New Poems

Part 1

This etext was prepared by Les Bowler.

NEW POEMS

BY FRANCIS THOMPSON.

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BURNS AND OATES 26 ORCHARD STREET, LONDON, W. 1907

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Third English Edition

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CONTENTS

PAGE Dedication vii SIGHT AND INSIGHT The Mistress of Vision 3 Contemplation 14 ‘By Reason of Thy Law’ 18 The Dread of Height 21 Orient Ode 26 New Year’s Chimes 36 From the Night of Forebeing 40 Any Saint 58 Assumpta Maria 67 The After Woman 74 Grace of the Way 77 Retrospect 80 A NARROW VESSEL A Girl’s Sin—in her Eyes 85 A Girl’s Sin—in his Eyes 91 Love Declared 94 The Way of a Maid 96 Beginning of the End 98 Penelope 100 The End of it 102 Epilogue 103 MISCELLANEOUS ODES Ode to the Setting Sun 107 A Captain of Song 123 Against Urania 126 An Anthem of Earth 129 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ‘Ex Ore Infantium’ 151 A Question 154 Field-flower 157 The Cloud’s Swan-Song 159 To the Sinking Sun 166 Grief’s Harmonics 169 Memorat Memoria 171 July Fugitive 173 To a Snow-flake 177 Nocturn 179 A May Burden 181 A Dead Astronomer 183 ‘Chose Vue’ 184 ‘Whereto art thou come’ 185 Heaven and Hell 186 To a Child 187 Hermes 188 House of Bondage 189 The Heart 191 A Sunset 193 Heard on the Mountain 197 ULTIMA Love’s Almsman Plaineth his 207 Fare A Holocaust 209 Beneath a Photograph 211 After her Going 212 My Lady the Tyranness 214 Unto this Last 218 Ultimum 221 Envoy 224

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.

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.

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.

It was a mazeful wonder; Thrice three times it was enwalled With an emerald— Sealèd 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.

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 wreathèd haze away.

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

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-derivèd stole Did inaureole All her lovely body round; Lovelily her lucid body with that light was interstrewn.

VII

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

Part 2

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 fringèd 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.

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.

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.

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?

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 remainèd 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.

‘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 lightless; 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 linkèd are, That thou canst not stir a flower Without troubling of a star; When thy song is shield and mirror To the fair snake-curlèd 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 mortal 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

Part 3

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.

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