New Poems By Francis Thompson

New Poems, by Francis Thompson. Dedication to Coventry Patmore. Lo, my book thinks to look Time’s leaguer down, Under the banner of your spread renown!Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time, Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame, Armed with your crested and prevailing Name. Note.–This dedication was written while the dear friend and great Poet to whom it was addressed yet lived. It is left as he saw it– the last verses of mine that were ever to pass under his eyes. F. T. Contents. SIGHT AND INSIGHT. The mistress of vision.Contemplation.‘By reason of Thy law.’The dread of height.Orient ode.New Year’s chimes.From the night of forebeing.Any saint.Assumpta Maria.The after woman.Grace of the way.Retrospect. A NARROW VESSEL. A girl’s sin–in her eyes.A girl’s sin–in his eyes.Love declared.The way of a maid.Beginning of the end.Penelope.The end of it.Epilogue. MISCELLANEOUS ODES. Ode to the setting sun.A captain of song.Against Urania.An anthem of earth. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. ‘Ex ore infantium.’A question.Field-flower.The cloud’s swan-song.To the sinking sun.Grief’s harmonics.Memorat memoria.July fugitive.To a snow-flake.Nocturn.A May burden.A dead astronomer.‘Chose vue.’‘Whereto art thou come.’Heaven and hell.To a child.Hermes.House of bondage.The heart.A sunset.Heard on the mountain. ULTIMA. Love’s almsman plaineth his fare.A holocaust.Beneath a photograph.After her going.My lady the tyranness.Unto this last.Ultimum.Envoy. SIGHT AND INSIGHT. ‘Wisdom is easily seen by them that love her, and is found by them that seek her.To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.’ WISDOM, vi. THE MISTRESS OF VISION. I Secret was the garden; Set i’ the pathless awe Where no star its breath can draw. Life, that is its warden,Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, and I saw. II It was a mazeful wonder; Thrice three times it was enwalled With an emerald– Seal-ed so asunder.All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their music thralled. III The Lady of fair weeping, At the garden’s core, Sang a song of sweet and sore And the after-sleeping;In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore. IV With sweet-panged singing, Sang she through a dream-night’s day; That the bowers might stay, Birds bate their winging,Nor the wall of emerald float in wreath-ed haze away. V The lily kept its gleaming, In her tears (divine conservers!) Wash-ed with sad art; And the flowers of dreaming Pal-ed not their fervours, For her blood flowed through their nervures; And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in her heart. VI There was never moon, Save the white sufficing woman: Light most heavenly-human– Like the unseen form of sound, Sensed invisibly in tune,– With a sun-deriv-ed stole Did inaureole All her lovely body round;Lovelily her lucid body with that light was inter- strewn. VII The sun which lit that garden wholly, Low and vibrant visible, Tempered glory woke; And it seem-ed solely Like a silver thurible Solemnly swung, slowly,Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense- smoke. VIII But woe’s me, and woe’s me, For the secrets of her eyes! In my visions fearfully They are ever shown to be As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies Pallid-dark beneath the skies Of a night that is But one blear necropolis.And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her own sighs. IX Many changes rise on Their phantasmal mysteries. They grow to an horizon Where earth and heaven meet; And like a wing that dies on The vague twilight-verges, Many a sinking dream doth fleet Lessening down their secrecies. And, as dusk with day converges, Their orbs are troublouslyOver-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear of things to be. X There is a peak on Himalay, And on the peak undeluged snow, And on the snow not eagles stray; There if your strong feet could go,– Looking over tow’rd Cathay From the never-deluged snow– Farthest ken might not surveyWhere the peoples underground dwell whom antique fables know. XI East, ah, east of Himalay, Dwell the nations underground; Hiding from the shock of Day, For the sun’s uprising-sound: Dare not issue from the ground At the tumults of the Day, So fearfully the sun doth sound Clanging up beyond Cathay;For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up beyond Cathay. XII Lend me, O lend me The terrors of that sound, That its music may attend me. Wrap my chant in thunders round; While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady’s singing found. XIII On Ararat there grew a vine, When Asia from her bathing rose; Our first sailor made a twine Thereof for his prefiguring brows. Canst divineWhere, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster grows? XIV On Golgotha there grew a thorn Round the long-prefigured Brows. Mourn, O mourn!For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the Heaven allows? XV On Calvary was shook a spear; Press the point into thy heart– Joy and fear!All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils start. XVI O, dismay! I, a wingless mortal, sporting With the tresses of the sun? I, that dare my hand to lay On the thunder in its snorting? Ere begun,Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old Icarian way. XVII From the fall precipitant These dim snatches of her chant Only have remain-ed mine;– That from spear and thorn alone May be grownFor the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine. XVIII Her song said that no springing Paradise but evermore Hangeth on a singing That has chords of weeping, And that sings the after-sleeping To souls which wake too sore.‘But woe the singer, woe!’ she said; ‘beyond the dead his singing-lore, All its art of sweet and sore, He learns, in Elenore!’ XIX Where is the land of Luthany, Where is the tract of Elenore? I am bound therefor. XX ‘Pierce thy heart to find the key; With thee take Only what none else would keep; Learn to dream when thou dost wake, Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. Learn to water joy with tears, Learn from fears to vanquish fears; To hope, for thou dar’st not despair, Exult, for that thou dar’st not grieve; Plough thou the rock until it bear; Know, for thou else couldst not believe; Lose, that the lost thou may’st receive; Die, for none other way canst live. When earth and heaven lay down their veil, And that apocalypse turns thee pale; When thy seeing blindeth thee To what thy fellow-mortals see; When their sight to thee is sightless; Their living, death; their light, most light- less; Search no more–Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’ XXI Where is the land of Luthany, And where the region Elenore? I do faint therefor. ‘When to the new eyes of thee All things by immortal power, Near or far, Hiddenly To each other link-ed are, That thou canst not stir a flower Without troubling of a star; When thy song is shield and mirror To the fair snake-curl-ed Pain, Where thou dar’st affront her terror That on her thou may’st attain Persean conquest; seek no more, O seek no more!Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’ XXII So sang she, so wept she, Through a dream-night’s day; And with her magic singing kept she– Mystical in music– That garden of enchanting In visionary May; Swayless for my spirit’s haunting, Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mor- tal mornings grey. XXIII And as a necromancer Raises from the rose-ash The ghost of the rose; My heart so made answer To her voice’s silver plash,– Stirred in reddening flash,And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom blows. XXIV Her tears made dulcet fretting, Her voice had no word, More than thunder or the bird. Yet, unforgetting,The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears heard not, and I heard. XXV When she shall unwind All those wiles she wound about me, Tears shall break from out me, That I cannot findMusic in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt me! 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 isWrought with unresting energies,Looked idly; from the musing wood,And every rock, a life renewedExhaled like an unconscious thought When poets, dreaming unperplexed,Dream that they dream of nought.Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed, Or to such serene balance broughtThat 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 careIts passionless 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 glassy hour,In skies that no man sees to move,Lurk untumultuous vortices of power, For joy too native, and for agitationToo instant, too entire for sense thereof, Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low, Perpetual as the prisoned feet of loveOn the heart’s floors with pain-ed 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 unbarsTo the importunate and thronging feet That round our corporal walls unheeded beat; Till, all containing, he exaltHis stature to the stars, or starsNarrow their heaven to his fleshly vault: When, like a city under ocean,To human things he grows a desolation, And is made a habitationFor the fluctuous universeTo lave with unimpeded motion.He scarcely frets the atmosphereWith 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 velocityThe spirit of the simoom 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 sphereHe lists the sweet and clearClangour 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 evermoreShout to each other from the peaks of space, As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer. ‘BY REASON OF THY LAW’. Here I make oath–Although the heart that knows its bitterness Hear loath,And credit less–That he who kens to meet Pain’s kisses fierce Which hiss against his tears,Dread, loss, nor love frustrate,Nor all iniquity of the froward years Shall his inur-ed wing make idly bate,Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight To lose observance quite;Seal from half-sad and all-elateSagacious eyesUltimate Paradise;Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate. Pacing the burning shares of many dooms, I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars To judgment cite,If I have borne arightThe proving of their pure-willed ordeal. From food of all delightThe heavenly Falconer my heart debars, And tames with fearful gloomsThe haggard to His call;Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal, And she sits meek now, and expects the light. In this Avernian sky,This sultry and incumbent canopyOf dull and doomed regret;Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet, At intervals,Trembles, and falls,Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet– Ah, far too sweetBut to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet; Leaving this pallid trace,This loitering and most fitful light a space, Still some sad space,For Grief to see her own poor face:- Here where I keep my standWith all o’er-anguished feet,And no live comfort near on any hand; Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term,When this morass of tears, then drained and firm, Shall be a land–Unshaken I affirm–Where seven-quired psalterings meet; And all the gods move with calm hand in hand, And eyes that know not trouble and the worm. THE DREAD OF HEIGHT. If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We see: your sin remaineth. JOHN ix. 41. Not the Circean wineMost perilous is for pain:Grapes of the heavens’ star-loaden vine, Whereto the lofty-placedThoughts of fair souls attain,Tempt with a more retributive delight, And do disrelish all life’s sober taste. ‘Tis to have drunk too wellThe drink that is divine,Maketh the kind earth waste,And breath intolerable. Ah me!How shall my mouth content it with mortality? Lo, secret music, sweetest music,From distances of distance drifting its lone flight, Down the arcane where Night would perish in night, Like a god’s loosened locks slips undulously: Music that is too grievous of the height For safe and low delight,Too infinite,For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea! So let it be,Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small: So let it be,O music, music, though you wake in me No joy, no joy at all;Although you only wakeUttermost sadness, measure of delight, Which else I could not credit to the height, Did I not know,That ill is statured to its opposite; Did I not know,And even of sadness so,Of utter sadness make,Of extreme sad a rod to meteThe incredible excess of unsensed sweet, And mystic wall of strange felicity.So let it be,Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small, And bitter meatThe food of gods for men to eat;Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread Less ways of heat,Than whom to their wind-carpetedHigh banquet-hall,And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat. But ah withal,Some hold, some stay,O difficult Joy, I pray,Some arms of thine,Not only, only arms of mine!Lest like a weary girl I fallFrom clasping love so high,And lacking thus