Changes and Chances

There are fifty of these in the set. Fifty -- That's an abundance of pain. George Meredith wrote 'Modern Love' in 1862, when his marriage to Mary Ellen Nicolis failed. We act as if the breakup were a modern invention, or as if modern love were modern in only our day (or as if it were a column in The New York Times), but they predated us and they'll keep happening long after we're gone.

Here's a first view of the night shift. Read it knowing that Meredith's second marriage was a smashing success. He wrote this from his pain, but lived to risk and love again -- to risk and, finally, to win.

Modern Love
George Meredith

I

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 strangely mute, like little gasping 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.