Poems of To-Day: an Anthology Part 23

Be confident of thought, Seeing that thou art naught; And be thy pride thou'rt all Delectably safe and small.

Epitomized in thee Was the mystery Which shakes the spheres conjoint-- G.o.d focussed to a point.

All thy fine mouths shout Scorn upon dull-eyed doubt.

Impenetrable fool Is he thou canst not school To the humility By which the angels see!

Unfathomably framed Sister, I am not shamed

{127}

Before the cherubin To vaunt my flesh thy kin.

My one hand thine, and one Imprisoned in G.o.d's own, I am as G.o.d; alas, And such a G.o.d of gra.s.s!

A little root clay-caught, A wind, a flame, a thought, Inestimably naught!

_Francis Thompson._

106. TO A SNOWFLAKE

What heart could have thought you?-- Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost?

Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?-- "G.o.d was my shaper.

Pa.s.sing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapour, To l.u.s.t of His mind:-- Thou couldst not have thought me!

So purely, so palely, Tinily, surely, Mightily, frailly,

{128}

Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost."

_Francis Thompson._

107. TO A DAISY

Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide, Like all created things, secrets from me, And stand a barrier to eternity.

And I, how can I praise thee well and wide

From where I dwell--upon the hither side?

Thou little veil for so great mystery, When shall I penetrate all things and thee, And then look back? For this I must abide,

Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled Literally between me and the world.

Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring,

And from a poet's side shall read his book.

O daisy mine, what will it be to look From G.o.d's side even of such a simple thing?

_Alice Meynell._

108. LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.

Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.

{129}

Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.

And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.

Soaring through wider zones that p.r.i.c.ked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, He reached a middle height, and at the stars, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.

Around the ancient track marched rank on rank, The army of unalterable law.

_George Meredith._

109. THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face; If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books, and my food, and summer rain Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-- Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake; Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, Choose thou, before that spirit die, A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in!

_Robert Louis Stevenson._

{130}

110. THE KINGDOM OF G.o.d

'_In no Strange Land_'

O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air-- That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars!-- The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;-- Turn but a stone, and start a wing!

'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

_Francis Thompson._

{131}