thine arms, then may Most hapless ITurn utterly to love of basest rate; For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. Yea, who me shall secureBut I of height grown desperateSurcease my wing, and my lost fateBe dashed from pureTo broken writhings in the shameful slime: Lower than man, for I dreamed higher,Thrust down, by how much I aspire,And damned with drink of immortality? For such things be,Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell Is but made possibleBy forta’en breath of Heaven’s austerest clime. These tidings from the vast to bringNeedeth not doctor nor divine,Too well, too wellMy flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; That dread theology aloneIs mine,Most native and my own;And ever with victorious toilWhen I have madeOf the deific peaks dim escalade,My soul with anguish and recoilDoth like a city in an earthquake rock, As at my feet the abyss is cloven then,With deeper menace than for other men, Of my potential cousinship with mire;That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, My fearful powers retire,No longer strong,Reversing the shook banners of their song. Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint,Or for a will accipitrine to pursue! The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew. ORIENT ODE. Lo, in the sanctuaried East,Day, a dedicated priestIn all his robes pontifical exprest, Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly,From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, Yon orb-ed sacrament confestWhich sprinkles benediction through the dawn; And when the grave procession’s ceased,The earth with due illustrious rite Blessed,–ere the frail fingers featlyOf twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte, His sacerdotal stoles unvest–Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, The sun in august exposition meetlyWithin the flaming monstrance of the West. O salutaris hostia,Quae coeli pandis ostium!Through breach-ed darkness’ rampart, a Divine assaulter, art thou come!God whom none may live and mark!Borne within thy radiant ark,While the Earth, a joyous David,Dances before thee from the dawn to dark. The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve;Behold her fair and greater daughter {1} Offers to thee her fruitful water,Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive! Thy gazes do on simple herDesirable allures confer;What happy comelinesses riseBeneath thy beautifying eyes!Who was, indeed, at first a maidSuch as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, And secret views herself afraid,Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover,Make the beauties they discover!What dainty guiles and treacheries caught From artful prompting of love’s artless thought Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn! And so the love which is thy dower,Earth, though her first-frightened breast Against the exigent boon protest,(For she, poor maid, of her own power Has nothing in herself, not even love,But an unwitting void thereof),Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest,That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy,Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing captive from the wishing West. Nor the majestic heavens lessThy formidable sweets approve,Thy dreads and thy delights confess, That do draw, and that remove.Thou as a lion roar’st, O Sun,Upon thy satellites’ vex-ed heels;Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; Each in his frighted orbit wheels,Each flies through inassuageable chase, Since the hunt o’ the world begun,The puissant approaches of thy face, And yet thy radiant leash he feels.Since the hunt o’ the world begun,Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, The mighty course is ever run;Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. Since the hunt o’ the world began,With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, Thou join’st the woman to the man;And Life with DeathIn obscure nuptials moveth,Commingling alien, yet affin-ed breath. Thou art the incarnated LightWhose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond Death and resurgence of our day and night; From him is thy vicegerent wandWith double potence of the black and white. Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire,The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire! Samson’s riddling meanings mergingIn thy twofold sceptre meet:Out of thy minatory might,Burning Lion, burning Lion,Comes the honey of all sweet,And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. And though, by thine alternate breath,Every kiss thou dost inspireEchoethBack from the windy vaultages of death; Yet thy clear warranty aboveAugurs the wings of death too mustOccult reverberations stir of loveCrescent and life incredible;That even the kisses of the justGo down not unresurgent to the dust. Yea, not a kiss which I have given,But shall tri-umph upon my lips in heaven, Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell. Know’st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, wellThou know’st the ancient miracle,The children know’st of Zeus and May; And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, To incarnate, the antique way,The truth which is their heritage from their Sire In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother. My fingers thou hast taught to conThy flame-chorded psalterion,Till I can translate into mortal wire– Till I can translate passing well–The heavenly harping harmony,Melodious, sealed, inaudible,Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world’s desire. Thou whisperest in the Moon’s white ear, And she does whisper into mine,–By night together, I and she–With her virgin voice divine,The things I cannot half so sweetly tell As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear. By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, Yet she for Earth, and both in thee.Light out of Light!Resplendent and prevailing WordOf the Unheard!Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee;And in an age of faith grown froreIf I too shall adore,Be it accounted unto meA bright sciential idolatry!God has given thee visible thunders To utter thine apocalypse of wonders;And what want I of prophecy,That at the sounding from thy station Of thy flagrant trumpet, seeThe seals that melt, the open revelation? Or who a God-persuading angel needs,That only heedsThe rhetoric of thy burning deeds?Which but to sing, if it may be,In worship-warranting moiety,So I would winIn such a song as hath withinA smouldering core of mystery,Brimm-ed with nimbler meanings upThan hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;– Lo, my suit pleadsThat thou, Isaian coal of fire,Touch from yon altar my poor mouth’s desire, And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds. To thine own shapeThou round’st the chrysolite of the grape, Bind’st thy gold lightnings in his veins; Thou storest the white garners of the rains. Destroyer and preserver, thouWho medicinest sickness, and to health Art the unthank-ed marrow of its wealth; To those apparent sovereignties we bowAnd bright appurtenances of thy brow! Thy proper blood dost thou not give,That Earth, the gusty Maenad, drink and dance? Art thou not life of them that live?Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell Within our body as a tabernacle!Thou bittest with thine ordinanceThe jaws of Time, and thou dost mete The unsustainable treading of his feet.Thou to thy spousal universeArt Husband, she thy Wife and Church; Who in most dusk and vidual curch,Her Lord being hence,Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. The heavens renew their innocenceAnd morning stateBut by thy sacrament communicate:Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, Our darkened search,And sinful vigil desolate.Yea, biune in imploring dumb,Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await, The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!Lo, of thy Magians I the leastHaste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced Regions and odorous of Song’s traded East. Thou, for the life of all that liveThe victim daily born and sacrificed; To whom the pinion of this longing verse Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, To thee, O Sun–or is’t perchance, to Christ? Ay, if men say that on all high heaven’s face The saintly signs I traceWhich round my stol-ed altars hold their solemn place, Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,–When I with wing-ed feet had runThrough all the windy earth about,Quested its secret of the sun,And heard what thing the stars together shout,– I should not heed thereoutConsenting counsel won:-‘By this, O Singer, know we if thou see. When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, Believe them: yea, and this–then art thou seer, When all thy crying clearIs but: Lo here! lo there!–ah me, lo everywhere!’ {1} The earth. NEW YEAR’S CHIMES. What is the song the stars sing? (And a million songs are as song of one.) This is the song the stars sing: Sweeter song’s none. One to set, and many to sing, (And a million songs are as song of one), One to stand, and many to cling,The many things, and the one Thing, The one that runs not, the many that run. The ever new weaveth the ever old (And a million songs are as song of one). Ever telling the never told;The silver saith, and the said is gold, And done ever the never done. The chase that’s chased is the Lord o’ the chase (And a million songs are as song of one), And the pursued cries on the race; And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run. Hidden stars by the shown stars’ sheen; (And a million suns are but as one);Colours unseen by the colours seen, And sounds unheard heard sounds between, And a night is in the light of the sun. An ambuscade of light in night, (And a million secrets are but as one), And a night is dark in the sun’s light, And a world in the world man looks upon. Hidden stars by the shown stars’ wings, (And a million cycles are but as one),And a world with unapparent strings Knits the simulant world of things; Behold, and vision thereof is none. The world above in the world below (And a million worlds are but as one), And the One in all; as the sun’s strength so Strives in all strength, glows in all glow Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon. Braced in its own fourfold embrace (And a million strengths are as strength of one), And round it all God’s arms of grace,The world, so as the Vision says, Doth with great lightning-tramples run. And thunder bruiteth into thunder, (And a million sounds are as sound of one), From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder, And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder, And sun leans forth to his brother-sun. And the more ample years unfold (With a million songs as song of one), A little new of the ever old,A little told of the never told, Added act of the never done. Loud the descant, and low the theme, (A million songs are as song of one); And the dream of the world is dream in dream, But the one Is is, or nought could seem; And the song runs round to the song begun. This is the song the stars sing, (Ton-ed all in time);Tintinnabulous, tuned to ringA multitudinous-single thing, Rung all in rhyme. FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING.An ode after Easter. In the chaos of preordination, and night of our forebeings.– SIR THOMAS BROWNE. Et lux in tenebris erat, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt.– ST. JOHN. Cast wide the folding doorways of the East, For now is light increased!And the wind-besomed chambers of the air, See they be garnished fair;And look the ways exhale some precious odours, And set ye all about wild-breathing spice, Most fit for Paradise.Now is no time for sober gravity,Season enough has Nature to be wise; But now discinct, with raiment glittering free, Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies With festal footing and bold joyance sweet, And let the earth be drunken and carouse! For lo, into her houseSpring is come home with her world-wandering feet, And all things are made young with young desires; And all for her is light increasedIn yellow stars and yellow daffodils, And East to West, and West to East,Fling answering welcome-fires,By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills. And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, Being newly coated in glad livery,Upon her steps attend,And round her treading dance and without end Reel your shrill lutany.What popular breath her coming does out-tell The garrulous leaves among!What little noises stir and passFrom blade to blade along the voluble grass! O Nature, never-doneUngaped-at Pentecostal miracle,We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue! Break, elemental children, break ye loose From the strict frosty ruleOf grey-beard Winter’s school.Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses Upon the snowy steeds that reinless useIn coerule pampas of the heaven to run; Foaled of the white sea-horses,Washed in the lambent waters of the sun. Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn Put forth a conscious horn!Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one; And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad– No, seem not sad,That my strange heart and I should be so little glad. Suffer me at your leafy feastTo sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, And watch your mirth,Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth; Yet with a sympathy,Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory– The little sweetness making grief complete; Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, When I, I too,Was once, O wild companions, as are you, Ran with such wilful feet.Wraith of a recent day and dead,Risen wanly overhead,Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon, Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven, When the sick night sinks into deathly swoon. A higher and a solemn voiceI heard through your gay-hearted noise; A solemn meaning and a stiller voiceSounds to me from far days when I too shall rejoice, Nor more be with your jollity at strife. O prophecyOf things that are, and are not, and shall be! The great-vanned Angel MarchHath trumpetedHis clangorous ‘Sleep no more’ to all the dead– Beat his strong vans o’er earth, and air, and sea. And they have heard;Hark to the Jubilate of the birdFor them that found the dying way to life! And they have heard,And quicken to the great precursive word; Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; The graves are riven,And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven! Before his wayWent forth the trumpet of the March; Before his way, before his wayDances the pennon of the May!O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long Lifting in patient pine and ivy-treeMournful belief and steadfast prophecy, Behold how all things are made true!Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, Exceeding glad and strong.Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad! No more shall you sit sole and vidual,Searching, in servile pall,Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad! Your children gathered back to your embrace See with a mother’s face.Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; In very deed,Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, Reintegrated are the heavens and earth!From sky to sod,The world’s unfolded blossom smells of God. O imageryOf that which was the first, and is the last! For as the dark, profound nativity,God saw the end should be,When the world’s infant horoscope He cast. Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe, In leaf, flower, mould, and tree,Resolved into dividual liberty,Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane, Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy,Lo, the Earth eased of rule:Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart The dear wish of the fool–Disintegration, merely which man’s heart For freedom understands,Amid the frog-like errors from the damp And quaking swampOf the low popular levels spawned in all the lands. But thou, O Earth, dost much disdainThe bondage of thy waste and futile reign, And sweetly to the great compulsion draw Of God’s alone true-manumitting law,And Freedom, only which the wise intend, To work thine innate end.Over thy vacant counterfeit of death Broods with soft urgent breathLove, that is child of Beauty and of Awe: To intercleavage of sharp warring pain,As of contending chaos come again,Thou wak’st, O Earth,And work’st from change to change and birth to birth Creation old as hope, and new as sight;For meed of toil not vain,Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:- ‘Let there be light!’And there is light!Light flagrant, manifest;Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole; Light from the East that waxeth to the West, And with its puissant goings-forthEncroaches on the South and on the North; And with its great approaches does prevail Upon the sullen fastness of the height,And summoning its levied powerCrescent and confident through the crescent hour, Goes down with laughters on the subject vale. Light flagrant, manifest;Light to the sentient closeness of the breast, Light to the secret chambers of the brain! And thou up-floatest, warm, and newly-bathed, Earth, through delicious air,And with thine own apparent beauties swathed, Wringing the waters from thine arborous hair; That all men’s hearts, which do behold and see, Grow weak with their exceeding much desire, And turn to thee on fire,Enamoured with their utter wish of thee, Anadyomene!What vine-outquickening life all creatures sup, Feel, for the air within its sapphire cup How it does leap, and twinkle headily!Feel, for Earth’s bosom pants, and heaves her scarfing sea; And round and round in bacchanal rout reel the swift spheres intemperably! My little-worlded self! the shadows pass In this thy sister-world, as in a glass, Of all processions that revolve in thee: Not only of cyclic ManThou here discern’st the plan,Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me. Not solely of Mortality’s great yearsThe reflex just appears,But thine own bosom’s year, still circling round In ample and in ampler gyreToward the far completion, wherewith crowned, Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire. How many trampled and deciduous joysEnrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, Before the distance shall fulfilCyclic unrest with solemn equipoise! Happiness is the shadow of things past,Which fools still take for that which is to be! And not all foolishly:For all the past, read true, is prophecy, And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring. Then leaf, and flower, and falless fruit Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough; And silence shall be Music muteFor her surcharg-ed heart. Hush thou! These things are far too sure that thou should’st dream Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem. Shade within shade! for deeper in the glass Now other imaged meanings pass;And as the man, the poet there is read. Winter with me, alack!Winter on every hand I find:Soul, brain, and pulses dead;The mind no further by the warm sense fed, The soul weak-stirring in the arid mind, More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad Than the earth’s life beneath the frost-scorched sod. My lips have drought, and crack,By laving music long unvisited.Beneath the austere and macerating