Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 11

Virtue may unlock h.e.l.l, or even A sin turn in the wards of Heaven, (As ethics of the text-book go), So little men their own deeds know, Or through the intricate _melee_ Guess whitherward draws the battle-sway; So little, if they know the deed, Discern what therefrom shall succeed.

To wisest moralists 'tis but given To work rough border-law of Heaven, Within this narrow life of ours, These marches 'twixt delimitless Powers.

Is it, if Heaven the future showed, Is it the all-severest mode To see ourselves with the eyes of G.o.d?

G.o.d rather grant, at His a.s.size, He see us not with our own eyes!

Heaven, which man's generations draws, Nor deviates into replicas, Must of as deep diversity In judgement as creation be.

There is no expeditious road To pack and label men for G.o.d, And save them by the barrel-load.

Some may perchance, with strange surprise, Have blundered into Paradise.

In vasty dusk of life abroad, They fondly thought to err from G.o.d, Nor knew the circle that they trod; And, wandering all the night about, Found them at morn where they set out.

Death dawned; Heaven lay in prospect wide:-- Lo! they were standing by His side!

GRACE OF THE WAY

The windy trammel of her dress, Her blown locks, took my soul in mesh.

G.o.d's breath they spake, with visibleness That stirred the raiment of her flesh:

And sensible, as her blown locks were, Beyond the precincts of her form I felt the woman flow from her-- A calm of intempestuous storm.

I failed against the affluent tide; Out of this abject earth of me I was translated and enskied Into the heavenly-regioned She.

Now of that vision I bereaven This knowledge keep, that may not dim:-- Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven, So ready is Heaven to stoop to him;

Which sets, to measure of man's feet, No alien Tree for trysting-place; And who can read, may read the sweet Direction in his Lady's face.

TO A SNOW-FLAKE

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 could'st not have thought me!

So purely, so palely, Tinily, surely, Mightily, frailly, Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost."

ORIENT ODE

Lo, in the sanctuaried East, Day, a dedicated priest In all his robes pontifical exprest, Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, Yon orbed sacrament confest Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn; And when the grave procession 's ceased, The earth with due ill.u.s.trious rite Blessed,--ere the frail fingers featly Of twilight, violet-ca.s.socked acolyte, His sacerdotal stoles unvest-- Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, The sun in august exposition meetly Within the flaming monstrance of the West.

G.o.d, whom none may live and mark, Borne within thy radiant ark!-- While the Earth, a joyous David, Dances before thee from the dawn to dark.

The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; Behold her fair and greater daughter[C]

Offers to thee her fruitful water, Which at thy first white _Ave_ shall conceive!

Thy gazes do on simple her Desirable allures confer; What happy comelinesses rise Beneath thy beautifying eyes!

Who was, indeed, at first a maid Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, And secret views herself afraid, Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, Make the beauties they discover!

What dainty guiles and treacheries caught From artful prompting of love's artless thought Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn!

And so the love which is thy dower, Earth, though her first-frightened breast Against the exigent boon protest, (For she, poor maid, of her own power Has nothing in herself, not even love, But an unwitting void thereof), Gives back to thee in sanct.i.ties of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest, That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy, Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing captive from the wishing West.

Nor the majestic heavens less Thy formidable sweets approve, Thy dreads and thy delights confess That do draw, and that remove.

Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun, Upon thy satellites' vexed heels; Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; Each in his frighted orbit wheels, Each flies through ina.s.suageable chase, Since the hunt o' the world begun, The puissant approaches of thy face, And yet thy radiant leash he feels.

Since the hunt o' the world begun, Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, The mighty course is ever run; p.r.i.c.ked with terror, leashed with longing, Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun.

Since the hunt o' the world began, With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, Thou join'st the woman to the man; And Life with Death In obscure nuptials moveth, Commingling alien, yet affined, breath.

Thou art the incarnated Light Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond Death and resurgence of our day and night; From him is thy vicegerent wand With double potence of the black and white.

Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire!

Samson's riddling meanings merging In thy twofold sceptre meet: Out of thy minatory might, Burning Lion, burning Lion, Comes the honey of all sweet, And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat.

