Complete Poems by George Eliot - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) (eBook)

GEORGE ELIOT (Autor)

GEORGE ELIOT (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
351 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-1-78877-010-1 (ISBN)

Infos

This eBook features the unabridged text of 'The Complete Poems by George Eliot - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)' from the bestselling edition of 'The Complete Works of George Eliot'.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Eliot includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of 'The Complete Poems by George Eliot - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)'
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Eliot's works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the text

Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

Textauszug

AGATHA.

Come with me to the mountain, not where rocks
Soar harsh above the troops of hurrying pines,
But where the earth spreads soft and rounded breasts
To feed her children; where the generous hills
Lift a green isle betwixt the sky and plain
To keep some Old World things aloof from change.
Here too ‘t is hill and hollow : new-born streams
With sweet enforcement, joyously compelled
Like laughing children, hurry down the steeps,
And make a dimpled chase athwart the stones;
Pine woods are black upon the heights, the slopes
Are green with pasture, and the bearded corn
Fringes the blue above the sudden ridge :
A little world whose round horizon cuts
This isle of hills with heaven for a sea,
Save in clear moments when south westward gleams
France by the Rhine, melting anon to haze.
The monks of old chose here their still retreat,
And called it by the Blessed Virgin’s name,
Sancta Maria, which the peasant’s tongue,
Speaking from out the parent’s heart that turns
All loved things into little things, has made
Sanct Margen — Holy little Mary, dear
As all the sweet home things she smiles upon,
The children and the cows, the apple-trees,
The cart, the plough, all named with that caress
Which feigns them little, easy to be held,
Familiar to the eyes and hand and heart.
What though a Queen? She puts her crown away
And with her little Boy wears common clothes,
Caring for common wants, remembering
That day when good Saint Joseph left his work
To marry her with humble trust sublime.
The monks are gone, their shadows fall no more
Tall-frocked and cowled athwart the evening fields
At milking-time; their silent corridors
Are turned to homes of bare-armed, aproned men,
Who toil for wife and children. But the bells,
Pealing on high from two quaint convent towers,
Still ring the Catholic signals, summoning
To grave remembrance of the larger life
That bears our own, like perishable fruit
Upon its heaven-wide branches. At their sound
The shepherd boy far off upon the hill,
The workers with the saw and at the forge,
The triple generation round the hearth —
Grandames and mothers and the flute-voiced girls —
Fall on their knees, and send forth prayerful cries
To the kind Mother with the little Boy,
Who pleads for helpless men against the storm,
Lightning and plagues and all terrific shapes
Of power supreme.
Within the prettiest hollow of these hills,
Just as you enter it, upon the slope
Stands a low cottage neighboured cheerily
By running water, which, at farthest end
Of the same hollow, turns a heavy mill,
And feeds the pasture for the miller’s cows,
Blanchi and Nageli, Veilchen and the rest,
Matrons with faces as Griselda mild,
Coming at call. And on the farthest height
A little tower looks out above the pines
Where mounting you will find a sanctuary
Open and still; without, the silent crowd
Of heaven-planted, incense-mingling flowers;
Within, the altar where the Mother sits
‘Mid votive tablets hung from far-off years
By peasants succored in the peril of fire,
Fever, or floods who thought that Mary’s love,
Willing but not omnipotent, had stood
Between their lives and that dread power which slew
Their neighbor at their side. The chapel bell
Will melt to gentlest music ere it reach
That cottage on the slope, whose garden gate
Has caught the rose-tree boughs and stands ajar;
So does the door, to let the sunbeams in;
For in the slanting sunbeams angels come
And visit Agatha who dwells within —
Old Agatha, whose cousins Kate and Nell
Are housed by her in Love and Duty’s name,
They being feeble, with small withered wits,
And she believing that the higher gift
Was given to be shared. So Agatha
Shares her one room, all neat on afternoons,
As if same memory were sacred there
And everything within the-four low waIls
An honored relic.
One long summer’s day
An angel entered at the rose-hung gate,
With skirts pale blue, a brow to quench the pearl,
Hair soft and blonde as infants’, plenteous
As hers who made the wavy lengths once speak
The grateful worship of a rescued soul.
The angel paused before the open door
To give good day. “ Come in, “ said Agatha.
I followed close, and watched and listened there.
The angel was a lady, noble, young,
Taught in all the seemliness that fits the court,
All lore that shapes the mind to delicate use,
Yet quiet, lowly, as a meek white dove
That with its presence teaches gentleness.
Men called her Countess Linda; little girls
In Freiburg town, orphans whom she caressed,
Said Mamma Linda : yet her years were few,
Her outward beauties all in budding time,
Her virtues the aroma of the plant
That dwells in all its being, root, stem, leaf.
And waits not ripeness.
“ Sit, “ said Agatha.
Her cousins were at work in neighboring homes
But yet she was not lonely; all things round
Seemed filled with noiseless yet responsive life,
As of a child at breast that gently clings :
Not sunlight only or the breathing flowers
Or the swift shadows of the birds and bees,
But all the household goods, which, polished fair
By hands that cherished them for service done,
Shone as with glad content. The wooden beams
Dark and yet friendly, easy to be reached,
Bore three white crosses for a speaking sign;
The walls had little pictures hung a-row,
Telling the stories of Saint Ursula,
And Saint Elizabeth, the lowly queen;
And on the bench that served for table too,
Skirting the wall to save the narrow space,
There lay the Catholic books, inherited
From those old times when printing still was young
With stout-limbed promise, like a sturdy boy.
And in the farthest corner stood the bed
Where o’er the pillow hung two pictures wreathed
With fresh-plucked ivy : one the Virgin’s death.
And one her flowering tomb, while high above
She smiling bends and lets her girdle down
For ladder to the soul that cannot trust
In life which outlasts burial. Agatha
Sat at her knitting, aged, upright, slim.
And spoke her welcome with mild dignity.
She kept the company of kings and queens
And mitred saints who sat below the feet
Of Francis with the ragged frock and wounds;
And Rank for her meant Duty, various,
Yet equal in its worth, done worthily.
Command was service; humblest service done
By willing and discerning soul was glory.
Fair Countess Linda sat upon the bench,
Close fronting the old knitter, and they talked
With sweet antiphony of young and old.

AGATHA.
You like our valley, lady? I am glad
You thought it well to come again. But rest —
The walk is long from Master Michael’s inn.

COUNTESS LINDA.
Yes, but no walk is prettier.

AGATHA.
It is true:
There lacks no blessing here, the waters all
Have virtues like the garments of the Lord,
And heal much sickness; then, the crops and cows
Flourish past speaking, and the garden flowers,
Pink, blue, and purple, ‘t is a joy to see
How they yield honey for the singing bees.
I would the whole world were as good a home.

COUNTESS LINDA.
And you are well off, Agatha? — your friends
Left you a certain bread : is it not so?

AGATHA.
Not so at all, dear lady. I had naught,
Was a poor orphan; but I came to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.7.2017
• Reihe/Serie: Delphi Parts Edition (George Eliot)
• Reihe/Serie: Delphi Parts Edition (George Eliot)
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Anthologien
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Austen • Bede • deronda • Felix • Floss • Middlemarch • Silas
• ISBN-10: 1-78877-010-2 / 1788770102
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78877-010-1 / 9781788770101