Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 8

With recognising eyes Look from your Paradise-- "G.o.d bless Thy hopelessness!"

Call, holy soul, O call The hosts angelical, And say,-- "See, far away

"Lies one I saw on earth; One stricken from his birth With curse Of destinate verse.

"What place doth He ye serve For such sad spirit reserve,-- Given, In dark lieu of Heaven,

"The impitiable Daemon, Beauty, to adore and dream on, To be Perpetually

"Hers, but she never his?

He reapeth miseries; Foreknows His wages woes;

"He lives detached days; He serveth not for praise; For gold He is not sold;

"Deaf is he to world's tongue; He scorneth for his song The loud Shouts of the crowd;

"He asketh not world's eyes; Not to world's ears he cries; Saith,--'These Shut, if you please';

"He measureth world's pleasure, World's ease, as Saints might measure; For hire Just love entire

"He asks, not grudging pain; And knows his asking vain, And cries-- 'Love! Love!' and dies,

"In guerdon of long duty, Unowned by Love or Beauty; And goes-- Tell, tell, who knows!

"Aliens from Heaven's worth, Fine beasts who nose i' the earth, Do there Reward prepare.

"But are _his_ great desires Food but for nether fires?

Ah me, A mystery!

"Can it be his alone, To find, when all is known, That what He solely sought

"Is lost, and thereto lost All that its seeking cost?

That he Must finally,

"Through sacrificial tears, And anch.o.r.etic years, Tryst With the sensualist?"

So ask; and if they tell The secret terrible, Good friend, I pray thee send

Some high gold emba.s.sage To teach my unripe age.

Tell!

Lest my feet walk h.e.l.l.

A DEAD ASTRONOMER

(STEPHEN PERRY, S.J.)

Starry amorist, starward gone, Thou art--what thou didst gaze upon!

Pa.s.sed through thy golden garden's bars, Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars.

She, about whose mooned brows Seven stars make seven glows, Seven lights for seven woes; She, like thine own Galaxy, All l.u.s.tres in one purity:-- What said'st thou, Astronomer, When thou did'st discover _her_?

When thy hand its tube let fall, Thou found'st the fairest star of all!

A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN

Hearken my chant,--'tis As a Bacchante's, A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis!

Suffer my singing, Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging; Ere Winter throws His slaking snows In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows!

Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet, And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip, And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it But her cheek unvow its vestalship; Thy mists enclip Her steel-clear circuit illuminous, Until it crust Rubiginous With the glorious gules of a glowing rust.

Far other saw we, other indeed, The crescent moon, in the May-days dead, Fly up with its slender white wings spread Out of its nest in the sea's waved mead!

How are the veins of thee, Autumn, laden?

Umbered juices, And pulped oozes Pappy out of the cherry-bruises

Froth the veins of thee, wild, wild maiden!

With hair that musters In globed cl.u.s.ters, In tumbling cl.u.s.ters, like swarthy grapes, Round thy brow and thine ears o'ershaden; With the burning darkness of eyes like pansies, Like velvet pansies Wherethrough escapes The splendid might of thy conflagrate fancies; With robe gold-tawny not hiding the shapes Of the feet whereunto it falleth down, Thy naked feet unsandalled; With robe gold-tawny that does not veil Feet where the red Is meshed in the brown, Like a rubied sun in a Venice-sail.

The wa.s.sailous heart of the Year is thine!

His Bacchic fingers disentwine His coronal At thy festival; His revelling fingers disentwine Leaf, flower, and all, And let them fall Blossom and all in thy wavering wine.

The Summer looks out from her brazen tower, Through the flashing bars of July, Waiting thy ripened golden shower; Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet, The North-west flying viewlessly, With a sword to sheer, and untameable feet, And the gorgon-head of the Winter shown To stiffen the gazing earth as stone.

In crystal Heaven's magic sphere Poised in the palm of thy fervid hand, Thou seest the enchanted shows appear That stain Favonian firmament; Richer than ever the Occident Gave up to bygone Summer's wand.

Day's dying dragon lies drooping his crest, Panting red pants into the West.

Or a b.u.t.terfly sunset claps its wings With flitter alit on the swinging blossom, The gusty blossom, that tosses and swings, Of the sea with its blown and ruffled bosom; Its ruffled bosom wherethrough the wind sings Till the crisped petals are loosened and strown Overblown on the sand; Shed, curling as dead Rose-leaves curl, on the flecked strand.

Or higher, holier, saintlier when, as now, All Nature sacerdotal seems, and thou.

The calm hour strikes on yon golden gong, In tones of floating and mellow light, A spreading summons to even-song: See how there The cowled Night Kneels on the Eastern sanctuary-stair.

What is this feel of incense everywhere?

Clings it round folds of the blanch-amiced clouds, Upwafted by the solemn thurifer, The mighty Spirit unknown, That swingeth the slow earth before the embannered Throne?

Or is't the Season, under all these shrouds Of light, and sense, and silence, makes her known A presence everywhere, An inarticulate prayer, A hand on the soothed tresses of the air?

But there is one hour scant Of this t.i.tanian, primal liturgy,-- As there is but one hour for me and thee, Autumn, for thee and thine hierophant, Of this grave ending chant.

Round the earth still and stark Heaven's death-lights kindle, yellow spark by spark, Beneath the dreadful catafalque of the dark.

And I had ended there: But a great wind blew all the stars to flare, And cried, "I sweep a path before the moon!

Tarry ye now the coming of the moon, For she is coming soon"; Then died before the coming of the moon.

And she came forth upon the trepidant air, In vesture unimagined-fair, Woven as woof of flag-lilies; And, curdled as of flag-lilies, The vapour at the feet of her; And a haze about her tinged in fainter wise; As if she had trodden the stars in press, Till the gold wine spurted over her dress, Till the gold wine gushed out round her feet; Spouted over her stained wear, And bubbled in golden froth at her feet, And hung like a whirlpool's mist round her.

Still, mighty Season, do I see't, Thy sway is still majestical!

Thou hold'st of G.o.d, by t.i.tle sure, Thine indefeasible invest.i.ture, And that right round thy locks are native to; The heavens upon thy brow imperial, This huge terrene thy ball, And o'er thy shoulders thrown wide air's depending pall.

What if thine earth be blear and bleak of hue?

Still, still the skies are sweet!

Still, Season, still thou hast thy triumphs there!

How have I, unaware, Forgetful of my strain inaugural, Cleft the great rondure of thy reign complete, Yielding thee half, who hast indeed the all?

I will not think thy sovereignty begun But with the shepherd Sun That washes in the sea the stars' gold fleeces; Or that with Day it ceases, Who sets his burning lips to the salt brine, And purples it to wine; While I behold how ermined Artemis Ordained weed must wear, And toil thy business; Who witness am of her, Her too in Autumn turned a vintager; And, laden with its lamped cl.u.s.ters bright, The fiery-fruited vineyard of this night.

_From_ "THE MISTRESS OF VISION"