New Poems by Francis Thompson Part 2

Yea, who me shall secure But I of height grown desperate Surcease my wing, and my lost fate Be dashed from pure To broken writhings in the shameful slime: Lower than man, for I dreamed higher, Thrust down, by how much I aspire, And d.a.m.ned with drink of immortality?

For such things be, Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky h.e.l.l Is but made possible By forta'en breath of Heaven's austerest clime.

These tidings from the vast to bring Needeth not doctor nor divine, Too well, too well My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; That dread theology alone Is mine, Most native and my own; And ever with victorious toil When I have made Of the deific peaks dim escalade, My soul with anguish and recoil Doth like a city in an earthquake rock, As at my feet the abyss is cloven then, With deeper menace than for other men, Of my potential cousins.h.i.+p with mire; That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, My fearful powers retire, No longer strong, Reversing the shook banners of their song.

Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, Or for a will accipitrine to pursue!

The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew.

ORIENT ODE.

Lo, in the sanctuaried East, Day, a dedicated priest In all his robes pontifical exprest, Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, Yon orb-ed sacrament confest Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn; And when the grave procession's ceased, The earth with due ill.u.s.trious rite Blessed,--ere the frail fingers featly Of twilight, violet-ca.s.socked acolyte, His sacerdotal stoles unvest-- Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, The sun in august exposition meetly Within the flaming monstrance of the West.

O salutaris hostia, Quae coeli pandis ostium!

Through breach-ed darkness' rampart, a Divine a.s.saulter, art thou come!

G.o.d whom none may live and mark!

Borne within thy radiant ark, While the Earth, a joyous David, Dances before thee from the dawn to dark.

The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; Behold her fair and greater daughter {1} Offers to thee her fruitful water, Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive!

Thy gazes do on simple her Desirable allures confer; What happy comelinesses rise Beneath thy beautifying eyes!

Who was, indeed, at first a maid Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, And secret views herself afraid, Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, Make the beauties they discover!

What dainty guiles and treacheries caught From artful prompting of love's artless thought Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, When thy plumes s.h.i.+ver against the conscious gates of morn!

And so the love which is thy dower, Earth, though her first-frightened breast Against the exigent boon protest, (For she, poor maid, of her own power Has nothing in herself, not even love, But an unwitting void thereof), Gives back to thee in sanct.i.ties of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest, That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy, Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing captive from the wis.h.i.+ng West.

Nor the majestic heavens less Thy formidable sweets approve, Thy dreads and thy delights confess, That do draw, and that remove.

Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun, Upon thy satellites' vex-ed heels; Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; Each in his frighted orbit wheels, Each flies through ina.s.suageable chase, Since the hunt o' the world begun, The puissant approaches of thy face, And yet thy radiant leash he feels.

Since the hunt o' the world begun, Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, The mighty course is ever run; p.r.i.c.ked with terror, leashed with longing, Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun.

Since the hunt o' the world began, With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, Thou join'st the woman to the man; And Life with Death In obscure nuptials moveth, Commingling alien, yet affin-ed breath.

Thou art the incarnated Light Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond Death and resurgence of our day and night; From him is thy vicegerent wand With double potence of the black and white.

Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire!

Samson's riddling meanings merging In thy twofold sceptre meet: Out of thy minatory might, Burning Lion, burning Lion, Comes the honey of all sweet, And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat.

And though, by thine alternate breath, Every kiss thou dost inspire Echoeth Back from the windy vaultages of death; Yet thy clear warranty above Augurs the wings of death too must Occult reverberations stir of love Crescent and life incredible; That even the kisses of the just Go down not unresurgent to the dust.

Yea, not a kiss which I have given, But shall tri-umph upon my lips in heaven, Or cling a shameful fungus there in h.e.l.l.

Know'st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well Thou know'st the ancient miracle, The children know'st of Zeus and May; And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, To incarnate, the antique way, The truth which is their heritage from their Sire In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother.

My fingers thou hast taught to con Thy flame-chorded psalterion, Till I can translate into mortal wire-- Till I can translate pa.s.sing well-- The heavenly harping harmony, Melodious, sealed, inaudible, Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world's desire.

Thou whisperest in the Moon's white ear, And she does whisper into mine,-- By night together, I and she-- With her virgin voice divine, The things I cannot half so sweetly tell As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear.

