New Poems [0]
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,