Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 10

Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and hark A song thou hast not heard in Northern day; For Rome too daring, and for Greece too dark, Sweet with wild wings that pa.s.s, that pa.s.s away!

ODE

Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth, The springing music, and its wasting breath-- The fairest things in life are Death and Birth, And of these two the fairer thing is Death.

Mystical twins of Time inseparable, The younger hath the holier array, And hath the awfuller sway: It is the falling star that trails the light, It is the breaking wave that hath the might, The pa.s.sing shower that rainbows maniple.

Is it not so, O thou down-stricken Day, That draw'st thy splendours round thee in thy fall?

High was thine Eastern pomp inaugural; But thou dost set in statelier pageantry Lauded with tumults of a firmament: Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky, Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident, Thou dost thy dying so triumphally: I _see_ the crimson blaring of thy shawms!

Why do those lucent palms Strew thy feet's failing thicklier than their might, Who dost but hood thy glorious eyes with night, And vex the heels of all the yesterdays?

Lo! this loud, lackeying praise Will stay behind to greet the usurping moon, When they have cloud-barred over thee the West.

Oh, shake the bright dust from thy parting shoon!

The earth not paeans thee, nor serves thy hest; Be G.o.dded not by Heaven! avert thy face, And leave to blank disgrace The oblivious world! unsceptre thee of state and place!

Yet ere Olympus thou wast, and a G.o.d!

Though we deny thy nod, We cannot spoil thee of thy divinity.

What know we elder than thee?

When thou didst, bursting from the great void's husk, Leap like a lion on the throat o' the dusk; When the angels rose-chapleted Sang to each other, The vaulted blaze overhead Of their vast pinions spread, Hailing thee brother; How chaos rolled back from the wonder, And the First Morn knelt down to thy visage of thunder!

Thou didst draw to thy side Thy young Auroral bride, And lift her veil of night and mystery; Tellus with baby hands Shook off her swaddling-bands, And from the unswathed vapours laughed to thee.

Thou twi-form deity, nurse at once and sire!

Thou genitor that all things nourishest!

The earth was suckled at thy s.h.i.+ning breast, And in her veins is quick thy milky fire.

Who scarfed her with the morning? and who set Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanet?

Who queened her front with the enrondured moon?

Who dug night's jewels from their vaulty mine To dower her, past an eastern wizard's dreams, When, hovering on him through his haschish-swoon, All the rained gems of the old Tartarian line s.h.i.+ver in l.u.s.trous throbbings of tinged flame?-- Whereof a moiety in the Paolis' seams Statelily builded their Venetian name.

Thou hast enwoofed her An empress of the air, And all her births are propertied by thee: Her teeming centuries Drew being from thine eyes: Thou fatt'st the marrow of all quality.

Who lit the furnace of the mammoth's heart?

Who s.h.a.gged him like Pilatus' ribbed flanks?

Who raised the columned ranks Of that old pre-diluvian forestry, Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea, When the ancient heavens did in rains depart, While the high-danced whirls Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drenched curls?

Thou rear'dst the enormous brood; Who hast with life imbued The lion maned in tawny majesty, The tiger velvet-barred, The stealthy-stepping pard, And the lithe panther's flexuous symmetry.

How came the entombed tree a light-bearer, Though sunk in lightless lair?

Friend of the forgers of earth, Mate of the earthquake and thunders volcanic, Clasped in the arms of the forces t.i.tanic Which rock like a cradle the girth Of the ether-hung world; Swart son of the swarthy mine, When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds How is his countenance half-divine, Like thee in thy sanguine weeds?

Thou gavest him his light, Though sepulchred in night Beneath the dead bones of a perished world; Over his prostrate form Though cold, and heat, and storm, The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled.

Who made the splendid rose Saturate with purple glows; Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press Whence the wind vintages Gushes of warmed fragrance richer far Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus' vats?

Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar, With dusky cheeks burnt red She sways her heavy head, Drunk with the must of her own odorousness; While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats Maze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush.

Who girt dissolved lightnings in the grape?

Summered the opal with an Irised flush?

Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape, And huest the daffodilly, Yet who hast snowed the lily; And her frail sister, whom the waters name, Dost vestal-vesture 'mid the blaze of June, Cold as the new-sprung girlhood of the moon Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame?

Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam O'er all delight and dream; Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance: And, like a jocund maid In garland-flowers arrayed, Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance.

And now, O shaken from thine antique throne, And sunken from thy coerule empery, Now that the red glare of thy fall is blown In smoke and flame about the windy sky, Where are the wailing voices that should meet From hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia's grape?

Where is the threne o' the sea?

And why not dirges thee The wind, that sings to himself as he makes stride Lonely and terrible on the Andean height?

Where is the Naiad 'mid her sworded sedge?

The Nymph wan-glimmering by her wan fount's verge?

The Dryad at timid gaze by the wood-side?

The Oread jutting light On one up-strained sole from the rock-ledge?

The Nereid tip-toe on the scud o' the surge, With whistling tresses dank athwart her face, And all her figure poised in lithe Circean grace?

Why withers their lament?

Their tresses tear-besprent, Have they sighed hence with trailing garment-hem?

O sweet, O sad, O fair, I catch your flying hair, Draw your eyes down to me, and dream on them!

A s.p.a.ce, and they fleet from me. Must ye fade-- O old, essential candours, ye who made The earth a living and a radiant thing-- And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms?

Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charms Draws from dull death his lost Eurydice, Lo ever thus, even at consummating, Even in the swooning minute that claims her his, Even as he trembles to the impa.s.sioned kiss Of reincarnate Beauty, his control Clasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul!

Whatso looks lovelily Is but the rainbow on life's weeping rain.

Why have we longings of immortal pain, And all we long for mortal? Woe is me, And all our chants but chaplet some decay, As mine this vanis.h.i.+ng--nay, vanished Day.

The low sky-line dusks to a leaden hue, No rift disturbs the heavy shade and chill, Save one, where the charred firmament lets through The scorching dazzle of Heaven; 'gainst which the hill, Out-flattened sombrely, Stands black as life against eternity.

Against eternity?

A rifting light in me Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind: O blessed Sun, thy state Uprisen or derogate Dafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find.

If with exultant tread Thou foot the Eastern sea, Or like a golden be Sting the West to angry red, Thou dost image, thou dost follow That King-Maker of Creation, Who, ere h.e.l.las hailed Apollo, Gave thee, angel-G.o.d, thy station; Thou art of Him a type memorial.

Like Him thou hang'st in dreadful pomp of blood Upon thy Western rood; And His stained brow did veil like thine to-night, Yet lift once more Its light, And, risen, again departed from our ball, But when It set on earth arose in Heaven.

Thus hath He unto death His beauty given: And so of all which form inheriteth The fall doth pa.s.s the rise in worth; For birth hath in itself the germ of death, But death hath in itself the germ of birth.

It is the falling acorn buds the tree, The falling rain that bears the greenery, The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.

For there is nothing lives but something dies, And there is nothing dies but something lives.

Till skies be fugitives, Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries, Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth; For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth.

AFTER-STRAIN

Now with wan ray that other sun of Song Sets in the bleakening waters of my soul: One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long 'Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole.

Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory.

Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields; Brightness may emanate in Heaven from thee, Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields.

Of reaped joys thou art the heavy sheaf Which must be lifted, though the reaper groan; Yea, we may cry till Heaven's great ear be deaf, But we must bear thee, and must bear alone.

Vain were a Simon; of the Antipodes Our night not borrows the superfluous day.

Yet woe to him that from his burden flees, Crushed in the fall of what he cast away.

Therefore, O tender Lady, Queen Mary, Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drape The Cross's rigorous austerity, Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must gape.

"Lo, though suns rise and set, but crosses stay, I leave thee ever," saith she, "light of cheer."

'Tis so: yon sky still thinks upon the Day, And showers aerial blossoms on his bier.

Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edged sharp; And once more welling through the air, ah me!

How the sweet viol plains him to the harp, Whose panged sobbings throng tumultuously.

Oh, this Medusa-pleasure with her stings!

This essence of all suffering, which is joy!

I am not thankless for the spell it brings, Though tears must be told down for the charmed toy.

No; while soul, sky, and music bleed together, Let me give thanks even for those griefs in me, The restless windward stirrings of whose feather Prove them the brood of immortality.

My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon, Who shall not slake her immitigable scars Until she hear "My sister!" from the moon, And take the kindred kisses of the stars.

_EPILOGUE TO_ "A JUDGEMENT IN HEAVEN"