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Poems by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

Writer, born monday november 22, 1819 in South Farm, Arbury (United Kingdom), died wednesday december 22, 1880 in London (United Kingdom)
You can find this author also in Quotes & Aphorisms.
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The World Is Great

The world is great!
The birds fly from me;
The stars are golden fruit
Upon a tree
All out of reach
My little sister went and I am lonely.

The world is great!
I tried to mount the hill
Above the pines
Where the light lies so still,
But it rose higher.
Little Lisa went and I am lonely.

The world is great!
The wind comes rushing by.
I wonder where it comes from.
Sea-birds cry
And hurt my heart.
My little sister went and I am lonely.

The world is great!
The people laugh and talk,
And make loud holiday.
How fast they walk!
I'm lame, they push me.
Little Lisa went and I am lonely.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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    The Radiant Dark

    Should I long that dark were fair? Say, o song.
    Lacks my love aught that I should long?
    Dark the night with breath all flow'rs
    And tender broken voice that fills
    With ravishment the list'ning hours.
    Whis'prings, wooings,
    Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings,
    in low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills.

    Dark the night, yet is she bright,
    For in her dark she brings the mystic star,
    Trembling yet strong as is the voice of love
    From some unknown afar.
    O radiant dark, o darkly foster'd ray,
    Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow day.
    George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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      Mid My Gold-Brown Curls

      'Mid my gold-brown curls
      There twined a silver hair:
      I plucked it idly out
      And scarcely knew 'twas there.
      Coiled in my velvet sleeve it lay
      And like a serpent hissed:
      "Me thou canst pluck & fling away,
      One hair is lightly missed;
      But how on that near day
      When all the wintry army muster in array?"
      George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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        Day Is Dying

        Day is dying! Float, o song,
        Down the westward river,
        Requiem chanting to the Day,
        Day, the mighty giver!

        Pierced by shafts of Time he bleeds,
        Melted rubies sending
        Through the river and the sky,
        Earth and heaven blending.

        All the long-drawn earthy banks
        Up to cloudland lifting:
        Slow between them drifts the swan
        'Twixt two heavens drifting,

        Wings half open like a flower.
        In by deeper flushing,
        Neck and breast as virgin' s pure
        Virgin proudly blushing.

        Day is dying! Float, o swan,
        Down the ruby river,
        Follow, song, in requiem
        To the mighty Giver!
        George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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          The Choir Invisible

          Oh, may I join the choir invisible
          Of those immortal dead who live again
          In minds made better by their presence; live
          In pulses stirred to generosity,
          In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
          For miserable aims that end with self,
          In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
          And with their mild persistence urge men's search
          To vaster issues. So to live is heaven:
          To make undying music in the world,
          Breathing a beauteous order that controls
          With growing sway the growing life of man.
          So we inherit that sweet purity
          For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
          With widening retrospect that bred despair.
          Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
          a vicious parent shaming still its child,
          Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
          Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
          Die in the large and charitable air,
          And all our rarer, better, truer self
          That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
          That watched to ease the burden of the world,
          Laboriously tracing what must be,
          And what may yet be better, -  - saw within
          a worthier image for the sanctuary,
          And shaped it forth before the multitude,
          Divinely human, raising worship so
          To higher reverence more mixed with love, - -
          That better self shall live till human Time
          Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
          Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
          Unread forever. This is life to come, - -
          Which martyred men have made more glorious
          For us who strive to follow. May I reach
          That purest heaven, -  - be to other souls
          The cup of strength in some great agony,
          Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
          Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
          Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
          And in diffusion ever more intense!
          So shall I join the choir invisible
          Whose music is the gladness of the world.
          George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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            Brother And Sister

            I.

            I cannot choose but think upon the time
            When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss
            At lightest thrill from the bee's swinging chime,
            Because the one so near the other is.

            He was the elder and a little man
            Of forty inches, bound to show no dread,
            And I the girl that puppy-like now ran,
            Now lagged behind my brother's larger tread.

            I held him wise, and when he talked to me
            Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best,
            I thought his knowledge marked the boundary
            Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest.

            If he said "Hush!" I tried to hold my breath;
            Wherever he said "Come!" I stepped in faith.

            Ii.

