



Produced by Les Bowler





NEW POEMS,

By Francis Thompson.


          Dedication to Coventry Patmore.


          Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down,
          Under the banner of your spread renown!
          Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme
          Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time,
          Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame,
          Armed with your crested and prevailing Name.


 Note.--This dedication was written while the dear friend and great
 Poet to whom it was addressed yet lived.  It is left as he saw it--
 the last verses of mine that were ever to pass under his eyes.

                                                 F. T.



Contents.


     SIGHT AND INSIGHT.


     The mistress of vision.
     Contemplation.
     'By reason of Thy law.'
     The dread of height.
     Orient ode.
     New Year's chimes.
     From the night of forebeing.
     Any saint.
     Assumpta Maria.
     The after woman.
     Grace of the way.
     Retrospect.



     A NARROW VESSEL.


     A girl's sin--in her eyes.
     A girl's sin--in his eyes.
     Love declared.
     The way of a maid.
     Beginning of the end.
     Penelope.
     The end of it.
     Epilogue.



     MISCELLANEOUS ODES.


     Ode to the setting sun.
     A captain of song.
     Against Urania.
     An anthem of earth.



     MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.


     'Ex ore infantium.'
     A question.
     Field-flower.
     The cloud's swan-song.
     To the sinking sun.
     Grief's harmonics.
     Memorat memoria.
     July fugitive.
     To a snow-flake.
     Nocturn.
     A May burden.
     A dead astronomer.
     'Chose vue.'
     'Whereto art thou come.'
     Heaven and hell.
     To a child.
     Hermes.
     House of bondage.
     The heart.
     A sunset.
     Heard on the mountain.



     ULTIMA.


     Love's almsman plaineth his fare.
     A holocaust.
     Beneath a photograph.
     After her going.
     My lady the tyranness.
     Unto this last.
     Ultimum.
     Envoy.




SIGHT AND INSIGHT.




     'Wisdom is easily seen by them that love her, and is found
               by them that seek her.
     To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.'

                                            WISDOM, vi.




THE MISTRESS OF VISION.

               I

          Secret was the garden;
          Set i' the pathless awe
          Where no star its breath can draw.
          Life, that is its warden,
     Sits behind the fosse of death.  Mine eyes saw not,
            and I saw.

               II

          It was a mazeful wonder;
          Thrice three times it was enwalled
          With an emerald--
          Seal-ed so asunder.
     All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their
            music thralled.

               III

          The Lady of fair weeping,
          At the garden's core,
          Sang a song of sweet and sore
          And the after-sleeping;
     In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore.

               IV

          With sweet-panged singing,
          Sang she through a dream-night's day;
          That the bowers might stay,
          Birds bate their winging,
     Nor the wall of emerald float in wreath-ed haze away.

               V

          The lily kept its gleaming,
          In her tears (divine conservers!)
          Wash-ed with sad art;
          And the flowers of dreaming
          Pal-ed not their fervours,
          For her blood flowed through their nervures;
     And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in
            her heart.

               VI

          There was never moon,
          Save the white sufficing woman:
          Light most heavenly-human--
          Like the unseen form of sound,
          Sensed invisibly in tune,--
          With a sun-deriv-ed stole
          Did inaureole
          All her lovely body round;
     Lovelily her lucid body with that light was inter-
            strewn.

               VII

          The sun which lit that garden wholly,
          Low and vibrant visible,
          Tempered glory woke;
          And it seem-ed solely
          Like a silver thurible
          Solemnly swung, slowly,
     Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense-
            smoke.

               VIII

          But woe's me, and woe's me,
          For the secrets of her eyes!
          In my visions fearfully
          They are ever shown to be
          As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies
          Pallid-dark beneath the skies
          Of a night that is
          But one blear necropolis.
     And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her
            own sighs.

               IX

          Many changes rise on
          Their phantasmal mysteries.
          They grow to an horizon
          Where earth and heaven meet;
          And like a wing that dies on
          The vague twilight-verges,
          Many a sinking dream doth fleet
          Lessening down their secrecies.
          And, as dusk with day converges,
          Their orbs are troublously
     Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear
            of things to be.

               X

          There is a peak on Himalay,
          And on the peak undeluged snow,
          And on the snow not eagles stray;
          There if your strong feet could go,--
          Looking over tow'rd Cathay
          From the never-deluged snow--
          Farthest ken might not survey
     Where the peoples underground dwell whom
            antique fables know.

