Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 3

And He will smile, that children's tongue Has not changed since Thou wast young!

From "Sister Songs"

A CHILD'S KISS

Where its umbrage[A] was enrooted, Sat, white-suited, Sat, green-amiced and bare-footed, Spring, amid her minstrelsy; There she sat amid her ladies, Where the shade is Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades'

Gloom fell thwart Persephone.

Dewy buds were interstrown Through her tresses hanging down, And her feet Were most sweet, Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown.

A throng of children like to flowers were sown About the gra.s.s beside, or clomb her knee: I looked who were that favoured company.

And one there stood Against the beamy flood Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance, Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face; As see I might Far off a lily-cl.u.s.ter poised in sun Dispread its gracile curls of light.

I knew what chosen child was there in place!

I knew there might no brows be, save of one, With such Hesperian fulgence compa.s.sed, Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head.

_O Spring's little children, more loud your lauds upraise, For this is even Sylvia with her sweet, feat ways!

Your lovesome labours lay away, And prank 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!_

Spring, G.o.ddess, is it thou, desired long?

And art thou girded round with this young train?-- If ever I did do thee ease in song, Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain, And list thou to one plain.

Oh, keep still in thy train, After the years when others therefrom fade, This tiny, well-beloved maid!

To whom the gate of my heart's fortalice, With all which in it is, And the shy self who doth therein immew him 'Gainst what loud leaguerers battailously woo him, I, bribed traitor to him, Set open for one kiss.

A kiss? for a child's kiss?

Aye, G.o.ddess, even for this.

Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far, Once--in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant-- Forlorn, and faint, and stark, I had endured through watches of the dark The abashless inquisition of each star, Yea, was the outcast mark Of all those heavenly pa.s.sers' scrutiny; Stood bound and helplessly For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me; Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour In night's slow-wheeled car; Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength, I waited the inevitable last.

Then there came past A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, And through the city-streets blown withering.

She pa.s.sed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!-- And of her own scant pittance did she give, That I might eat and live: Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.

Therefore I kissed in thee The heart of Childhood, so divine for me; And her, through what sore ways, And what unchildish days, Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.

Therefore I kissed in thee Her, child! and innocency, And spring, and all things that have gone from me, And that shall never be; All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss, Came with thee to my kiss.

And ah! so long myself had strayed afar From child, and woman, and the boon earth's green, And all wherewith life's face is fair beseen; Journeying its journey bare Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun Unkissed of one; Almost I had forgot The healing harms, And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that Authentic cestus of two girdling arms: And I remembered not The subtle sanct.i.ties which dart From childish lips' unvalued precious brush, Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push Between the loosening fibres of the heart.

Then, that thy little kiss Should be to me all this, Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat; Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat!

And straightway charts me out the empyreal air.

Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth: And howso thou and I may be disjoint, Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point Over the covert where Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!

_Soul, hush these sad numbers, too sad to upraise In hymning bright Sylvia, unlearn'd in such ways!

Our mournful moods lay me away, And prank our thoughts in holiday, For syllabling to Sylvia; When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear with us this burthen For singing to Sylvia!_

[A] The umbrage of an elm-tree, described earlier in the _Sister Songs_ from which this and the six succeeding poems are detached.

POET AND ANCHORITE

Love and love's beauty only hold their revels In life's familiar, penetrable levels: What of its ocean-floor?

I dwell there evermore.

From almost earliest youth I raised the lids o' the truth, And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight; Ever I knew me Beauty's eremite, In antre of this lowly body set, Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul.

Natheless I not forget How I have, even as the anchorite, I too, imperishing essences that console.

Under my ruined pa.s.sions, fallen and sere, The wild dreams stir, like little radiant girls, Whom in the moulted plumage of the year Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls.

Yet, though their dedicated amorist, How often do I bid my visions hist, Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills; Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills: And their tears wash them lovelier than before, That from grief's self our sad delight grows more.

Fair are the soul's uncrisped calms, indeed, Endiapered with many a spiritual form Of blosmy-tinctured weed; But scarce itself is conscious of the store Suckled by it, and only after storm Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the sh.o.r.e.

To this end my deeps are stirred; And I deem well why life unshared Was ordained me of yore.

In pairing-time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat: Were its love for ever nigh it, Never by it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine l.u.s.tre linger on its coat.

