Francis Thompson

“ The rhymer a life uncomplex,
With just such cares as mortals vex,
So simply felt as all men feel,
Lived purely out to his soul’s weal.
A double life the Poet lived,
p. 62And with a double burthen grieved;
The life of flesh and life of song,
The pangs to both lives that belong;
Immortal knew and mortal pain,
Who in two worlds could lose and gain. ”

“ Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:—
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue. ”

“ But once; it has no power to fare again
Forth o’er the heads of men,
Nor other Summers for its Sanctuary:
But from your mind’s chilled sky
It needs must drop, and lie with stiffened wings
Among your soul’s forlornest things;
A speck upon your memory, alack!
A dead fly in a dusty window-crack.
O therefore you who are
What words, being to such mysteries
As raiment to the body is,
Should rather hide than tell ”

“ So for thy spirit did devise
Its Maker seemly garniture,
Of its own essence parcel pure,—
From grave simplicities a dress,
And reticent demurenesses,
And love encinctured with reserve;
Which the woven vesture should subserve.
For outward robes in their ostents
Should show the soul’s habiliments.
Therefore I say,—Thou’rt fair even so,
But better Fair I use to know. ”

“ In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth ”

“ Summer set lip to earth’s bosom bare.
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.
With burnt mouth red like a lion’s it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,
And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine
When the eastern conduits ran with wine. ”

“ Bellying with neither gale,
Of Heaven
Nor Orcus even.
Life is a coquetry
Of Death, which wearies me,
Too sure
Of the amour;
A tiring-room where I
Death’s divers garments try,
Till fit
Some fashion sit. ”

“ Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their changèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to dawn: Be sudden—to eve: Be soon ”

“ Her soul from earth to Heaven lies,
Like the ladder of the vision,
Whereon go
To and fro,
In ascension and demission,
Star-flecked feet of Paradise. ”

“ The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet—
A silvern segregation, globed complete
In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;
Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,
Your cousined clusters, emulous to share
With you the roseal lightnings burning ’mid their hair;
Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:—
Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.
p. 75THE POPPY.
To Monica. Summer set lip to earth’s bosom bare. ”

“ Our minds make their own Termini, nor call
The issuing circumscriptions great or small;
So high constructing Nature lessons to us all:
Who optics gives accommodate to see
Your countenance large as looks the sun to be,
And distant greatness less than near humanity.
We, therefore, with a sure instinctive mind,
An equal spaciousness of bondage find
p. 26In confines far or near, of air or our own kind. ”

“ But our untempered speech descends—poor heirs!
Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel’s bricklayers:
Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit,
Strong but to damn, not memorise, a spirit!
A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they
Move with light ease in speech of working-day;
And women we do use to praise even so. ”

“ I reach back through the days
A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise.
The water-wraith that cries
From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes
Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies! ”

“ From eyes and speech weakness unmanned, unmeet;
As when his terrible dotage to repeat
Its little lesson learneth at your feet;
As when he sits among
His sepulchres, to play
With broken toys your hand has cast away,
With derelict trinkets of the darling young. ”

“ But lilies, stolen from grassy mold,
No more curlèd state unfold
Translated to a vase of gold;
In burning throne though they keep still
Serenities unthawed and chill. ”

“ That pleasaunce makes or prison, loose or chained.
Too much alike or little captives me,
For all oppression is captivity.
What groweth to its height demands no higher;
The limit limits not, but the desire. ”

“ What of her silence, that outsweetens speech?
What of her thoughts, high marks for mine own thoughts to reach?
Yet (Chaucer’s antique sentence so to turn) ,
p. 20Most gladly will she teach, and gladly learn;
And teaching her, by her enchanting art,
The master threefold learns for all he can impart. ”

“ Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self knew.
But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent doth,
Laid them at the rhymer’s feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,
Stood in a dim and shamèd stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty moth.
“Thou gav’st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are solely Thine,
And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;
The life I textured, Thou the song *—my handicraft is not divine!”
p. 59He wrested o’er the rhymer’s head * that garmenting which wrought him wrong ”

“ As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to nourish there—
Lord, who gav’st him robe and wreath, * what was this Thou gav’st for wear?”
“Fetch forth the Paradisal garb!” * spake the Father, sweet and low;
Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary’s throne made irised bow—
“Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, * two spirits greater than they know.”
EPILOGUE. Virtue may unlock hell, or even
A sin turn in the wards of Heaven,
(As ethics of the text-book go) ,
So little men their own deeds know,
Or through the intricate mêlée
Guess whitherward draws the battle-sway ”

“ The sopped sun—toper as ever drank hard—
Stares foolish, hazed,
Rubicund, dazed,
Totty with thine October tankard. ”

“ Whose form is as a grove
Hushed with the cooing of an unseen dove; ”

“ With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes so burned their charge;
Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,—disclosed from their kindling marge,
Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God’s light lay large.
Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer’s glories clings
A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork things,
Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs’ versicoloured wings. ”

“ As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth
At momentary intervals * beholds from its raggèd rifts break forth
The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a witchèd birth ”

“ I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”
p. 55A JUDGMENT IN HEAVEN. [55] Athwart the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with his splendid eyes;
Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of Paradise,
Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter-tangled relucent dyes. ”

“ The Assisian, who kept plighted faith to three,
To Song, to Sanctitude, and Poverty,
p. 73 (In two alone of whom most singers prove
A fatal faithfulness of during love!) ;
He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken
How God he could love more, he so loved men ”

“ Swift, swift, and bring with you
Song’s Indian summer! ”

“ A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through Eden-ways
Into the shade of the poet’s glory, * darkened under his prevalent rays,
Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.
p. 58The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: *—“Who has done this sorry deed in
The garden of our Father, God? * ’mid his blossoms to sow this weed in? ”

“ A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers long:—
“Better thou wov’st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy woof of song!”
Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then ”

“ Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *—the Mary titled Magdalen.
“Turn yon robe,” spake Magdalen, * “of torn bright song, and see and feel.”
They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did reveal—
All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs of steel.
“Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head.”
They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonishèd:
Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst and bled.
p. 60“See his torn flesh through those rents ”