rime Draws back constricted in its icy urnsThe genial flame of Earth, and there With torment and with tension does prepare The lush disclosures of the vernal time. All joys draw inward to their icy urns,Tormented by constraining rime,And thereWith undelight and throe prepareThe bounteous efflux of the vernal time. Nor less beneath compulsive LawRebuk-ed drawThe numb-ed musics back upon my heart; Whose yet-triumphant course I knowAnd prevalent pulses forth shall start, Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding snow. All power is boundIn quickening refusal so;And silence is the lair of sound;In act its impulse to deliver,With fluctuance and quiverThe endeavouring thew grows rigid;StrongFrom its retracted coil strikes the resilient song. Giver of spring,And song, and every young new thing! Thou only seest in me, so stripped and bare, The lyric secret waiting to be born,The patient term allowedBefore it stretch and flutteringly unfold Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold. And what hard task abstracts me from delight, Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair The still-born day and parch-ed fields of night, That my old way of song, no longer fair, For lack of serene care,Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot, Thou only know’st aright,Thou only know’st, for I know not.How many songs must die that this may live! And shall this most rash hope and fugitive, Fulfilled with beauty and with mightIn days whose feet are rumorous on the air, Make me forget to grieveFor songs which might have been, nor ever were? Stern the denial, the travail slow,The struggling wall will scantly grow: And though with that dread rite of sacrifice Ordained for during edifice,How long, how long ago!Into that wall which will not thrive I build myself alive,Ah, who shall tell me will the wall uprise? Thou wilt not tell me, who dost only know! Yet still in mind I keep,He which observes the wind shall hardly sow, He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap. Thine ancient way! I give,Nor wit if I receive;Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so. ‘And blindly,’ said I?–No!That saying I unsay: the wingsHear I not in praevenient winnowings Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! Utter stagnationIs the solstitial slumber of the spirit, The blear and blank negation of all life: But these sharp questionings mean strife, and strife Is the negation of negation.The thing from which I turn my troubled look Fearing the gods’ rebuke;That perturbation putting glory on, As is the golden vortex in the WestOver the foundered sun;That–but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis Unchild me, vaunting this–Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss! O youngling Joy carest!That on my now first-mothered breast Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip, What this aghast surprise of keenest panging, Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest? Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip! So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam, Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb: I, one with her in cruel fellowship,Marvel what unmaternal thing I am. Nature, enough! within thy glassToo many and too stern the shadows pass. In this delighted season, flamingFor thy resurrection-feast,Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, Than stony winter rolledFrom the unsealed mouth of the holy East; The snowdrop’s saintly stoles less heedThan the snow-cloistered penance of the seed. ‘Tis the weak flesh reclaimingAgainst the ordinanceWhich yet for just the accepting spirit scans. Earth waits, and patient heaven,Self-bonded God doth waitThrice-promulgated bansOf his fair nuptial-date.And power is man’s,With that great word of ‘wait,’To still the sea of tears,And shake the iron heart of Fate.In that one word is strongAn else, alas, much-mortal song;With sight to pass the frontier of all spheres, And voice which does my sight such wrong. Not without fortitude I waitThe dark majestical ensuitOf destiny, nor peevish rateCalm-knowledged Fate.I, that no part have in the time’s bragged way, And its loud bruitI, in this house so rifted, marred, So ill to live in, hard to leave;I, so star-weary, over-warred,That have no joy in this your day– Rather foul fume englutting, that of day Confounds all ray–But only stand aside and grieve;I yet have sight beyond the smoke,And kiss the gods’ feet, though they wreak Upon me stroke and again stroke;And this my seeing is not weak.The Woman I behold, whose vision seek All eyes and know not; t’ward whom climb The steps o’ the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, And knows not; ‘twixt the sun and moonHer inexpressible front enstarredTempers the wrangling spheres to tune; Their divergent harmoniesConcluded in the concord of her eyes, And vestal dances of her glad regard.I see, which fretteth with surmiseMuch heads grown unsagacious-grey,The slow aim of wise-hearted Time,Which folded cycles within cycles cloak: We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away, But holds the furrowing earth still harnessed to its yoke. The stars still write their golden purposes On heaven’s high palimpsest, and no man sees, Nor any therein Daniel; I do hearFrom the revolving yearA voice which cries:‘All dies;Lo, how all dies! O seer,And all things too arise:All dies, and all is born;But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn.’ Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast Of Fortune’s game, and the iniquitous hour, Whose falcon soul sits fast,And not intends her high sagacious tour Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past To slow much sweet from little instant sour, And in the first does always see the last. ANY SAINT. His shoulder did I holdToo high that I, o’erbold Weak one, Should lean thereon. But He a little hathDeclined His stately path And my Feet set more high; That the slack arm may reachHis shoulder, and faint speech Stir His unwithering hair. And bolder now and bolderI lean upon that shoulder So dear He is and near: And with His aureoleThe tresses of my soul Are blent In wished content. Yes, this too gentle LoverHath 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 easilyConceits 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 contriv-ed charms Allure A love unsure. Not to me, not to me,Builded so flawfully, O God, Thy humbling laud! Not to this man, but Man,–Universe in a span; Point Of the spheres conjoint; In whom eternallyThou, Light, dost focus Thee!