Francis Thompson

“ One has seldom seen poet more wildly abandoned to his rapture, more absorbed in the trance of his ecstasy. When the irresistible moment comes, he throws himself upon his mood as a glad swimmer gives himself to the waves, careless whither the strong tide carries him, knowing only the wild joy of the laughing waters and the rainbow spray. He shouts, as it were, for mere gladness, in the welter of wonderful words, and he dives swift and fearless to fetch his deep-sea fancies. When weak men venture on these vagaries they drown; but Mr Thompson is a strong swimmer. ”

“ Like Him thou hang'st in dreadful pomp of blood Upon thy Western rood; And His stained brow did veil like thine to-night, Yet lift once more Its light, And, risen, again departed from our ball, But when It set on earth arose in Heaven. Thus hath He unto death His beauty given: And so of all which form inheriteth [Pg 84] The fall doth pass the rise in worth; For birth hath in itself the germ of death, But death hath in itself the germ of birth. It is the falling acorn buds the tree, The falling rain that bears the greenery, The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise. ”

“ How should I gauge what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the casement for the sky? And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by, I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind. Hers is the face whence all should copied be, Did God make replicas of such as she; Its presence felt by what it does abate, Because the soul shines through tempered and mitigate: Where—as a figure labouring at night Beside the body of a splendid light— Dark Time works hidden by its luminousness ”

“ Oh, shake the bright dust from thy parting shoon! The earth not pæans thee, nor serves thy hest; Be godded not by Heaven! avert thy face, And leave to blank disgrace The oblivious world! unsceptre thee of state and place!
Yet ere Olympus thou wast, and a god! Though we deny thy nod, We cannot spoil thee of thy divinity. What know we elder than thee? When thou didst, bursting from the great void's husk, Leap like a lion on the throat o' the dusk; When the angels rose-chapleted Sang to each other, The vaulted blaze overhead Of their vast pinions spread, Hailing thee brother ”

“ No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays The eyes that on it gaze. We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit. In poets floating like a water-flower Upon the bosom of the glassy hour, In skies that no man sees to move, Lurk untumultuous vortices of power, For joy too native, and for agitation Too instant, too entire for sense thereof, Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low,— Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love On the heart's floors with painèd pace that go. From stones and poets you may know, Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so. ”

“ By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. Light out of light! Resplendent and prevailing Word Of the Unheard! Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; And in an age of faith grown frore If I too shall adore, Be it accounted unto me, A bright sciential idolatry! God has given thee visible thunders To utter thine apocalypse of wonders, And what want I of prophecy, That at the sounding from thy station Of thy flagrant trumpet, see The seals that melt, the open revelation? ”

“ Each in his frighted orbit wheels, Each flies through inassuageable chase, Since the hunt o' the world begun, The puissant approaches of thy face, And yet thy radiant leash he feels. Since the hunt o' the world begun, Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, The mighty course is ever run; Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. Since the hunt o' the world began, With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, Thou join'st the woman to the man; And Life with Death In obscure nuptials moveth, Commingling alien, yet affinèd, breath. ”

“ Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah me! What secret would thy radiant finger show? Of thy bright mastership is this the key? Is this thy secret, then? And is it woe?
Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and hark A song thou hast not heard in Northern day; For Rome too daring, and for Greece too dark, Sweet with wild wings that pass, that pass away!
ODE
Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth, The springing music, and its wasting breath— The fairest things in life are Death and Birth, And of these two the fairer thing is Death. ”

“ I hang 'mid men my needless head, And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread: The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper Time shall reap; but after the reaper The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper! [Pg 6]
Love, love! your flower of withered dream In leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem, Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme, From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.
Love! I fall into the claws of Time: But lasts within a leavèd rhyme All that the world of me esteems— My withered dreams, my withered dreams.
TO MONICA THOUGHT DYING
You, O the piteous you! ”

“ So I, in very lowlihead of love,— Too shyly reverencing To let one thought's light footfall smooth Tread near the living, consecrated thing,— Treasure me thy cast youth. This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee, Hath yet my knee, For that, with show and semblance fair Of the past Her Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare, It cheateth me. As gale to gale drifts breath Of blossoms' death, So dropping down the years from hour to hour This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day: I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower. ”

“ They say, Earth's beauty seems completest To them that on their death-beds rest; Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest Just ere she clasps us to her breast. [Pg 23] And I,—now my Earth's countenance grew bright, Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night? But, whileas on such dubious bed I lay, One unforgotten day, As a sick child waking sees Wide-eyed daisies Gazing on it from its hand, Slipped there for its dear amazes; So between thy father's knees I saw thee stand, And through my hazes Of pain and fear thine eyes' young wonder shone. ”

“ Comes the honey of all sweet, And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. And though, by thine alternate breath, Every kiss thou dost inspire Echoeth Back from the windy vaultages of death; Yet thy clear warranty above Augurs the wings of death too must Occult reverberations stir of love Crescent and life incredible; That even the kisses of the just Go down not unresurgent to the dust. Yea, not a kiss which I have given, But shall triúmph upon my lips in heaven, Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell. ”

“ Or, if a right successive you declare When worms, for ivies, intertwine my hair, Take but this Poesy that now followeth My clayey best with sullen servile breath, Made then your happy freedman by testating death. My song I do but hold for you in trust, I ask you but to blossom from my dust. When you have compassed all weak I began, Diviner poet, and ah! diviner man— The man at feud with the perduring child In you before song's altar nobly reconciled— From the wise heavens I half shall smile to see How little a world, which owned you, needed me. ”

