Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 4

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.

Did not obstruction's vessel hem it in, Force were not force, would spill itself in vain; We know the t.i.tan by his champed chain.

Stay is heat's cradle, it is rocked therein, And by check's hand is burnished into light; If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright?

G.o.d's Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin; Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well, Is flashed back from the brazen gates of h.e.l.l.

The heavens decree All power fulfil itself as soul in thee.

For supreme Spirit subject was to clay, And Law from its own servants learned a law, And Light besought a lamp unto its way, And Awe was reined in awe, At one small house of Nazareth; And Golgotha Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath, And Life do homage for its crown to death.

TO A CHILD HEARD REPEATING HER MOTHER'S VERSES

As a nymph's carven head sweet water drips, For others oozing so the cool delight Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone-- Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains.

Memnonian lips!

Smitten with singing from thy mother's east, And murmurous with music not their own: Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone A pa.s.sionless statue stands.

Oh, pardon, innocent one!

Pardon at thine unconscious hands!

"Murmurous with music not their own," I say?

And in that saying how do I missay, When from the common sands Of poorest common speech of common day Thine accents sift the golden musics out!

And ah, we poets, I mis...o...b.., 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.

And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat Idly the music from thy mother caught; Not vainly has she wrought, Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret Of her aerial mind, for thy weak feet, Let down the silken ladder of her thought.

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.

So it may be, so it _shall_ be,-- O, take the prophecy from me!

What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time, This crescent marvel of his hands Carveth all too painfully, And I who prophesy shall never see?

What if the niche of its predestined rhyme, Its aching niche, too long expectant stands?

Yet shall he after sore delays On some exultant day of days The white enshrouding childhood raise From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze; While we (but 'mongst that happy "we"

The prophet cannot be!) 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-chrismed kings-- O Princess of the Blood of Song!

A FORETELLING OF THE CHILD'S HUSBAND

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.

Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, Fraught with its golden pa.s.sion, oared with cadent rhyme, Set with a towering press of fantasies, Drop safely down the time, Leaving mine isled 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-submerged star), And in thy subject sovereign's havening heart Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore; Adding its wasteful more To his own overflowing treasury.

So through his river mine shall reach thy sea, Bearing its confluent part; In his pulse mine shall thrill; And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that's still.

_Now pa.s.s your ways, fair bird, and pa.s.s your ways, If you will; I have you through the days.

And flit or hold you still, And perch you where you list On what wrist,-- You are mine through the times.

I have caught you fast for ever in a tangle of sweet rhymes.

And in your young maiden morn, You may scorn, But you must be Bound and sociate to me; With this thread from out the tomb my dead hand shall tether thee!_

Love in Dian's Lap

BEFORE HER PORTRAIT IN YOUTH

As lovers, banished from their lady's face, And hopeless of her grace, Fas.h.i.+on a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief, or a glove: And at the lover's beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:

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.

So, then, she looked (I say); And so her front sunk down Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown: On her mouth museful sweet-- (Even as the twin lips meet) Did thought and sadness greet: Sighs In those mournful eyes So put on visibilities; As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes.

Thus, long ago, She kept her meditative paces slow Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and gleam Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream, Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow.

Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine, This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall I, faring in the c.o.c.kshut-light, astray, Find on my 'lated way, And stoop, and gather for memorial, And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine.

To this, the all of love the stars allow me, I dedicate and vow me.

I reach back through the days A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise.

The water-wraith that cries From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!

TO A POET BREAKING SILENCE

Too wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea, song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The mountain where the Muses hymn For Sinai and the Seraphim.

Now in both the mountains' s.h.i.+ne Dress thy countenance, twice divine!

From Moses and the Muses draw The Tables of thy double Law!

His rod-born fount and Castaly Let the one rock bring forth for thee, Renewing so from either spring The songs which both thy countries sing: Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long, Thou should'st forget thy native song, And mar thy mortal melodies With broken stammer of the skies.

Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord With earth's waters make accord; Teach how the crucifix may be Carven from the laurel-tree, Fruit of the Hesperides Burnish take on Eden-trees, The Muses' sacred grove be wet With the red dew of Olivet, And Sappho lay her burning brows In white Cecilia's lap of snows!

I think thy girlhood's watchers must Have took thy folded songs on trust, And felt them, as one feels the stir Of still lightnings in the hair, When conscious hush expects the cloud To speak the golden secret loud Which tacit air is privy to; Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, Ere thy poet-mouth was able For its first young starry babble.

Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace?

Yea, in this silent inters.p.a.ce, G.o.d sets His poems in thy face!

The loom which mortal verse affords, Out of weak and mortal words, Wovest thou thy singing-weed in, To a rune of thy far Eden.

Vain are all disguises! Ah, Heavenly _incognita_!

Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong The great Uranian House of Song!

As the vintages of earth Taste of the sun that riped their birth, We know what never-cadent Sun Thy lamped cl.u.s.ters throbbed upon, What plumed feet the winepress trod; Thy wine is flavorous of G.o.d.

Whatever singing-robe thou wear Has the paradisal air; And some gold feather it has kept Shows what Floor it lately swept.

A CARRIER SONG

Since you have waned from us, Fairest of women, I am a darkened cage Song cannot hymn in.

My songs have followed you, Like birds the summer; Ah! bring them back to me, Swiftly, dear comer!

_Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_