Francis Thompson

“ The moon’s young rondure through the shamefast veil
Drawn to her gleaming chin:
After this wise,
From the enticing smile of earth and skies
I dream my unknown Fair’s refusèd gaze;
And guessingly her love’s close traits devise,
Which she with subtile coquetries
Through little human glimpses slow displays,
Cozening my mateless days
By sick, intolerable delays.
And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways;
And so my touch, to golden poesies
Turning love’s bread, is bought at hunger’s price. ”

“ O Spring’s little children, more loud your lauds upraise,
For this is even Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways!
Your lovesome labours lay away,
And prank you out in holiday,
For syllabling to Sylvia;
And all you birds on branches, lave your mouths with May,
To bear with me this burthen
For singing to Sylvia!
7. Spring, goddess, is it thou, desirèd long? ”

“ He knows not if a leaf shall grow,
Where he sows he doth not reap,
He reapeth where he did not sow;
He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep
To meet him on his waking way.
Vision will mate him not by law and vow:
p. 43Disguised in life’s most hodden-grey,
By the most beaten road of everyday
She waits him, unsuspected and unknown.
The hardest pang whereon
He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob’s stone.
In the most iron crag his foot can tread
A Dream may strew her bed,
And suddenly his limbs entwine,
And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might through brine. ”

“ In all I work, my hand includeth thine;
Thou rushest down in every stream
Whose passion frets my spirit’s deepening gorge;
Unhood’st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;
Thou swing’st the hammers of my forge;
As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world. ”

“ The glimmering shapes of its dim-tressèd daughters,
And missions each to be thy minister.
Saying; “O ye,
The organ-stops of being’s harmony;
The blushes on existence’s pale face,
Lending it sudden grace;
Without whom we should but guess Heaven’s worth
By blank negations of this sordid earth,
(So haply to the blind may light
Be but gloom’s undetermined opposite) ”

“ Pardon at thine unconscious hands!
“Murmurous with music not their own,” I say?
And in that saying how do I missay,
p. 42When from the common sands
Of poorest common speech of common day
Thine accents sift the golden musics out!
And ah, we poets, I misdoubt,
Are little more than thou!
We speak a lesson taught we know not how,
And what it is that from us flows
The hearer better than the utterer knows.
Thou canst foreshape thy word;
The poet is not lord
Of the next syllable may come
With the returning pendulum ”

“ In the fair lakes of thine eyes,
And I watch the sparkles that use
There to rise,
Knowing these
Are bubbles from the calyces
Of the lovely thoughts that breathe
Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit’s floor beneath.
O thou most dear!
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,
p. 38As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free ”

“ On thee, green pleasaunce as thou art,
To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white.
The water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet
Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk
Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit? ”

“ These strains the way for thine own strains prepare;
We feel the music moist upon this breeze,
And hope the congregating poesies.
Sundered yet by thee from us
Wait, with wild eyes luminous,
All thy wingèd things that are to be;
They flit against thee, Gate of Ivory!
They clamour on the portress Destiny,—
“Set her wide, so we may issue through!
Our vans are quick for that they have to do!”
Suffer still your young desire;
Your plumes but bicker at the tips with fire,
p. 45Tarry their kindling; they will beat the higher. ”

“ Where man’s embaying mind those waters lave,
(For music hath its Oceanides
Flexuously floating through their parent seas,
And such are these) ,
I saw a vision—or may it be
The effluence of a dear desired reality?
I saw two spirits high,—
Two spirits, dim within the silver smoke
Which is for ever woke
By snowing lights of fountained Poesy.
Two shapes they were familiar as love;
They were those souls, whereof
One twines from finest gracious daily things,
Strong, constant, noticeless, as are heart-strings
p. 64The golden cage wherein this song-bird sings ”

“ The destined paramount of thy universe,
Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee,
p. 52Àscends his vermeil throne of empery,
One grace alone I seek.
Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse,
Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,
Set with a towering press of fantasies,
Drop safely down the time,
Leaving mine islèd self behind it far
Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas,
(As down the years the splendour voyages
From some long ruined and night-submergèd star) ,
And in thy subject sovereign’s havening heart
Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore ”

“ Monica and Madeline (Sylvia) Meynell
p. 1SISTER SONGS
An Offering to Two Sisters The Proem Shrewd winds and shrill—were these the speech of May?
A ragged, slag-grey sky—invested so,
Mary’s spoilt nursling! wert thou wont to go?
Or thou, Sun-god and song-god, say
Could singer pipe one tiniest linnet-lay,
While Song did turn away his face from song?
Or who could be
In spirit or in body hale for long,—
Old Æsculap’s best Master!—lacking thee?
p. 2At length, then, thou art here!
On the earth’s lethèd ear
Thy voice of light rings out exultant, strong ”

“ In its rise, and in its fall;
As if in one sweet consort there were blent
Those archetypes celestial
Which our endeavouring instruments recall.
p. 8So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain
To heavenly viols, that again
—Aching with music—wailed back pain ”