               XI

          East, ah, east of Himalay,
          Dwell the nations underground;
          Hiding from the shock of Day,
          For the sun's uprising-sound:
          Dare not issue from the ground
          At the tumults of the Day,
          So fearfully the sun doth sound
          Clanging up beyond Cathay;
     For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up
            beyond Cathay.

               XII

          Lend me, O lend me
          The terrors of that sound,
          That its music may attend me.
          Wrap my chant in thunders round;
     While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady's
            singing found.

               XIII

          On Ararat there grew a vine,
          When Asia from her bathing rose;
          Our first sailor made a twine
          Thereof for his prefiguring brows.
          Canst divine
     Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster
            grows?

               XIV

          On Golgotha there grew a thorn
          Round the long-prefigured Brows.
          Mourn, O mourn!
     For the vine have we the spine?  Is this all the
            Heaven allows?

               XV

          On Calvary was shook a spear;
          Press the point into thy heart--
          Joy and fear!
     All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils
            start.

               XVI

          O, dismay!
          I, a wingless mortal, sporting
          With the tresses of the sun?
          I, that dare my hand to lay
          On the thunder in its snorting?
          Ere begun,
     Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old
            Icarian way.

               XVII

          From the fall precipitant
          These dim snatches of her chant
          Only have remain-ed mine;--
          That from spear and thorn alone
          May be grown
     For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine.

               XVIII

          Her song said that no springing
          Paradise but evermore
          Hangeth on a singing
          That has chords of weeping,
          And that sings the after-sleeping
          To souls which wake too sore.
     'But woe the singer, woe!' she said; 'beyond the
            dead his singing-lore,
          All its art of sweet and sore,
          He learns, in Elenore!'

               XIX

          Where is the land of Luthany,
          Where is the tract of Elenore?
          I am bound therefor.

               XX

          'Pierce thy heart to find the key;
          With thee take
          Only what none else would keep;
          Learn to dream when thou dost wake,
          Learn to wake when thou dost sleep.
          Learn to water joy with tears,
          Learn from fears to vanquish fears;
          To hope, for thou dar'st not despair,
          Exult, for that thou dar'st not grieve;
          Plough thou the rock until it bear;
          Know, for thou else couldst not believe;
          Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive;
          Die, for none other way canst live.
          When earth and heaven lay down their veil,
          And that apocalypse turns thee pale;
          When thy seeing blindeth thee
          To what thy fellow-mortals see;
          When their sight to thee is sightless;
          Their living, death; their light, most light-
            less;
          Search no more--
     Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.'

               XXI

          Where is the land of Luthany,
          And where the region Elenore?
          I do faint therefor.
          'When to the new eyes of thee
          All things by immortal power,
          Near or far,
          Hiddenly
          To each other link-ed are,
          That thou canst not stir a flower
          Without troubling of a star;
          When thy song is shield and mirror
          To the fair snake-curl-ed Pain,
          Where thou dar'st affront her terror
          That on her thou may'st attain
          Persean conquest; seek no more,
          O seek no more!
     Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.'

               XXII

          So sang she, so wept she,
          Through a dream-night's day;
          And with her magic singing kept she--
          Mystical in music--
          That garden of enchanting
          In visionary May;
          Swayless for my spirit's haunting,
     Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mor-
            tal mornings grey.

               XXIII

          And as a necromancer
          Raises from the rose-ash
          The ghost of the rose;
          My heart so made answer
          To her voice's silver plash,--
          Stirred in reddening flash,
     And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom
            blows.

               XXIV

          Her tears made dulcet fretting,
          Her voice had no word,
          More than thunder or the bird.
          Yet, unforgetting,
     The ravished soul her meanings knew.  Mine ears
            heard not, and I heard.

               XXV

          When she shall unwind
          All those wiles she wound about me,
          Tears shall break from out me,
          That I cannot find
     Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt
            me!




CONTEMPLATION.


     This morning saw I, fled the shower,
     The earth reclining in a lull of power:
     The heavens, pursuing not their path,
     Lay stretched out naked after bath,
     Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still,
     Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill.

     The hill, which sometimes visibly is
     Wrought with unresting energies,
     Looked idly; from the musing wood,
     And every rock, a life renewed
     Exhaled like an unconscious thought
     When poets, dreaming unperplexed,
     Dream that they dream of nought.
     Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed,
     Or to such serene balance brought
     That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms,
     And sleep in one another's arms.
     The sun with resting pulses seems to brood,
     And slacken its command upon my unurged blood.

     The river has not any care
     Its passionless water to the sea to bear;
     The leaves have brown content;
     The wall to me has freshness like a scent,
     And takes half animate the air,
     Making one life with its green moss and stain;
     And life with all things seems too perfect blent
     For anything of life to be aware.
     The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain,
     Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain.

