Modern Love: II

By George Meredith 1828–1909 George Meredith

It ended, and the morrow brought the task.

Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in

By shutting all too zealous for their sin:

Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask.

But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had!

He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers:

A languid humour stole among the hours,

And if their smiles encountered, he went mad,

And raged deep inward, till the light was brown

Before his vision, and the world, forgot,

Looked wicked as some old dull murder-spot.

A star with lurid beams, she seemed to crown

The pit of infamy: and then again

He fainted on his vengefulness, and strove

To ape the magnanimity of love,

And smote himself, a shuddering heap of pain.

Biography

George Meredith was a major Victorian novelist whose career developed in conjunction with an era of great change in English literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. While his early novels largely conformed to Victorian literary conventions, his later novels demonstrated a concern with character psychology, modern social problems, and the development of the novel form that has led to his being considered an . . .

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