– Didst pave The way o’ the wave; Rivet with stars the Heaven,For causeways to Thy driven Car In its coming far Unto him, only him;In Thy deific whim Didst bound Thy works’ great round In this small ring of flesh;The sky’s gold-knotted mesh Thy wrist Did only twist To take him in that net.–Man! swinging-wicket set Between The Unseen and Seen; Lo, God’s two worlds immense,Of spirit and of sense, Wed In this narrow bed; Yea, and the midge’s hymnAnswers the seraphim Athwart Thy body’s court! Great arm-fellow of God!To the ancestral clod Kin, And to cherubin; Bread predilectedlyO’ the worm and Deity! Hark, O God’s clay-sealed Ark, To praise that fits thee, clearTo the ear within the ear, But dense To clay-sealed sense. All the Omnific madeWhen in a word he said, (Mystery!) He uttered THEE; Thee His great utterance bore,O secret metaphor Of what Thou dream’st no jot! Cosmic metonymy!Weak world-unshuttering key! One Seal of Solomon! Trope that itself not scansIts huge significance, Which tries Cherubic eyes. Primer where the angels allGod’s grammar spell in small, Nor spell The highest too well. Point for the great descantsOf starry disputants; Equation Of creation. Thou meaning, couldst thou see,Of all which dafteth thee; So plain, It mocks thy pain; Stone of the Law indeed,Thine own self couldst thou read; Thy bliss Within thee is. Compost of Heaven and mire,Slow foot and swift desire! Lo, To have Yes, choose No; Gird, and thou shalt unbind;Seek not, and thou shalt find; To eat, Deny thy meat; And thou shalt be fulfilledWith all sweet things unwilled: So best God loves to jest With children small–a freakOf heavenly hide-and-seek Fit For thy wayward wit, Who art thyself a thingOf whim and wavering; Free When His wings pen thee; Sole fully blest, to feelGod whistle thee at heel; Drunk up As a dew-drop, When He bends down, sun-wise,Intemperable eyes; Most proud, When utterly bowed. To feel thyself and beHis dear nonentity– Caught Beyond human thought In the thunder-spout of Him,Until thy being dim, And be Dead deathlessly. Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fearThe nettle’s wrathful spear, So slight Art thou of might! Rise; for Heaven hath no frownWhen thou to thee pluck’st down, Strong clod! The neck of God. ASSUMPTA MARIA. ‘Thou needst not sing new songs, but say the old.’–COWLEY. Mortals, that behold a Woman, Rising ‘twixt the Moon and Sun;Who am I the heavens assume? an All am I, and I am one. Multitudinous ascend I, Dreadful as a battle arrayed,For I bear you whither tend I; Ye are I: be undismayed!I, the Ark that for the graven Tables of the Law was made;Man’s own heart was one, one Heaven, Both within my womb were laid. For there Anteros with Eros Heaven with man conjoin-ed was,– Twin-stone of the Law, Ischyros, Agios Athanatos. I, the flesh-girt Paradises Gardenered by the Adam new,Daintied o’er with sweet devices Which He loveth, for He grew.I, the boundless strict savannah Which God’s leaping feet go through; I, the heaven whence the Manna, Weary Israel, slid on you! He the Anteros and Eros, I the body, He the Cross; He upbeareth me, Ischyros, Agios Athanatos! I am Daniel’s mystic Mountain, Whence the mighty stone was rolled; I am the four Rivers’ fountain, Watering Paradise of old;Cloud down-raining the Just One am, Danae of the Shower of Gold;I the Hostel of the Sun am; He the Lamb, and I the Fold. He the Anteros and Eros, I the body, He the Cross; He is fast to me, Ischyros, Agios Athanatos! I, the presence-hall where Angels Do enwheel their plac-ed King–Even my thoughts which, without change else, Cyclic burn and cyclic sing.To the hollow of Heaven transplanted, I a breathing Eden spring,Where with venom all outpanted Lies the slimed Curse shrivelling. For the brazen Serpent clear on That old fang-ed knowledge shone; I to Wisdom rise, Ischyron, Agion Athanaton! See in highest heaven pavilioned Now the maiden Heaven rest,The many-breasted sky out-millioned By the splendours of her vest.Lo, the Ark this holy tide is The un-handmade Temple’s guest,And the dark Egyptian bride is Whitely to the Spouse-Heart prest! He the Anteros and Eros, Nail me to Thee, sweetest Cross! He is fast to me, Ischyros, Agios Athanatos! ‘Tell me, tell me, O Belov-ed, Where Thou dost in mid-day feed!For my wanderings are reprov-ed, And my heart is salt with need.’‘Thine own self not spellest God in, Nor the lisping papyrus reed?Follow where the flocks have trodden, Follow where the shepherds lead.’ He, the Anteros and Eros, Mounts me in AEgyptic car, Twin-yoked; leading me, Ischyros, Trembling to the untempted Far. ‘Make me chainlets, silvern, golden, I that sow shall surely reap;While as yet my Spouse is holden Like a Lion in mountained sleep.’‘Make her chainlets, silvern, golden, She hath sown and she shall reap;Look up to the mountains olden, Whence help comes with lioned leap.’ By what gushed the bitter Spear on, Pain, which sundered, maketh one; Crucified to Him, Ischyron, Agion Athanaton! Then commanded and spake to me He who framed all things that be;And my Maker entered through me, In my tent His rest took He.Lo! He standeth, Spouse and Brother; I to Him, and He to me,Who upraised me where my mother Fell, beneath the apple-tree. Risen ‘twixt Anteros and Eros, Blood and Water, Moon and Sun, He upbears me, He Ischyros, I bear Him, the Athanaton! Where is laid the Lord arisen? In the light we walk in gloom;Though the sun has burst his prison, We know not his biding-room.Tell us where the Lord sojourneth, For we find an empty tomb.‘Whence He sprung, there He returneth, Mystic Sun,–the Virgin’s Womb.’ Hidden Sun, His beams so near us, Cloud enpillared as He was From of old, there He, Ischyros, Waits our search, Athanatos. Who will give Him me for brother, Counted of my family,Sucking the sweet breasts of my Mother?