Modern Love: XLVI
Modern Love: XLVI
Original Text
George Meredith, Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with poems and ballads (London: Chapman and Hall, 1862). end M474 M63 1862 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto).
2In such a close communion! It befell
3About the sounding of the Matin-bell,
4And lo! her place was vacant, and the hum
5Of loneliness was round me. Then I rose,
6And my disordered brain did guide my foot
7To that old wood where our first love-salute
8Was interchanged: the source of many throes!
9There did I see her, not alone. I moved
10Toward her, and made proffer of my arm.
11She took it simply, with no rude alarm;
12And that disturbing shadow passed reproved.
13I felt the pained speech coming, and declared
14My firm belief in her, ere she could speak.
15A ghastly morning came into her cheek,
16While with a widening soul on me she stared.
Notes
1] This narrative sequence of fifty sixteen-line "sonnets" probably has its roots in the unhappy history of Meredith's unsuccessful marriage to his first wife, Mary Ellen Nicolls, Peacock's widowed daughter, who had been the inspiration for Love in the Valley. The great novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), tells the same story. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1862
RPO poem Editors
H. Kerpneck
RPO Edition
3RP 3.296.
Rhyme