Eyes of Youth | Page 2

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 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?"
A mediaeval illuminator would have jumped out of his sandals in his eagerness to illustrate 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 hunch��d 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 Shelley, 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 Shelley 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 PASSION 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 passion 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 passion 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 space 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, shine down from Heaven!

PADRAIC COLUM
"I SHALL NOT DIE FOR YOU"
(From the Irish)
O woman, shapely as the swan,?On your account I shall not die.?The men you've slain--a trivial clan--?Were less than I.
I ask me shall I die for these:?For blossom-teeth and scarlet lips??And shall that delicate swan-shape?Bring me eclipse?
Well shaped the breasts and smooth the skin,?The cheeks are fair, the tresses free;?And yet I shall not suffer death,?God over me.
Those even brows, that hair like gold,?Those languorous tones, that virgin way;?The flowing limbs, the rounded heel?Slight men betray.
Thy spirit keen through radiant mien,?Thy shining throat and smiling eye,?Thy little palm,