Eyes of Youth | Page 2

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 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 hunchèd 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?
0. 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