New Poems | Page 3

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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, 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 grown?For 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