Sister Songs

狨
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 sure upraise?For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways:?Those flutes do flute their