Eyes of Youth Part 1

Eyes of Youth.

by Various.

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. 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 cla.s.s with Sh.e.l.ley 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. 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; they studied the Imitation of Christ.

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 a.s.sembled bards.

Take, for example, Mr. Colum's stern and simple rendering of the bitter old Irish verses:

"O woman, shapely as the swan, On your account I shall not die."

Like Fitzgerald's Omar and all good translations, it leaves one wondering whether the original was as good; but to an Englishman the note is not only unique, but almost hostile. It is the hardness of the real Irishman which has been so skilfully hidden under the softness of the stage Irishman. The words are ages old, I believe; they come out of the ancient Ireland of Cairns and fallen Kings: and yet the words might have been spoken by one of Bernard Shaw's modern heroes to one of his modern heroines. The curt, bleak words, the haughty, heathen spirit are certainly as remote as anything can be from the luxuriant humility of Francis Thompson.

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; where one may find a small picture of the Deluge or of the flaming Cities of the Plain. One of the specially short poems sees the universe overthrown and the good angels conquered. Another short poem sees the newsboys in Fleet Street shouting the news of the end of the world, and the awful return of G.o.d. 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?"

A mediaeval illuminator would have jumped out of his sandals in his eagerness to ill.u.s.trate that.

G.K. CHESTERTON.

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.

In the aspect of those known eyes My soul's a captain weatherwise.

Ah me! what presages it sees In those watery Hyades.

_ARAB LOVE SONG_

The hunched camels of the night*

Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon.

The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering.

Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come!

And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.

Leave thy father, leave thy mother And thy brother; Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart!

Am I not thy father and thy brother, And thy mother?

And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?

* The cloud-shapes often observed by travellers in the East.

_BUONA NOTTE_

_Jane Williams, in her last letter to Sh.e.l.ley, wrote: "Why do you talk of never enjoying moments like the past? Are you going to join your friend Plato, or do you expect I shall do so soon? Buona Notte." This letter was dated July 6th, and Sh.e.l.ley was drowned on the 8th. The following is his imagined reply from, another world_:--

Ariel to Miranda:--hear This good-night the sea-winds bear; And let thine unacquainted ear Take grief for their interpreter.

Good-night; I have risen so high Into slumber's rarity, Not a dream can beat its feather Through the unsustaining ether.

Let the sea-winds make avouch How thunder summoned me to couch, Tempest curtained me about And turned the sun with his own hand out: And though I toss upon my bed My dream is not disquieted; Nay, deep I sleep upon the deep, And my eyes are wet, but I do not weep; And I fell to sleep so suddenly That my lips are moist yet--could'st thou see With the good-night draught I have drunk to thee.

Thou can'st not wipe them; for it was Death Damped my lips that has dried my breath.

A little while--it is not long-- The salt shall dry on them like the song.

Now know'st thou, that voice desolate, Mourning ruined joy's estate, Reached thee through a closing gate.

"Go'st thou to Plato?" Ah, girl, no!

It is to Pluto that I go.

_THE Pa.s.sION OF MARY_

O Lady Mary, thy bright crown Is no mere crown of majesty; For with the reflex of His own Resplendent thorns Christ circled thee.

The red rose of this pa.s.sion tide Doth take a deeper hue from thee, In the five Wounds of Jesus dyed, And in Thy bleeding thoughts, Mary.

The soldier struck a triple stroke That smote thy Jesus on the tree; He broke the Heart of hearts, and broke The Saint's and Mother's hearts in thee.

Thy Son went up the Angels' ways, His pa.s.sion ended; but, ah me!

Thou found'st the road of further days A longer way of Calvary.

On the hard cross of hopes deferred Thou hung'st in loving agony, Until the mortal dreaded word, Which chills our mirth, spake mirth to thee.

The Angel Death from this cold tomb Of life did roll the stone away; And He thou barest in thy womb Caught thee at last into the day-- Before the living throne of Whom The lights of heaven burning pray.

L'ENVOY.

O thou who dwellest in the day, Behold, I pace amidst the gloom: Darkness is ever round my way, With little s.p.a.ce for sunbeam room.

Yet Christian sadness is divine, Even as thy patient sadness was: The salt tears in our life's dark wine Fell in it from the saving Cross.

Bitter the bread of our repast; Yet doth a sweet the bitter leaven: Our sorrow is the shadow cast Around it by the light of Heaven.

O Light in light, s.h.i.+ne down from Heaven!