Various

“ Prose before poetry is an unmeaning interruption; for poetry is perhaps the one thing in the world that explains itself. The only possible prelude for songs is silence; and I shall endeavour here to imitate the brevity of the silence as well as its stillness.
This collection contains four new poems by one whom all serious critics now class with Shelley and Keats and those other great ones cut down with their work unfinished. Yet I would not speak specially of him, lest modern critics should run away with their mad notion of a one-man influence; and call this a "school" of Francis Thompson. ”

“ To Choose Thou canst choose the eastern Circle for thy part,
And within its sacred precincts thou shalt rest;
Thou shalt fold pale, slender hands upon thy breast,
Thou shalt fasten silent eyes upon thy heart.
If there steal within the languor of thine ark
The thunder of the waters of the earth,
The human, simple cries of pain and mirth,
The wails of little children in the dark,
Thou shalt contemplate thy Circle's radiant gleam,
Thou shalt gather self and God more closely still:
Let the Piteous and the Foolish moan at will,
So thou shelter in the sweetness of thy dream. ”

“ The golden moon aglow in your hair, and the spear-driven light
Of an army of stars in your eyes, weary with truant sleep.
O little skilled in self, who thought you came to weep!
Out of the darkness, light; flame in the virgin dew!
Love came unto her own, and knew him not, who knew.
O understood! O known! O apprehended bliss!
O self unskilled in self! O taught of my one kiss!
Mater Inviolata A maiden's love most nuptial is,
Innocent of his nuptial kiss ”

“ FRANCIS THOMPSON Threatened Tears Do not loose those rains thy wet
Eyes, my Fair, unsurely threat;
Do not, Sweet, do not so;
Thou canst not have a single woe,
But this sad and doubtful weatlier
Overcasts us both together. ”

“ Francis Thompson was not a schoolmaster. He would have said as freely as Whitman (and with a far more consistent philosophy) , "I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free." The modern world has this mania about plagiarism because the modern world cannot comprehend the idea of communion. It thinks that men must steal ideas; it does not understand that men may share them. The saints did not imitate each other; not always even study each other ”

“ Sic Transit They camped in the meadow at sunrise,
And their crests gleamed bright in the sun,
And the breeze that blew sighed soft, for it knew
Their fate e'er the day was done.
They lay in the meadow at sunset,
As the sky in anger blushed red;
For the host of the dawn lay still on the lawn—
The host was a host of dead.
Let the gardener but pass his scythe o'er the grass—
And the life of a daisy is sped! ”

“ Another short poem sees the newsboys in Fleet Street shouting the news of the end of the world, and the awful return of God. The writers seem unconsciously to have sought to make a poem as large as a revelation, while it was nearly as short as a riddle. And though Francis Thompson himself was rather in the Elizabethan tradition of amplitude and ingenuity, he could write separate lines that were separate poems in themselves:—
"And thou, what needest with thy tribe's black tents,
Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?" ”

“ Though heaven and earth and sky should be forgotten,
Yet of that hour my soul should bear the trace:
For night fell fast, and in the deepening shadow
You turned and kissed my face.
Childhood A stranger come I to the festival
Thou holdest in the regions of romance,
Where dragons lurk and elfin spirits dance,
And pearls lie hid within each rose petal.
What magic changes in life's crystal ball
Shall thus transform earth's dullness at thy glance! ”

“ And the Devil had bought up the Church,
And put out the Pope in the street.
To a Nobleman becoming Socialist I do remember thee so blest and filled
With all life offered thee,
Yet unsurprised I learn that thou hast willed
To share or lose her fee. ”

“ A real religion is that in which any two solitary people might suddenly say the same thing at any moment. It would therefore be most misleading to give to this collection an air of having been inspired by its most famous contributor. The little lyrics of this little book must surely be counted individual, even by those who may count them mysterious. A variety verging on quaintness is the very note of the assembled bards. ”

“ Whereo'er eternal each huge star-world rolls.
There is no tiny insect but does know
Itself within Thy Presence visual:
From us too swiftly years and seasons go,
To Thee all change is a thing gradual. ”

“ Across the sky a blood-red message slid.
Sudden the ship blazed up, the dark was light;
Lo! Scald is dead! his pyre was lit to-night.
JUDITH LYTTON A Day Remembered Oh, Love, what fate is ours? No summer morning
Shall give us joy, no sunrise bring relief ”

“ If the writers have a real point of union it is in a certain instinct for contrast between their shape and subject matter. All the poems are brief in form, and at the same time big in topic. They remind us of the vivid illuminations of the virile thirteenth century, when artists crowded cosmic catastrophes into the corner of an initial letter ”

“ Mater Inviolata
Song-burden
Gifts
Wraith
A Dedication
FOREWORD
My office on this occasion is one which I may well carry as lightly as possible. In our society, I am told, one needs an introduction to a beautiful woman; but I have never heard of men needing an introduction to a beautiful song. ”

“ FRANCIS THOMPSON
Threatened Tears
Arab Love Song
Buona Notte
The Passion of Mary
PADRAIC COLUM
"I shall not die for you"
An Idyll
Christ the Comrade
Arab Songs (I)
Arab Songs (II)
SHANE LESLIE
A Dead Friend (J.S. 1905)
Forest Song
The Bee
Outside the Carlton
The Pater of the Cannon
Fleet Street
Nightmare
To a Nobleman becoming Socialist
St. George-in-the-East
VIOLA MEYNELL
The Ruin
The Dream
The Wanderer
"Nature is the living mantle of God"
Secret Prayer
The Unheeded
Dream of Death
THE HON. MRS. LINDSAY ”