Poems | Page 3

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This etext was prepared from the 1909 Burns and Oates edition by
David Price, email [email protected]

Poems by Francis Thompson

Contents:
Dedication Love in Dian's Lap Before Her Portrait in Youth To a Poet
Breaking Silence Manus Animam Pinxit A Carrier-Song Scala Jacobi
Portaque Eburnea Gilded Gold Her Portrait Miscellaneous Poems To
the Dead Cardinal of Westminster A Fallen Yew Dream-Tryst A
Corymbus for Autumn The Hound of Heaven A Judgment in Heaven
Poems on Children Daisy The Making of Viola To My Godchild To
Poppy To Monica Thought Dying

DEDICATION--TO WILFRID AND ALICE MEYNELL

If the rose in meek duty May dedicate humbly To her grower the
beauty Wherewith she is comely; If the mine to the miner The jewels
that pined in it, Earth to diviner The springs he divined in it; To the
grapes the wine-pitcher Their juice that was crushed in it, Viol to its
witcher The music lay hushed in it; If the lips may pay Gladness In
laughters she wakened, And the heart to its sadness Weeping
unslakened, If the hid and sealed coffer, Whose having not his is, To
the loosers may proffer Their finding--here this is; Their lives if all
livers To the Life of all living, - To you, O dear givers! I give your own
giving.

BEFORE HER PORTRAIT IN YOUTH

As lovers, banished from their lady's face And hopeless of her grace,
Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some
stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief or a glove: And at the
lover's beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous
command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck: So I, in very
lowlihead of love, - Too shyly reverencing To let one thought's light
footfall smooth Tread near the living, consecrated thing, - Treasure me
thy cast youth. This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee, Hath yet my
knee, For that, with show and semblance fair Of the past Her Who once
the beautiful, discarded raiment bare, It cheateth me. As gale to gale
drifts breath Of blossoms' death, So dropping down the years from hour
to hour This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day: I sit, and from the
fragrance dream the flower. So, then, she looked (I say); And so her
front sunk down Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown: On her mouth
museful sweet - (Even as the twin lips meet) Did thought and sadness
greet: Sighs In those mournful eyes So put on visibilities; As viewless
ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes. Thus, long ago, She kept her
meditative paces slow Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and
gleam Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream, Till love up-caught
her to his chariot's glow. Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine! This
drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall I, faring in the cockshut-light,
astray, Find on my 'lated way, And stoop, and gather for memorial,
And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine. To this, the all of love the
stars allow me, I dedicate and vow me. I reach back through the days A

trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise. The water-wraith
that cries From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes Entwines and
draws me down their soundless intricacies!

TO A POET BREAKING SILENCE

Too wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea,
song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The
mountain where the Muses hymn For Sinai and the Seraphim. Now in
both the mountains' shine Dress thy countenance, twice divine! From
Moses and the Muses draw The Tables of thy double Law! His
rod-born fount and Castaly Let the one rock bring forth for thee,
Renewing so from either spring The songs which both thy countries
sing: