Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 13

Littly he sets him to the daily way, With all around the valleys growing grave, And known things changed and strange; but he holds on, Though all the land of light be widowed, In a little thought.

In a little dust, in a little dust, Earth, thou reclaim'st us, who do all our lives Find of thee but Egyptian villeinage.

Thou dost this body, this enhavocked realm, Subject to ancient and ancestral shadows; Descended pa.s.sions sway it; it is distraught With ghostly usurpation, dinned and fretted With the still-tyrannous dead; a haunted tenement, Peopled from barrows and outworn ossuaries.

Thou giv'st us life not half so willingly As thou undost thy giving; thou that teem'st The stealthy terror of the sinuous pard, The lion maned with curled puissance, The serpent, and all fair strong beasts of ravin, Thyself most fair and potent beast of ravin; And thy great eaters thou, the greatest, eat'st.

Thou hast devoured mammoth and mastodon, And many a floating bank of fangs, The scaly scourges of thy primal brine, And the tower-crested plesiosaure.

Thou fill'st thy mouth with nations, gorgest slow On purple aeons of kings; man's hulking towers Are carcase for thee, and to modern sun Disglutt'st their splintered bones.

Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidae Keep their cold house within thee; thou hast sucked down How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi And perished cities whose great phantasmata O'erbrow the silent citizens of Dis:-- Hast not thy fill?

Tarry awhile, lean Earth, for thou shalt drink Even till thy dull throat sicken, The draught thou grow'st most fat on; hear'st thou not The world's knives bickering in their sheaths? O patience!

Much offal of a foul world comes thy way, And man's superfluous cloud shall soon be laid In a little blood.

In a little peace, in a little peace, Thou dost rebate thy rigid purposes Of imposed being, and relenting, mend'st Too much, with nought. The westering Phoebus' horse Paws i' the lucent dust as when he shocked The East with rising; O how may I trace In this decline that morning when we did Sport 'twixt the claws of newly-whelped existence, Which had not yet learned rending? we did then Divinely stand, not knowing yet against us Sentence had pa.s.sed of life, nor commutation Pet.i.tioning into death. What's he that of The Free State argues? Tellus! bid him stoop, Even where the low _hic jacet_ answers him; Thus low, O Man! there's freedom's seignory, Tellus' most reverend sole free commonweal, And model deeply-policied: there none Stands on precedence, nor ambitiously Woos the impartial worm, whose favours kiss With liberal largesse all; there each is free To be e'en what he must, which here did strive So much to be he could not; there all do Their uses just, with no flown questioning.

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.

The fiery pomps, brave exhalations, And all the glistering shows o' the seeming world, Which the sight aches at, we unwinking see Through the smoked gla.s.s of Death; Death, wherewith's fined The muddy wine of life; that earth doth purge Of her plethora of man; Death, that doth flush The c.u.mbered gutters of humanity; Nothing, of nothing king, with front uncrowned, Whose hand holds crownets; playmate swart o' the strong; Tenebrous moon that flux and refluence draws Of the high-tided man; skull-housed asp That stings the heel of kings; true Fount of Youth, Where he that dips is deathless; being's drone-pipe; Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars, And thicks the l.u.s.ty breathing of the sun; Pontifical Death, that doth the creva.s.se bridge To the steep and trifid G.o.d; 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. Here I untrammel, Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing, And break the tomb of life; here I shake off The bur o' the world, man's congregation shun, And to the antique order of the dead I take the tongueless vows: my cell is set Here in thy bosom; my little trouble is ended In a little peace.

CONTEMPLATION

This morning saw I, fled the shower, The earth reclining in a lull of power: The heavens, pursuing not their path, Lay stretched out naked after bath, Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still, Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill.

The hill, which sometimes visibly is Wrought with unresting energies, Looked idly; from the musing wood, And every rock, a life renewed Exhaled like an unconscious thought When poets, dreaming unperplexed, Dream that they dream of nought.

Nature one hour appears a thing uns.e.xed, Or to such serene balance brought That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms, And sleep in one another's arms.

The sun with resting pulses seems to brood, And slacken its command upon my unurged blood.

The river has not any care Its pa.s.sionless water to the sea to bear; The leaves have brown content; The wall to me has freshness like a scent, And takes half animate the air, Making one life with its green moss and stain; And life with all things seems too perfect blent For anything of life to be aware.