“ While we behold with no astonishments, With that serene fulfilment of delight Wherewith we view the sight When the stars pitch the golden tents Of their high encampment on the plains of night. Why should amazement be our satellite? What wonder in such things? If angels have hereditary wings, If not by Salic law is handed down The poet's crown, To thee, born in the purple of the throne, The laurel must belong: Thou, in thy mother's right Descendant of Castilian-chrismèd kings— O Princess of the Blood of Song! ”

“ Who girt dissolvèd lightnings in the grape? Summered the opal with an Irised flush? Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape, And huest the daffodilly, Yet who hast snowed the lily; And her frail sister, whom the waters name, Dost vestal-vesture 'mid the blaze of June, Cold as the new-sprung girlhood of the moon Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame? Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam O'er all delight and dream; Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance: And, like a jocund maid In garland-flowers arrayed, Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance. ”

“ In this delighted season, flaming For thy resurrection-feast, Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, Than stony winter rolled From the unsealed mouth of the holy East; The snowdrop's saintly stoles less heed Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed. 'Tis the weak flesh reclaiming Against the ordinance Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans. Earth waits, and patient heaven, Self-bonded God doth wait Thrice-promulgated bans Of his fair nuptial-date. And power is man's, With that great word of "wait," To still the sea of tears, And shake the iron heart of Fate. ”

“ Thou hast made his mouth Avid of all dominion and all mightiness, All sorrow, all delight, all topless grandeurs, All beauty, and all starry majesties, And dim transtellar things;—even that it may, Filled in the ending with a puff of dust, Confess—"It is enough." The world left empty What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded For pride, for potency, infinity, All heights, all deeps, and all immensities, Arrased with purple like the house of kings, To stall the grey-rat, and the carrion-worm Statelily lodge. ”

“ To be took by the hand of equal earth They doff her livery, slip to the worm, Which lacqueys them, their suits of maintenance, And that soiled workaday apparel cast, Put on condition: Death's ungentle buffet Alone makes ceremonial manumission; So are the heavenly statutes set, and those Uranian tables of the primal Law. In a little peace, in a little peace, Like fierce beasts that a common thirst makes brothers, We draw together to one hid dark lake; In a little peace, in a little peace, We drain with all our burthens of dishonour Into the cleansing sands o' the thirsty grave. ”

“ Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars, And thicks the lusty breathing of the sun; Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge To the steep and trifid God; one mortal birth That broker is of immortality. Under this dreadful brother uterine, This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come, Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-motherlike, To turn thy weanlings' mouth averse, embitter'st Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike, I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last Shall sustenant be to thee. ”

“ The wailful sweetness of the violin Floats down the hushèd waters of the wind; The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin To long in aching music. Spirit-pined,
In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until The wounded soul ooze sadness. The red sun, A bubble of fire, drops slowly toward the hill, While one bird prattles that the day is done.
O setting Sun, that as in reverent days Sinkest in music to thy smoothèd sleep, Discrowned of homage, though yet crowned with rays, Hymned not at harvest more, though reapers reap:
For thee this music wakes not. ”

“ Till, all containing, he exalt His stature to the stars, or stars Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault: When, like a city under ocean, To human things he grows a desolation, And is made a habitation For the fluctuous universe To lave with unimpeded motion. He scarcely frets the atmosphere [Pg 114] With breathing, and his body shares The immobility of rocks; His heart's a drop-well of tranquillity; His mind more still is than the limbs of fear, And yet its unperturbed velocity The spirit of the simoon mocks. ”

“ Must be obsequious to the body's powers, Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways; Must do obeisance to the days, And wait the little pleasure of the hours; Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be Captive in statuted minority! So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee. So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule, And wisdom weaves itself i' the loom o' the fool. The splendent sun no splendour can display, Till on gross things he dash his broken ray, From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray. ”

“ Cruel to take from a Sinner his Heaven! [Pg 39] Think you with contrite smiles To be forgiven? Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!
Penitent! give me back Angels, and Heaven; Render your stolen self, And be forgiven! How frontier Heaven from you? For my soul prays, Sweet, Still to your face in Heaven, Heaven in your face, Sweet! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!
HER PORTRAIT
Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold! ”

“ She bare thee with a double pain, Of the body and the spirit; Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta'en, Thy diviner weeds inherit! The precious streams which through thy young lips roll Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul: Where sprites of so essential kind Set their paces, Surely they shall leave behind The green traces Of their sportance in the mind; And thou shalt, ere we well may know it, Turn that daintiness, a poet,— Elfin-ring Where sweet fancies foot and sing. ”

“ Who art thy sex's complex harmony God-set more facilely; To thee may love draw near Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility: Thou Perseus' Shield! wherein I view secure The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure! Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free; With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind The barèd limbs of the rebukeless mind. Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree, With which indissolubly The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole ”

“ Whether man's heart or life it be which yields Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit Comes on at hand the bruit; That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: "And is thy earth so marred, Shattered in shard on shard? Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! Strange, piteous, futile thing, Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said) , "And human love needs human meriting: How hast thou merited— Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? ”

“ But on a day whereof I think, One shall dip his hand to drink In that still water of thy soul, And its imaged tremors race Over thy joy-troubled face, As the intervolved reflections roll From a shaken fountain's brink, With swift light wrinkling its alcove. From the hovering wing of Love The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek. Then, sweet blushet! whenas he, The destined paramount of thy universe, Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee, Ascends his vermeil throne of empery, One grace alone I seek. ”

“ Must ye fade— O old, essential candours, ye who made The earth a living and a radiant thing— And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms? Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charms Draws from dull death his lost Eurydice, Lo ever thus, even at consummating, Even in the swooning minute that claims her his, Even as he trembles to the impassioned kiss Of reincarnate Beauty, his control Clasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul! Whatso looks lovelily Is but the rainbow on life's weeping rain. ”