Therefore must my song-bower lone be, That my tone be Fresh with dewy pain alway; She, who scorns my dearest care ta'en, An uncertain Shadow of the sprite of May.

THE OMEN

Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love!

Upon the ending of my deadly night (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight Is all that any mortal knows thereof), Thou wert to me that earnest of day's light, When, like the back of a gold-mailed saurian Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime, The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime.

Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea Whence they had rescued me, With faint and painful pulses was I lying; Not yet discerning well If I had 'scaped, or were an icicle, Whose thawing is its dying.

Like one who sweats before a despot's gate, Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate, And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait; And all so sickened is his countenance, The courtiers buzz, "Lo, doomed!" and look at him askance:-- At Fate's dread portal then Even so stood I, I ken, Even so stood I, between a joy and fear, And said to mine own heart, "Now if the end be here!"

They say, Earth's beauty seems completest To them that on their death-beds rest; Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest Just ere she clasps us to her breast.

And I,--now _my_ Earth's countenance grew bright, Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night?

But, whileas on such dubious bed I lay, One unforgotten day, As a sick child waking sees Wide-eyed daisies Gazing on it from its hand, Slipped there for its dear amazes; So between thy father's knees I saw _thee_ stand, And through my hazes Of pain and fear thine eyes' young wonder shone.

Then, as flies scatter from a carrion, Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke, Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting sp.a.w.n: The heart which I had questioned spoke, A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,-- "I take the omen of this face of dawn!"

And with the omen to my heart cam'st thou.

Even with a spray of tears That one light draft was fixed there for the years.

And now?-- The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet, Beneath my casual feet.

With rainfall as the lea, The day is drenched with thee; In little exquisite surprises Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises From sudden places, Under the common traces Of my most lethargied and customed paces.

THE MIRAGE

As an Arab journeyeth Through a sand of Ayaman, Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue, Lagging by his side along; And a rusty-winged Death Grating its low flight before, Casting ribbed shadows o'er The blank desert, blank and tan: He lifts by hap toward where the morning's roots are His weary stare,-- Sees, although they plashless mutes are, Set in a silver air Fountains of gelid shoots are, Making the daylight fairest fair; Sees the palm and tamarind Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;-- A sight like innocence when one has sinned!

A green and maiden freshness smiling there, While with unblinking glare The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.

'Tis a vision: Yet the greeneries Elysian He has known in tracts afar; Thus the enamouring fountains flow, Those the very palms that grow, By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.-- Such a watered dream has tarried Trembling on my desert arid; Even so Its lovely gleamings Seemings show Of things not seemings; And I gaze, Knowing that, beyond my ways, Verily All these _are_, for these are She.

Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth, Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, Than thy shadow soothes this weak And distempered being of mine.

In all I work, my hand includeth thine; Thou rushest down in every stream Whose pa.s.sion frets my spirit's deepening gorge; Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream; Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge; As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, Moves all the labouring surges of the world.

Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.

This poor song that sings of thee, This fragile song, is but a curled Sh.e.l.l outgathered from thy sea, And murmurous still of its nativity.

THE CHILD-WOMAN

O thou most dear!

Who art thy s.e.x's complex harmony G.o.d-set more facilely; To thee may love draw near Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility: Thou Perseus' Shield! wherein I view secure The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure!

Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free; With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind The bared limbs of the rebukeless mind.

Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree, With which indissolubly The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole; Whose frank arms pa.s.s unfretted through its bole: Who wear'st thy femineity Light as entrailed blossoms, that shalt find It erelong silver shackles unto thee.

Thou whose young s.e.x is yet but in thy soul;-- As, h.o.a.rded in the vine, Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine, As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:-- In whom the mystery which lures and sunders, Grapples and thrusts apart, endears, estranges, --The dragon to its own Hesperides-- Is gated under slow-revolving changes, Manifold doors of heavy-hinged years.

So once, ere Heaven's eyes were filled with wonders To see Laughter rise from Tears, Lay in beauty not yet mighty, Conched in translucencies, The antenatal Aphrodite, Caved magically under magic seas; Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.

"Whose s.e.x is in thy soul!"

What think we of thy soul?

Which has no parts, and cannot grow, Unfurled not from an embryo; Born of full stature, lineal to control; And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.

Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind, With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind; Must be obsequious to the body's powers, Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways; Must do obeisance to the days, And wait the little pleasure of the hours; Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be Captive in statuted minority!