The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain, Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain.

No hill can idler be than I; No stone its inter-particled vibration Investeth with a stiller lie; 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 gla.s.sy 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 pained pace that go.

From stones and poets you may know, Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so.

For he, that conduit running wine of song, Then to himself does most belong, When he his mortal house unbars To the importunate and thronging feet That round our corporal walls unheeded beat; 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 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.

He round the solemn centre of his soul Wheels like a dervish, while his being is Streamed with the set of the world's harmonies, In the long draft of whatsoever sphere He lists the sweet and clear Clangour of his high orbit on to roll, So gracious is his heavenly grace; And the bold stars does hear, Every one in his airy soar, For evermore Shout to each other from the peaks of s.p.a.ce, As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer.

CORRELATED GREATNESS

O nothing, in this corporal earth of man, That to the imminent heaven of his high soul Responds with colour and with shadow, can Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph Be mighty through its mighty habitants; If G.o.d be in His Name; grave potence if The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; All's vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm Nature is whole in her least things exprest, Nor know we with what scope G.o.d builds the worm.

Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; And all man's Babylons strive but to impart The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.

JULY FUGITIVE

Can you tell me where has hid her, Pretty Maid July?

I would swear one day ago She pa.s.sed by, I would swear that I do know The blue bliss of her eye: "Tarry, maid, maid," I bid her; But she hastened by.

Do you know where she has hid her, Maid July?

Yet in truth it needs must be The flight of her is old; Yet in truth it needs must be, For her nest, the earth, is cold.

No more in the pooled Even Wade her rosy feet, Dawn-flakes no more plash from them To poppies 'mid the wheat.

She has muddied the day's oozes With her petulant feet; Scared the clouds that floated As sea-birds they were, Slow on the coerule Lulls of the air, Lulled on the luminous Levels of air: She has chidden in a pet All her stars from her; Now they wander loose and sigh Through the turbid blue, Now they wander, weep, and cry-- Yea, and I too-- "Where are you, sweet July, Where are you?"

Who hath beheld her footprints, Or the pathway she goes?

Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, Which of you knows?

Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic Night of the rose?

Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow On the lily's snows?

Gales, that are all-visitant, Find the runaway; And for him who findeth her (I do charge you say) I will throw largesse of broom Of this summer's mintage, I will broach a honey-bag Of the bee's best vintage.

Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, None of them knows!

How then shall we lure her back From the way she goes?

For it were a shameful thing, Saw we not this comer Ere Autumn camp upon the fields Red with rout of Summer.

When the bird quits the cage, We set the cage outside, With seed and with water, And the door wide, Haply we may win it so Back to abide.

Hang her cage of earth out O'er Heaven's sunward wall, Its four gates open, winds in watch By reined cars at all; Relume in hanging hedgerows The rain-quenched blossom, And roses sob their tears out On the gale's warm heaving bosom; Shake the lilies till their scent Over-drip their rims, That our runaway may see We do know her whims: Sleek the tumbled waters out For her travelled limbs; Strew and smooth blue night thereon, There will--O not doubt her!-- The lovely sleepy lady lie, With all her stars about her!

ANY SAINT

His shoulder did I hold Too high that I, o'erbold Weak one, Should lean thereon.

But He a little hath Declined His stately path And my Feet set more high;

That the slack arm may reach His shoulder, and faint speech Stir His unwithering hair.

And bolder now and bolder I lean upon that shoulder, So dear He is and near.

And with His aureole The tresses of my soul Are blent In wished content.

Yea, this too gentle Lover Hath flattering words to move her To pride By His sweet side.

Ah, Love! somewhat let be!

Lest my humility Grow weak When Thou dost speak!

Rebate Thy tender suit, Lest to herself impute Some worth Thy bride of earth!

A maid too easily Conceits herself to be Those things Her lover sings;

And being straitly wooed, Believes herself the Good And Fair He seeks in her.

Turn something of Thy look, And fear me with rebuke, That I May timorously

Take tremors in Thy arms, And with contrived charms Allure A love unsure.

Not to me, not to me, Builded so flawfully, O G.o.d, Thy humbling laud!

Not to this man, but Man,-- Universe in a span; Point Of the spheres conjoint;

In whom eternally Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!-- Didst pave The way o' the wave,