            Long years have left their writing on my brow,
            But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam
            Of those young mornings are about me now,
            When we two wandered toward the far-off stream

            With rod and line. Our basket held a store
            Baked for us only, and I thought with joy
            That I should have my share, though he had more,
            Because he was the elder and a boy.

            The firmaments of daisies since to me
            Have had those mornings in their opening eyes,
            The bunchéd cowslip's pale transparency
            Carries that sunshine of sweet memories,

            And wild-rose branches take their finest scent
            From those blest hours of infantine content.

            Iii.

            Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways,
            Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill,
            Then with the benediction of her gaze
            Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still

            Across the homestead to the rookery elms,
            Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound,
            So rich for us, we counted them as realms
            With varied products: here were earth-nuts found,

            And here the Lady-fingers in deep shade;
            Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew,
            The large to split for pith, the small to braid;
            While over all the dark rooks cawing flew,

            And made a happy strange solemnity,
            a deep-toned chant from life unknown to me.

            Iv.

            Our meadow-path had memorable spots:
            One where it bridged a tiny rivulet,
            Deep hid by tangled blue Forget-me-nots;
            And all along the waving grasses met

            My little palm, or nodded to my cheek,
            When flowers with upturned faces gazing drew
            My wonder downward, seeming all to speak
            With eyes of souls that dumbly heard and knew.

            Then came the copse, where wild things rushed unseen,
            And black-scathed grass betrayed the past abode
            Of mystic gypsies, who still lurked between
            Me and each hidden distance of the road.

            A gypsy once had startled me at play,
            Blotting with her dark smile my sunny day.

            V.

            Thus rambling we were schooled in deepest lore,
            And learned the meanings that give words a soul,
            The fear, the love, the primal passionate store,
            Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole.

            Those hours were seed to all my after good;
            My infant gladness, through eye, ear, and touch,
            Took easily as warmth a various food
            To nourish the sweet skill of loving much.

            For who in age shall roam the earth and find
            Reasons for loving that will strike out love
            With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind?
            Were reasons sown as thick as stars above,

            'Tis love must see them, as the eye sees light:
            Day is but Number to the darkened sight.

            Vi.

            Our brown canal was endless to my thought;
            And on its banks I sat in dreamy peace,
            Unknowing how the good I loved was wrought,
            Untroubled by the fear that it would cease.

            Slowly the barges floated into view
            Rounding a grassy hill to me sublime
            With some Unknown beyond it, whither flew
            The parting cuckoo toward a fresh spring time.

            The wide-arched bridge, the scented elder-flowers,
            The wondrous watery rings that died too soon,
            The echoes of the quarry, the still hours
            With white robe sweeping-on the shadeless noon,

            Were but my growing self, are part of me,
            My present Past, my root of piety.

            Vii.

            Those long days measured by my little feet
            Had chronicles which yield me many a text;
            Where irony still finds an image meet
            Of full-grown judgments in this world perplext.

            One day my brother left me in high charge,
            To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait,
            And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge,
            Snatch out the line lest he should come too late.

            Proud of the task, I watched with all my might
            For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide,
            Till sky and earth took on a strange new light
            And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide -

            a fair pavilioned boat for me alone
            Bearing me onward through the vast unknown.

            Viii.

            But sudden came the barge's pitch-black prow,
            Nearer and angrier came my brother's cry,
            And all my soul was quivering fear, when lo!
            Upon the imperilled line, suspended high,

            a silver perch! My guilt that won the prey,
            Now turned to merit, had a guerdon rich
            Of songs and praises, and made merry play,
            Until my triumph reached its highest pitch

            When all at home were told the wondrous feat,
            And how the little sister had fished well.
            In secret, though my fortune tasted sweet,
            I wondered why this happiness befell.

            'The little lass had luck, ' the gardener said:
            And so I learned, luck was with glory wed.

            Ix.

            We had the self-same world enlarged for each
            By loving difference of girl and boy:
            The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach
            He plucked for me, and oft he must employ

            a measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe
            Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind
            "This thing I like my sister may not do,
            For she is little, and I must be kind."

            Thus boyish Will the nobler mastery learned
            Where inward vision over impulse reigns,
            Widening its life with separate life discerned,
            a Like unlike, a Self that self restrains.