     No hill can idler be than I;
     No stone its inter-particled vibration
     Investeth with a stiller lie;
     No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays
     The eyes that on it gaze.
     We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat
     Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit.

     In poets floating like a water-flower
     Upon the bosom of the glassy hour,
     In skies that no man sees to move,
     Lurk untumultuous vortices of power,
     For joy too native, and for agitation
     Too instant, too entire for sense thereof,
     Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low,
     Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love
     On the heart's floors with pain-ed pace that go.
     From stones and poets you may know,
     Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so.

     For he, that conduit running wine of song,
     Then to himself does most belong,
     When he his mortal house unbars
     To the importunate and thronging feet
     That round our corporal walls unheeded beat;
     Till, all containing, he exalt
     His stature to the stars, or stars
     Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault:
     When, like a city under ocean,
     To human things he grows a desolation,
     And is made a habitation
     For the fluctuous universe
     To lave with unimpeded motion.
     He scarcely frets the atmosphere
     With breathing, and his body shares
     The immobility of rocks;
     His heart's a drop-well of tranquillity;
     His mind more still is than the limbs of fear,
     And yet its unperturbed velocity
     The spirit of the simoom mocks.
     He round the solemn centre of his soul
     Wheels like a dervish, while his being is
     Streamed with the set of the world's harmonies,
     In the long draft of whatsoever sphere
     He lists the sweet and clear
     Clangour of his high orbit on to roll,
     So gracious is his heavenly grace;
     And the bold stars does hear,
     Every one in his airy soar,
     For evermore
     Shout to each other from the peaks of space,
     As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer.




'BY REASON OF THY LAW'.

     Here I make oath--
     Although the heart that knows its bitterness
     Hear loath,
     And credit less--
     That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses fierce
     Which hiss against his tears,
     Dread, loss, nor love frustrate,
     Nor all iniquity of the froward years
     Shall his inur-ed wing make idly bate,
     Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight
     To lose observance quite;
     Seal from half-sad and all-elate
     Sagacious eyes
     Ultimate Paradise;
     Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate.

     Pacing the burning shares of many dooms,
     I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars
     To judgment cite,
     If I have borne aright
     The proving of their pure-willed ordeal.
     From food of all delight
     The heavenly Falconer my heart debars,
     And tames with fearful glooms
     The haggard to His call;
     Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal,
     And she sits meek now, and expects the light.

     In this Avernian sky,
     This sultry and incumbent canopy
     Of dull and doomed regret;
     Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet,
     At intervals,
     Trembles, and falls,
     Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet--
     Ah, far too sweet
     But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet;
     Leaving this pallid trace,
     This loitering and most fitful light a space,
     Still some sad space,
     For Grief to see her own poor face:-

     Here where I keep my stand
     With all o'er-anguished feet,
     And no live comfort near on any hand;
     Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term,
     When this morass of tears, then drained and firm,
     Shall be a land--
     Unshaken I affirm--
     Where seven-quired psalterings meet;
     And all the gods move with calm hand in hand,
     And eyes that know not trouble and the worm.




THE DREAD OF HEIGHT.

          If ye were blind, ye should have no sin:  but now ye say:  We
               see:  your sin remaineth.            JOHN ix. 41.


     Not the Circean wine
     Most perilous is for pain:
     Grapes of the heavens' star-loaden vine,
     Whereto the lofty-placed
     Thoughts of fair souls attain,
     Tempt with a more retributive delight,
     And do disrelish all life's sober taste.
     'Tis to have drunk too well
     The drink that is divine,
     Maketh the kind earth waste,
     And breath intolerable.

     Ah me!
     How shall my mouth content it with mortality?
     Lo, secret music, sweetest music,
     From distances of distance drifting its lone flight,
     Down the arcane where Night would perish in night,
     Like a god's loosened locks slips undulously:
     Music that is too grievous of the height
     For safe and low delight,
     Too infinite,
     For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea!

     So let it be,
     Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small:
     So let it be,
     O music, music, though you wake in me
     No joy, no joy at all;
     Although you only wake
     Uttermost sadness, measure of delight,
     Which else I could not credit to the height,
     Did I not know,
     That ill is statured to its opposite;
     Did I not know,
     And even of sadness so,
     Of utter sadness make,
     Of extreme sad a rod to mete
     The incredible excess of unsensed sweet,
     And mystic wall of strange felicity.
     So let it be,
     Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small,
     And bitter meat
     The food of gods for men to eat;
     Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread
     Less ways of heat,
     Than whom