New Poems by Francis Thompson Part 12

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.

GRIEF'S HARMONICS.

At evening, when the lank and rigid trees, To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying, On heaven's blank leaf seem pressed and flatten-ed; Or rather, to my sombre thoughts replying, Of plumes funereal the thin effigies; That hour when all old dead things seem most dead, And their death instant most and most undying, That the flesh aches at them; there stirred in me The babe of an unborn calamity, Ere its due time to be deliver-ed.

Dead sorrow and sorrow unborn so blent their pain, That which more present was were hardly said, But both more NOW than any Now can be.

My soul like sackcloth did her body rend, And thus with Heaven contend:- 'Let pa.s.s the chalice of this coming dread, Or that fore-drained O bid me not re-drain!'

So have I asked, who know my asking vain, Woe against woe in antiphon set over, That grief's soul transmigrates, and lives again, And in new pang old pang's incarnated.

MEMORAT MEMORIA.

Come you living or dead to me, out of the silt of the Past, With the sweet of the piteous first, and the shame of the shameful last?

Come with your dear and dreadful face through the pa.s.ses of Sleep, The terrible mask, and the face it masked--the face you did not keep?

You are neither two nor one--I would you were one or two, For your awful self is embalmed in the fragrant self I knew: And Above may ken, and Beneath may ken, what I mean by these words of whirl, But by my sleep that sleepeth not,--O Shadow of a Girl!-- Nought here but I and my dreams shall know the secret of this thing:- For ever the songs I sing are sad with the songs I never sing, Sad are sung songs, but how more sad the songs we dare not sing!

Ah, the ill that we do in tenderness, and the hateful horror of love!

It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit than it ever will draw above.

I d.a.m.ned you, girl, with my pity, who had better by far been thwart, And drave you hard on the track to h.e.l.l, because I was gentle of heart.

I shall have no comfort now in scent, no ease in dew, for this; I shall be afraid of daffodils, and rose-buds are amiss; You have made a thing of innocence as shameful as a sin, I shall never feel a girl's soft arms without horror of the skin.

My child! what was it that I sowed, that I so ill should reap?

You have done this to me. And I, what I to you?--It lies with Sleep.

JULY FUGITIVE.

Can you tell me where has hid her Pretty Maid July?

I would swear one day ago She pa.s.sed by, I would swear that I do know The blue bliss of her eye: 'Tarry, maid, maid,' I bid her; But she hastened by.

Do you know where she has hid her, Maid July?

Yet in truth it needs must be The flight of her is old; Yet in truth it needs must be, For her nest, the earth, is cold.

No more in the pool-ed Even Wade her rosy feet, Dawn-flakes no more plash from them To poppies 'mid the wheat.

She has muddied the day's oozes With her petulant feet; Scared the clouds that floated, As sea-birds they were, Slow on the coerule Lulls of the air, Lulled on the luminous Levels of air: She has chidden in a pet All her stars from her; Now they wander loose and sigh Through the turbid blue, Now they wander, weep, and cry-- Yea, and I too-- 'Where are you, sweet July, Where are you?'

Who hath beheld her footprints, Or the pathway she goes?

Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, Which of you knows?

Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic Night of the rose?

Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow On the lily's snows?

Gales, that are all-visitant, Find the runaway; And for him who findeth her (I do charge you say) I will throw largesse of broom Of this summer's mintage, I will broach a honey-bag Of the bee's best vintage.

Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, None of them knows!

How then shall we lure her back From the way she goes?

For it were a shameful thing, Saw we not this comer Ere Autumn camp upon the fields Red with rout of Summer.

When the bird quits the cage, We set the cage outside, With seed and with water, And the door wide, Haply we may win it so Back to abide.

Hang her cage of earth out O'er Heaven's sunward wall, Its four gates open, winds in watch By rein-ed cars at all; Relume in hanging hedgerows The rain-quenched blossom, And roses sob their tears out On the gale's warm heaving bosom; Shake the lilies till their scent Over-drip their rims; That our runaway may see We do know her whims: Sleek the tumbled waters out For her travelled limbs; Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, There will--O not doubt her!-- The lovely sleepy lady lie, With all her stars about her!

TO A SNOW-FLAKE.

What heart could have thought you?-- Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fas.h.i.+oned 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.'

NOCTURN.

I walk, I only, Not I only wake; Nothing is, this sweet night, But doth couch and wake For its love's sake; Everything, this sweet night, Couches with its mate.

For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun Is the naked moon Tremulous and elate?

The heaven hath the earth Its own and all apart; The hush-ed pool holdeth A star to its heart.

You may think the rose sleepeth, But though she folded is, The wind doubts her sleeping; Not all the rose sleeps, But smiles in her sweet heart For crafty bliss.

The wind lieth with the rose, And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose: The wind hath the rose, And the rose her kiss.

Ah, mouth of me!

Is it then that this Seemeth much to thee?-- I wander only.