Poem by George Meredith

Earth's Preference

Earth loves her young: a preference manifest:
She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds;
Their beauty with her choicest interthreads,
And makes her revel of their merry zest;
As in our East much were it in our West,
If men had risen to do the work of heads.
Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads
The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed.
How wrought they in their zenith? 'Tis not writ;
Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read:
Have they but held her laws and nature dear,
They mouth no sentence of inverted wit.
More prizes she her beasts than this high breed
Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear. 

1. Modern Love. Sonnet 38. Give to Imagination
2. Empdeocles
3. Unknown Fair Faces
4. My Theme
5. Modern Love. Sonnet 40. I Bade my Lady Think what She Might Mean

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