"With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank."
In this excerpt Meredith lends the character of Satan a degree of humanity. He describes how Lucifer is haunted by the memory of defying "Awe," a clever reference to the full Hebrew name of God. Recalling the rebellion, he is immediately brought low by the related memory of his banishment. He's not allowed to fly beyond the stars because of his previous disloyalty.
"Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,
Said, 'I will kiss you': she laughed and leaned her cheek."
The narrator imagines his lover as the paragon of attraction. She's not stingy with her attention, nor reserved with her affection. As this passage describes, her most attractive feature is that she accepts compliments -- in this case in the form of a kiss.
"Now they'll miss us at our stations:
There's a Juggler outjuggles all!"
Jerry and his wife have devoted their lives to the circus, but now they are aging. Unable to keep performing, Jerry acknowledges the supremacy of God, but he views the divine through a personal lens. To him, God refers to the ultimate perfection. His God is the best juggler ever because that's an individual to whom Jerry is willing to submit himself. He is looking for perfection, so God becomes his model of perfection who makes all things complete.
"Those visible immortable beam
Allurement to the dream:
Ireful at human hungers brook
No question in the look."
Appropriate for the meditative purpose of this poem, Meredith devotes much of his discussion to a contemplation of the unreachable. The stars are visible to people, but they promise something unable to be fulfilled. Indifferent to human suffering and ignorance, the stars continue to shine their promise of illumination and mystery.
"As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so."
As endless as the formation of clouds, the rebirth cycle of humanity perpetuates. People are constantly dying, participating in the patterns of nature itself. Although we like to consider ourselves something more significant than the clouds, we fade away in the same way that they do. No exceptions.