            His years with others must the sweeter be
            For those brief days he spent in loving me.

            X.

            His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy
            Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame;
            My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy
            Had any reason when my brother came.

            I knelt with him at marbles, marked his fling
            Cut the ringed stem and make the apple drop,
            Or watched him winding close the spiral string
            That looped the orbits of the humming top.

            Grasped by such fellowship my vagrant thought
            Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil;
            My aëry-picturing fantasy was taught
            Subjection to the harder, truer skill

            That seeks with deeds to grave a thought-tracked line,
            And by 'What is, ' 'What will bè to define.

            Xi.

            School parted us; we never found again
            That childish world where our two spirits mingled
            Like scents from varying roses that remain
            One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

            Yet the twin habit of that early time
            Lingered for long about the heart and tongue:
            We had been natives of one happy clime
            And its dear accent to our utterance clung.

            Till the dire years whose awful name is Change
            Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce,
            And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range
            Two elements which sever their life's course.

            But were another childhood-world my share,
            I would be born a little sister there.
            George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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              Blue Wings

              Warm whisp'ring through the slender olive leaves
              Came to me a gentle sound,
              Whis'pring of a secret found
              In the clear sunshine 'mid the golden sheaves:

              Said it was sleeping for me in the morn,
              Called it gladness, called it joy,
              Drew me on "Come hither, boy."
              To where the blue wings rested on the corn.

              I thought the gentle sound had whispered true
              Thought the little heaven mine,
              Leaned to clutch the thing divine,
              And saw the blue wings melt within the blue!
              George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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                Sping Comes Hither

                Spring comes hither
                Buds the rose ...
                Roses wither
                Sweet spring goes ...
                o ja là
                o ja là ...
                Would she carry me.

                Summer soars
                Wide-wing'd day ...
                White light pours
                Flies away ...
                o ja là
                o ja là ...
                Would he carry me.

                Soft winds blow
                Westward borne ...
                Onward go
                Towards the morn
                o ja là
                o ja là ...
                Would they carry me.

                Sweet birds sing
                o'er the graves
                Then take wing
                o'er the waves
                o ja là
                o ja là ...
                Would they carry me.
                George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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                  Bright, O Bright Fedalma

                  Maiden crowned with glossy blackness,
                  Lithe as panther forest-roaming,
                  Long-armed Naiad when she dances
                  On a stream of ether floating,
                  Bright, o bright Fedalma!

                  Form all curves like softness drifted,
                  Wave-kissed marble roundly dimpling,
                  Far-off music slowly wingèd,
                  Gently rising, gently sinking,
                  Bright, o bright Fedalma!

                  Pure as rain-tear on a rose-leaf,
                  Cloud high born in noonday spotless
                  Sudden perfect like the dew-bead,
                  Gem of earth and sky begotten,
                  Bright, o bright Fedalma!

                  Beauty has no mortal father,
                  Holy light her form engendered,
                  Out of tremor yearning, gladness,
                  Presage sweet, and joy remembered,
                  Child of light! Child of light!
                  Child of light, Fedalma!
                  George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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                    Two Lovers

                    Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
                    They leaned soft cheeks together there,
                    Mingled the dark and sunny hair,
                    And heard the wooing thrushes sing.
                    O budding time!
                    O love's blest prime!

                    Two wedded from the portal stept:
                    The bells made happy carolings,
                    The air was soft as fanning wings,
                    White petals on the pathway slept.
                    O pure-eyed bride!
                    O tender pride!

                    Two faces o'er a cradle bent:
                    Two hands above the head were locked:
                    These pressed each other while they rocked,
                    Those watched a life that love had sent.
                    O solemn hour!
                    O hidden power!

                    Two parents by the evening fire:
                    The red light fell about their knees
                    On heads that rose by slow degrees
                    Like buds upon the lily spire.
                    O patient life!
                    O tender strife!

                    The two still sat together there,
                    The red light shone about their knees;
                    But all the heads by slow degrees
                    Had gone and left that lonely pair.
                    O voyage fast!
                    O vanished past!

                    The red light shone upon the floor
                    And made the space between them wide;
                    They drew their chairs up side by side,
                    Their pale cheeks joined, and said, "Once more!"
                    O memories!
                    O past that is!
                    George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
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