Modern Love: XXII

By George Meredith 1828–1909 George Meredith

What may the woman labour to confess?

There is about her mouth a nervous twitch.

'Tis something to be told, or hidden:—which?

I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess.

She has desires of touch, as if to feel

That all the household things are things she knew.

She stops before the glass. What sight in view?

A face that seems the latest to reveal!

For she turns from it hastily, and tossed

Irresolute, steals shadow-like to where

I stand; and wavering pale before me there,

Her tears fall still as oak-leaves after frost.

She will not speak. I will not ask. We are

League-sundered by the silent gulf between.

Yon burly lovers on the village green,

Yours is a lower, and a happier star!

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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