– I His flesh, and mine is He;To my Bread myself the bread is, And my Wine doth drink me: see,His left hand beneath my head is, His right hand embraceth me! Sweetest Anteros and Eros, Lo, her arms He leans across; Dead that we die not, stooped to rear us, Thanatos Athanatos. Who is She, in candid vesture, Rushing up from out the brine?Treading with resilient gesture Air, and with that Cup divine?She in us and we in her are, Beating Godward: all that pine,Lo, a wonder and a terror! The Sun hath blushed the Sea to Wine! He the Anteros and Eros, She the Bride and Spirit; for Now the days of promise near us, And the Sea shall be no more. Open wide thy gates, O Virgin, That the King may enter thee!At all gates the clangours gurge in, God’s paludament lightens, see!Camp of Angels! Well we even Of this thing may doubtful be,–If thou art assumed to Heaven, Or is Heaven assumed to thee! Consummatum. Christ the promised, Thy maiden realm is won, O Strong! Since to such sweet Kingdom comest, Remember me, poor Thief of Song! Cadent fails the stars along:- Mortals, that behold a woman Rising ‘twixt the Moon and Sun; Who am I the heavens assume? an All am I, and I am one. THE AFTER WOMAN. Daughter of the ancient Eve,We know the gifts ye gave–and give. Who knows the gifts which YOU shall give, Daughter of the newer Eve?You, if my soul be augur, youShall–O what shall you not, Sweet, do? The celestial traitress play,And all mankind to bliss betray;With sacrosanct cajoleriesAnd starry treachery of your eyes,Tempt us back to Paradise!Make heavenly trespass;–ay, press in Where faint the fledge-foot seraphin,Blest Fool! Be ensign of our wars,And shame us all to warriors!Unbanner your bright locks,–advance Girl, their gilded puissance,I’ the mystic vaward, and draw onAfter the lovely gonfalonUs to out-folly the excessOf your sweet foolhardiness;To adventure like intenseAssault against Omnipotence! Give me song, as She is, new,Earth should turn in time thereto!New, and new, and thrice so new,All old sweets, New Sweet, meant you! Fair, I had a dream of thee,When my young heart beat prophecy,And in apparition elateThy little breasts knew wax-ed great, Sister of the Canticle,And thee for God grown marriageable. How my desire desired your day,That, wheeled in rumour on its way, Shook me thus with presentience! ThenEden’s lopped tree shall shoot again: For who Christ’s eyes shall miss, with those Eyes for evident nuncios?Or who be tardy to His callIn your accents augural? Who shall not feel the Heavens hidImpend, at tremble of your lid,And divine advent shine avowedUnder that dim and lucid cloud;Yea, ‘fore the silver apocalypseFail, at the unsealing of your lips? When to love YOU is (O Christ’s Spouse!) To love the beauty of His house;Then come the Isaian days; the oldShall dream; and our young men behold Vision–yea, the vision of Thabor mount, Which none to other shall recount,Because in all men’s hearts shall be The seeing and the prophecy.For ended is the Mystery Play,When Christ is life, and you the way; When Egypt’s spoils are Israel’s right,And Day fulfils the married arms of Night. But here my lips are still.UntilYou and the hour shall be revealed, This song is sung and sung not, and its words are sealed. GRACE OF THE WAY. ‘My brother!’ spake she to the sun; The kindred kisses of the starsWere hers; her feet were set upon The moon. If slumber solved the bars Of sense, or sense transpicuous grown Fulfill-ed seeing unto sight,I know not; nor if ’twas my own Ingathered self that made her night. The windy trammel of her dress, Her blown locks, took my soul in mesh; God’s breath they spake, with visibleness That stirred the raiment of her flesh: And sensible, as her blown were, Beyond the precincts of her formI felt the woman flow from her– A calm of intempestuous storm. I failed against the affluent tide; Out of this abject earth of meI was translated and enskied Into the heavenly-regioned She. Now of that vision I bereaven This knowledge keep, that may not dim:- Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven, So ready is Heaven to stoop to him. Which sets, to measure of man’s feet, No alien Tree for trysting-place;And who can read, may read the sweet Direction in his Lady’s face. And pass and pass the daily crowd, Unwares, occulted Paradise;Love the lost plot cries silver-loud, Nor any know the tongue he cries. The light is in the darkness, and The darkness doth not comprehend:God hath no haste; and God’s sons stand Yet a Day, tarrying for the end. Dishonoured Rahab still hath hid, Yea still, within her house of shame, The messengers by Jesus bid Forerun the coming of His Name. The Word was flesh, and crucified, From the beginning, and blasphemed: Its profaned raiment men divide, Damned by what, reverenced, had redeemed. Thy Lady, was thy heart not blind, One hour gave to thy witless trust The key thou go’st about to find; And thou hast dropped it in the dust. Of her, the Way’s one mortal grace, Own, save thy seeing be all forgot, That truly, God was in this place, And thou, unbless-ed, knew’st it not. But some have eyes, and will not see; And some would see, and have not eyes;And fail the tryst, yet find the Tree, And take the lesson for the prize. RETROSPECT. Alas, and I have sungMuch song of matters vain,And a heaven-sweetened tongueTurned to unprofiting strainOf vacant things, which thoughEven so they be, and throughly so,It is no boot at all for thee to know, But babble and false pain. What profit if the sunPut forth his radiant thews,And on his circuit run,Even after my device, to this and to that use; And the true Orient, Christ,Make not His cloud of thee?I have sung vanity,And nothing well devised. And though the cry of starsGive tongue before his wayGoldenly as I say,And each from wide Saturnus to hot Mars He calleth by its name,Lest that its bright feet stray;And thou have lore of all,But to thine own Sun’s callThy path disorbed hast never wit to tame; It profits not withal,And my rede is but lame. Only that, ‘mid vain vauntOf wisdom ignorant,A little kiss upon the feet of Love My hasty verse has stayedSometimes a space to plant:It has not wholly strayed,Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud plumes above. Therefore I do repentThat with religion vain,And misconceiv-ed pain,I have my music bentTo waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain: Yet shall a wiser dayFulfil more heavenly way,And with approv-ed music clear this slip I trust in God most sweet;Meantime the silent lip,Meantime the climbing feet. A NARROW VESSEL. Being a little dramatic sequence on the aspect of primitive girl- naturetowards a love beyond its capacities. A GIRL’S SIN. I.–In her eyes. Cross child! red, and frowning so? ‘I, the day just over,Gave a lock of hair to–no! How DARE you say, my lover?’ He asked you?–Let me understand; Come, child, let me sound it!‘Of course, he WOULD have asked it, and– And so–somehow–he–found it. ‘He told it out with great loud eyes– Men have such little wit!His sin I ever will chastise Because I gave him it. ‘Shameless in me the gift, alas! In him his open bliss:But for the privilege he has A thousand he shall miss! ‘His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed,