New Poems | Page 3

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*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
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
interstrewn.
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 incensesmoke.
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 troublously
Over-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 survey
Where 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
divine
Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster
grows?
XIV
On Golgotha there grew a thorn
Round the long-prefigured Brows.

Mourn,