By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, Yet she for Earth, and both in thee.

Light out of Light!

Resplendent and prevailing Word Of the Unheard!

Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; And in an age of faith grown frore If I too shall adore, Be it accounted unto me A bright sciential idolatry!

G.o.d has given thee visible thunders To utter thine apocalypse of wonders; And what want I of prophecy, That at the sounding from thy station Of thy flagrant trumpet, see The seals that melt, the open revelation?

Or who a G.o.d-persuading angel needs, That only heeds The rhetoric of thy burning deeds?

Which but to sing, if it may be, In wors.h.i.+p-warranting moiety, So I would win In such a song as hath within A smouldering core of mystery, Brimm-ed with nimbler meanings up Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;-- Lo, my suit pleads That thou, Isaian coal of fire, Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's desire, And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds.

To thine own shape Thou round'st the chrysolite of the grape, Bind'st thy gold lightnings in his veins; Thou storest the white garners of the rains.

Destroyer and preserver, thou Who medicinest sickness, and to health Art the unthank-ed marrow of its wealth; To those apparent sovereignties we bow And bright appurtenances of thy brow!

Thy proper blood dost thou not give, That Earth, the gusty Maenad, drink and dance?

Art thou not life of them that live?

Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell Within our body as a tabernacle!

Thou bittest with thine ordinance The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete The unsustainable treading of his feet.

Thou to thy spousal universe Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; Who in most dusk and vidual curch, Her Lord being hence, Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hea.r.s.e.

The heavens renew their innocence And morning state But by thy sacrament communicate: Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, Our darkened search, And sinful vigil desolate.

Yea, biune in imploring dumb, Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await, The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!

Lo, of thy Magians I the least Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced Regions and odorous of Song's traded East.

Thou, for the life of all that live The victim daily born and sacrificed; To whom the pinion of this longing verse Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, To thee, O Sun--or is't perchance, to Christ?

Ay, if men say that on all high heaven's face The saintly signs I trace Which round my stol-ed altars hold their solemn place, Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,-- When I with wing-ed feet had run Through all the windy earth about, Quested its secret of the sun, And heard what thing the stars together shout,-- I should not heed thereout Consenting counsel won:- 'By this, O Singer, know we if thou see.

When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, Believe them: yea, and this--then art thou seer, When all thy crying clear Is but: Lo here! lo there!--ah me, lo everywhere!'

{1} The earth.

NEW YEAR'S CHIMES.

What is the song the stars sing?

(And a million songs are as song of one.) This is the song the stars sing: Sweeter song's none.

One to set, and many to sing, (And a million songs are as song of one), One to stand, and many to cling, The many things, and the one Thing, The one that runs not, the many that run.

The ever new weaveth the ever old (And a million songs are as song of one).

Ever telling the never told; The silver saith, and the said is gold, And done ever the never done.

The chase that's chased is the Lord o' the chase (And a million songs are as song of one), And the pursued cries on the race; And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run.

Hidden stars by the shown stars' sheen; (And a million suns are but as one); Colours unseen by the colours seen, And sounds unheard heard sounds between, And a night is in the light of the sun.

An ambuscade of light in night, (And a million secrets are but as one), And a night is dark in the sun's light, And a world in the world man looks upon.

Hidden stars by the shown stars' wings, (And a million cycles are but as one), And a world with unapparent strings Knits the simulant world of things; Behold, and vision thereof is none.

The world above in the world below (And a million worlds are but as one), And the One in all; as the sun's strength so Strives in all strength, glows in all glow Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon.

Braced in its own fourfold embrace (And a million strengths are as strength of one), And round it all G.o.d's arms of grace, The world, so as the Vision says, Doth with great lightning-tramples run.

And thunder bruiteth into thunder, (And a million sounds are as sound of one), From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder, And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder, And sun leans forth to his brother-sun.

And the more ample years unfold (With a million songs as song of one), A little new of the ever old, A little told of the never told, Added act of the never done.

Loud the descant, and low the theme, (A million songs are as song of one); And the dream of the world is dream in dream, But the one Is is, or nought could seem; And the song runs round to the song begun.

This is the song the stars sing, (Ton-ed all in time); Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring A mult.i.tudinous-single thing, Rung all in rhyme.