Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 15

TO THE SINKING SUN

How graciously thou wear'st the yoke Of use that does not fail!

The gra.s.ses, like an anch.o.r.ed smoke, Ride in the bending gale; This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, And fire-dropt as a seraph's mail.

Here every eve thou stretchest out Untarnishable wing, And marvellously bring'st about Newly an olden thing; Nor ever through like-ordered heaven Moves largely thy grave progressing.

Here every eve thou goest down Behind the self-same hill, Nor ever twice alike go'st down Behind the self-same hill; Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower Possessed with glory past its will.

Not twice alike! I am not blind, My sight is live to see; And yet I do complain of thy Weary variety.

O Sun! I ask thee less or more, Change not at all, or utterly!

O give me unprevisioned new, Or give to change reprieve!

For new in me is olden too, That I for sameness grieve.

O flowers! O gra.s.ses! be but once The gra.s.s and flower of yester-eve!

Wonder and sadness are the lot Of change: thou yield'st mine eyes Grief of vicissitude, but not Its penetrant surprise.

Immutability mutable Burthens my spirit and the skies.

O altered joy, all joyed of yore, Plodding in unconned ways!

O grief grieved out, and yet once more A dull, new, staled amaze!

I dream, and all was dreamed before, Or dream I so? the dreamer says.

DREAM-TRYST

The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, And dawn's grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up the sky, And mine to Lucide.

There was no change in her sweet eyes Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine; There was no change in her deep heart Since last that deep heart knocked at mine.

Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope's, Wherein did ever come and go The sparkle of the fountain drops From her sweet soul below.

The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air, That Time's h.o.a.r wings grow young therein, And they who walk there are most fair.

I joyed for me, I joyed for her, Who with the Past meet girt about: Where our last kiss still warms the air, Nor can her eyes go out.

BUONA NOTTE

Jane Williams, in her last letter to Sh.e.l.ley, wrote:

"Why do you talk of never enjoying moments like the past?

Are you going to join your friend Plato, or do you expect I shall do so soon? Buona Notte." That letter was dated July 6th; Sh.e.l.ley was drowned on the 8th; and this is his imagined reply to it from another world:--

Ariel to Miranda:--hear This good-night the sea-winds bear; And let thine unacquainted ear Take grief for their interpreter.

Good-night; I have risen so high Into slumber's rarity, Not a dream can beat its feather Through the unsustaining ether.

Let the sea-winds make avouch How thunder summoned me to couch, Tempest curtained me about And turned the sun with his own hand out: And though I toss upon my bed My dream is not disquieted; Nay, deep I sleep upon the deep, And my eyes are wet, but I do not weep; And I fell to sleep so suddenly That my lips are moist yet--could'st thou see-- With the good-night draught I have drunk to thee.

Thou can'st not wipe them; for it was Death Damped my lips that has dried my breath.

A little while--it is not long-- The salt shall dry on them like the song.

Now know'st thou, that voice desolate, Mourning ruined joy's estate, Reached thee through a closing gate.

"Go'st thou to Plato?" Ah, girl, no!

It is to Pluto that I go.

ARAB LOVE SONG

The hunched camels of the night[E]

Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon.

The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering.

Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come!

And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.

Leave thy father, leave thy mother And thy brother; Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart!

Am I not thy father and thy brother, And thy mother?

And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?

[E] Cloud-shapes often observed by travellers in the East.

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 Genesareth, but Thames![F]

[F] This Poem (found among his papers when he died) Francis Thompson might yet have worked upon to remove, here a defective rhyme, there an unexpected elision. But no altered mind would he have brought to its main purport; and the prevision of "Heaven in Earth and G.o.d in Man,"

pervading his earlier published verse, we find here accented by poignantly local and personal allusions. For in these triumphing stanzas, he held in retrospect those days and nights of human dereliction he spent beside London's River, and in the shadow--but all radiance to him--of Charing Cross.

ENVOY

Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: And some are sung, and that was yesterday, And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow.

Go forth; and if it be o'er stony way, Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow: And it was sweet, and that was yesterday, And sweet is sweet, though purchased with sorrow.

Go, songs, and come not back from your far way; And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow, Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day, Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow.