Modern love, I
George Meredith’s poem “Modern Love, I” is the first in a sequence of 50 sonnets that were first published in 1862 as part of Meredith’s volume “Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside”.
George Meredith was born on 12 February 1828 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and he died on 18 May 1909 in Box Hill, Surrey, England, at the age of 81.A poet and novelist, Meredith at first focused on poetry, but gradually established his reputation as a novelist. His novels were innovative in their attention to characters’ psychology and also took a close interest in social change. His style, in both poetry and prose, was noted for its syntactic complexity.
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By this he knew she wept with waking eyes: That, at his hand’s light quiver by her head, The strange low sobs that shook their common bed Were called into her with a sharp surprise, And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes, Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes Her giant heart of Memory and Tears Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat Sleep’s heavy measure, they from head to feet Were moveless, looking through their dead black years, By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall. Like sculptured effigies they might be seen Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between; Each wishing for the sword that severs all.