And though, by thine alternate breath, Every kiss thou dost inspire Echoeth Back from the windy vaultages of death; Yet thy clear warranty above Augurs the wings of death too must Occult reverberations stir of love Crescent and life incredible; That even the kisses of the just Go down not unresurgent to the dust.

Yea, not a kiss which I have given, But shall triumph upon my lips in heaven, Or cling a shameful fungus there in h.e.l.l.

Know'st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well Thou know'st the ancient miracle, The children know'st of Zeus and May; And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, To incarnate, the antique way, The truth which is their heritage from their Sire In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother.

My fingers thou hast taught to con Thy flame-chorded psalterion, Till I can translate into mortal wire-- Till I can translate pa.s.sing well-- The heavenly harping harmony, Melodious, sealed, inaudible, Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world's desire.

Thou whisperest in the Moon's white ear, And she does whisper into mine,-- By night together, I and she-- With her virgin voice divine, The things I cannot half so sweetly tell As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear.

By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, Yet she for Earth, and both in thee.

Light out of light!

Resplendent and prevailing Word Of the Unheard!

Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; And in an age of faith grown frore If I too shall adore, Be it accounted unto me, A bright sciential idolatry!

G.o.d has given thee visible thunders To utter thine apocalypse of wonders, And what want I of prophecy, That at the sounding from thy station Of thy flagrant trumpet, see The seals that melt, the open revelation?

Or who a G.o.d-persuading angel needs, That only heeds The rhetoric of thy burning deeds?

Which but to sing, if it may be, In worship-warranting moiety, So I would win In such a song as hath within A smouldering core of mystery, Brimmed with nimbler meanings up Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;-- Lo, my suit pleads That thou, Isaian coal of fire, Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's desire, And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds.

To thine own shape Thou round'st the chrysolite of the grape, Bind'st thy gold lightnings in his veins; Thou storest the white garners of the rains.

Destroyer and preserver, thou Who medicinest sickness, and to health Art the unthanked marrow of its wealth; To those apparent sovereignties we bow And bright appurtenances of thy brow!

Thy proper blood dost thou not give, That Earth, the gusty Maenad, drink and dance?

Art thou not life of them that live?

Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell Within our body as a tabernacle!

Thou bittest with thine ordinance The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete The unsustainable treading of his feet.

Thou to thy spousal universe Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; Who in most dusk and vidual curch, Her Lord being hence, Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hea.r.s.e.

The heavens renew their innocence And morning state But by thy sacrament communicate; Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, Our darkened search, And sinful vigil desolate.

Yea, biune in imploring dumb, Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await; The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!

Lo, of thy Magians I the least Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced Regions and odorous of Song's traded East.

Thou, for the life of all that live The victim daily born and sacrificed; To whom the pinion of this longing verse Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, To thee, O Sun--or is 't perchance, to Christ?

Ay, if men say that on all high heaven's face The saintly signs I trace Which round my stoled altars hold their solemn place, Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,-- When I with winged feet had run Through all the windy earth about, Quested its secret of the sun, And heard what thing the stars together shout,-- I should not heed thereout Consenting counsel won:-- "By this, O Singer, know we if thou see.

When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, Believe them: yea, and this--then art thou seer, When all thy crying clear Is but: Lo here! lo there!--ah me, lo everywhere!"

[C] The Earth.

_From_ "FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING"

AN ODE AFTER EASTER

Cast wide the folding doorways of the East, For now is light increased!

And the wind-besomed chambers of the air, See they be garnished fair; And look the ways exhale some precious odours, And set ye all about wild-breathing spice, Most fit for Paradise.

Now is no time for sober gravity, Season enough has Nature to be wise; But now distinct, with raiment glittering free, Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies With festal footing and bold joyance sweet, And let the earth be drunken and carouse!

For lo, into her house Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, And all things are made young with young desires; And all for her is light increased In yellow stars and yellow daffodils, And East to West, and West to East, Fling answering welcome-fires, By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills.

And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, Being newly coated in glad livery, Upon her steps attend, And round her treading dance and without end Reel your shrill lutany.

What popular breath her coming does out-tell The garrulous leaves among!

What little noises stir and pa.s.s From blade to blade along the voluble gra.s.s!

O Nature, never-done Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle, We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue!