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<name>George <index>Meredith</index></name>

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<title>Modern Love XXX</title>

<source><plug href="http://www.sonnets.org">Sonnet Central</plug> has the entire <worktitle>Modern Love</worktitle> cycle.....</source>

<remark>This splendid, bleak, righteous work is defiantly a sonnet despite its sixteen lines. (This is thirtieth in a cycle of fifty such examples.) The ironies of the final line, which rhetorically stands alone with a sudden (couplet-like) turn, are manifold.</remark>

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<line>What are we first? First, animals; and <rhyme on="a">next</rhyme></line>

<line>Intelligences at a leap; on <rhyme on="b">whom</rhyme></line>

<line>Pale lies the distant shadow of the <rhyme on="b">tomb</rhyme>,</line>

<line>And all that draweth on the tomb for <rhyme on="a">text</rhyme>.</line>

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<line>Into which state comes Love, the crowning <rhyme on="c">sun</rhyme>:</line>

<line>Beneath whose light the shadow loses <rhyme on="d">form</rhyme>.</line>

<line>We are the lords of life, and life is <rhyme on="d">warm</rhyme>.</line>

<line>Intelligence and instinct now are <rhyme on="c">one</rhyme>.</line>

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</octave>

<line>But nature says: ‘My children most they <rhyme on="e">seem</rhyme></line>

<line>When they least know me: therefore I <rhyme on="f">decree</rhyme></line>

<line>That they shall suffer.’ Swift doth young Love <rhyme on="f">flee</rhyme>,</line>

<line>And we stand wakened, shivering from our <rhyme on="e">dream</rhyme>.</line>

</quatrain>

<line>Then if we study Nature we are <rhyme on="g">wise</rhyme>.</line>

<line>The scientific animals are <rhyme on="h">they</rhyme>.</line>

<line>Lady, this is my sonnet to your <rhyme on="g">eyes</rhyme>.</line>

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