George Meredith (1828-1909)

Modern Love XXX

 
 
 

What are we first? First, animals; and next

a 
 

Intelligences at a leap; on whom

b 
 

Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb,

b 
 

And all that draweth on the tomb for text.

a 
 5

Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun:

c 
 

Beneath whose light the shadow loses form.

d 
 

We are the lords of life, and life is warm.

d 
 

Intelligence and instinct now are one.

c 
 

But nature says: ‘My children most they seem

e 
 10

When they least know me: therefore I decree

f 
 

That they shall suffer.’ Swift doth young Love flee,

f 
 

And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.

e 
 

Then if we study Nature we are wise.

g 
 

Thus do the few who live but with the day:

h 
 15

The scientific animals are they.

h 
 

Lady, this is my sonnet to your eyes.

g 
 
 

Sonnet Central has the entire Modern Love cycle.....

Remarks:

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.