Sister Songs

Sister Songs
PREFACE
This poem, though new in the sense of being now for the first time
printed, was written some four years ago, about the same date as the
Hound of Heaven in my former volume.
One image in the Proem was an unconscious plagiarism from the
beautiful image in Mr. Patmore's St. Valentine's Day:-
"O baby Spring,
That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth,
A
month before the birth!"
Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the passage in which
it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with this acknowledgment
to a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor.
FRANCIS THOMPSON,
1895
SISTER SONGS--An Offering to Two Sisters
THE PROEM
Shrewd winds and shrill--were these the speech of May?
A ragged,
slag-grey sky--invested so,
Mary's spoilt nursling! wert thou wont to
go?
Or THOU, Sun-god and song-god, say
Could singer pipe one
tiniest linnet-lay,
While Song did turn away his face from song?
Or
who could be
In spirit or in body hale for long, -
Old AEsculap's
best Master!--lacking thee?
At length, then, thou art here!
On the
earth's lethed ear
Thy voice of light rings out exultant, strong;

Through dreams she stirs and murmurs at that summons dear:
From
its red leash my heart strains tamelessly,
For Spring leaps in the
womb of the young year!
Nay, was it not brought forth before,
And
we waited, to behold it,
Till the sun's hand should unfold it,
What
the year's young bosom bore?
Even so; it came, nor knew we that it

came,
In the sun's eclipse.
Yet the birds have plighted vows,
And
from the branches pipe each other's name;
Yet the season all the
boughs
Has kindled to the finger-tips, -
Mark yonder, how the long
laburnum drips
Its jocund spilth of fire, its honey of wild flame!

Yea, and myself put on swift quickening,
And answer to the presence
of a sudden Spring.
From cloud-zoned pinnacles of the secret spirit

Song falls precipitant in dizzying streams;
And, like a mountain-hold
when war-shouts stir it,
The mind's recessed fastness casts to light

Its gleaming multitudes, that from every height
Unfurl the flaming of
a thousand dreams.
Now therefore, thou who bring'st the year to birth,

Who guid'st the bare and dabbled feet of May;
Sweet stem to that
rose Christ, who from the earth
Suck'st our poor prayers, conveying
them to Him;
Be aidant, tender Lady, to my lay!
Of thy two
maidens somewhat must I say,
Ere shadowy twilight lashes, drooping,
dim
Day's dreamy eyes from us;
Ere eve has struck and furled

The beamy-textured tent transpicuous,
Of webbed coerule wrought
and woven calms,
Whence has paced forth the lambent-footed sun.

And Thou disclose my flower of song upcurled,
Who from Thy fair
irradiant palms
Scatterest all love and loveliness as alms;
Yea, Holy
One,
Who coin'st Thyself to beauty for the world!
Then, Spring's little children, your lauds do ye upraise
To Sylvia, O
Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways!
Your lovesome labours lay away,
And
trick you out in holiday,
For syllabling to Sylvia;
And all you birds
on branches, lave your mouths with May,
To bear with me this
burthen,
For singing to Sylvia.
PART THE FIRST
The leaves dance, the leaves sing,

The leaves dance in the breath of
the Spring.
I bid them dance,
I bid them sing,
For the limpid
glance
Of my ladyling;
For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring,

For God's good grace of this ladyling!
I know in the lane, by the
hedgerow track,
The long, broad grasses underneath
Are warted

with rain like a toad's knobbed back;
But here May weareth a rainless
wreath.
In the new-sucked milk of the sun's bosom
Is dabbled the
mouth of the daisy-blossom;
The smouldering rosebud chars through
its sheath;
The lily stirs her snowy limbs,
Ere she swims
Naked
up through her cloven green,
Like the wave-born Lady of Love
Hellene;
And the scattered snowdrop exquisite
Twinkles and
gleams,
As if the showers of the sunny beams
Were splashed from
the earth in drops of light.
Everything
That is child of Spring

Casts its bud or blossoming
Upon the stream of my delight.
Their voices, that scents are, now let them upraise
To Sylvia, O
Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways!
Their lovely mother them array,
And
prank them out in holiday,
For syllabling to Sylvia;
And all the
birds on branches lave their mouths with May,
To bear with me this
burthen,
For singing to Sylvia.
2.
While thus I stood in mazes bound
Of vernal sorcery,
I heard a
dainty dubious sound,
As of goodly melody;
Which first was faint
as if in swound,
Then burst so suddenly
In warring concord all
around,
That, whence this thing might be,
To see
The very
marrow longed in me!
It seemed of air, it seemed of ground,
And
never any witchery
Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string,
Made such
dulcet ravishing.
'Twas like no earthly instrument,
Yet had
something of them all
In its rise, and in its fall;

As if in one sweet
consort there were blent
Those archetypes celestial
Which our
endeavouring instruments recall.
So heavenly flutes made murmurous
plain
To heavenly viols, that again
- Aching with music--wailed
back pain;
Regals release their notes, which rise
Welling, like tears
from heart to eyes;
And the harp thrills with thronging sighs.
Horns
in mellow flattering
Parley with the cithern-string:-
Hark!--the
floating, long-drawn note
Woos the throbbing cithern-string!

Their pretty, pretty prating those citherns