Hate, the shadow of a grain; You are lost in Westermain: Earthward swoops a vulture sun Nighted upon carrion: Straightway venom winecups shout As to One whose eyes are out: Flowers along the reeling floor Drip henbane and hellebore; Beauty, of her tresses shorn, Shrieks as nature's maniac: Hideousness on hoof and horn Tumbles, yapping in her track: Haggard Wisdom, stately once, Leers fantastical and trips. . . . . . . . Imp that dances, imp that flits, Imp o' the demon-growing girl, Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits Round you, and with them you whirl Fast where pours the fountain--rout Out of Him whose eyes are out. The foregoing must seem to you very difficult verse; and it is really very difficult for the best English readers. But at the same time it is very powerful; and I think that you ought to have at least one example of the difficult side of Meredith. This is a picture--a horrible picture, such as old artists used to make in the fifteenth or sixteenth century to illustrate the temptations of a saint by devils, or the terrors of a sinner about to die, and surrounded by ghastly visions. Really if you hate Nature, the universe will at once for you become what it seemed to the superstitious of the past ages and to the disordered fancies of insane fanatics. The very sun itself will no longer appear as a glorious star, but as a creature of prey, devouring the dead. Perhaps the poet here wishes also to teach us that we must not think too much about the ugly side of death as an appearance--the corruption, the worms, the darkness of the grave. To think about those things, as the monks of the Middle Ages did, is to hate Nature. Everything seems foul to the man whose imagination is foul. Everything which should be nourishing becomes poison, everything which should seem beautiful becomes hideous. The reference to "One whose eyes are out," is, you know, a reference to the old fashioned pictures of death, as a goblin skeleton, seeing without eyes. In some frightful pictures death was represented also as an eyeless corpse, out of which all kinds of goblins, demons, and bad dreams were swarming, like maggots. Of course such are the pictures referred to here by the poet. Believe in goblins and devils, and you will see them; believe that all men are wicked, and you will find them wicked; believe that Nature is evil, and Nature will certainly destroy you, just as the demons in the mediæval story tore to pieces the magician who had not learned the secret of making them obey.