Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 12

Break, elemental children, break ye loose From the strict frosty rule Of grey-beard Winter's school.

Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use In coerule pampas of the heaven to run, Foaled of the white sea-horses, Washed in the lambent waters of the sun.

Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn Put forth a conscious horn!

Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one; And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad-- No, seem not sad, That my strange heart and I should be so little glad.

Suffer me at your leafy feast To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, And watch your mirth, Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth; Yet with a sympathy, Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory-- The little sweetness making grief complete; Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, When I, I too, Was once, O wild companions, as are you, Ran with such wilful feet.

Hark to the _Jubilate_ of the bird For them that found the dying way to life!

And they have heard, And quicken to the great precursive word; Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; The graves are riven, And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven!

Before his way Went forth the trumpet of the March; Before his way, before his way Dances the pennon of the May!

O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, Behold how all things are made true!

Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, Exceeding glad and strong.

Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad!

No more shall you sit sole and vidual, Searching, in servile pall, Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad!

Your children gathered back to your embrace See with a mother's face.

Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; In every deed, Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, Reintegrated are the heavens and earth!

From sky to sod, The world's unfolded blossom smells of G.o.d.

My little-worlded self! the shadows pa.s.s In this thy sister-world, as in a gla.s.s, Of all processions that revolve in thee: Not only of cyclic Man Thou here discern'st the plan, Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me.

Not solely of Mortality's great years The reflex just appears, But thine own bosom's year,--still circling round In ample and in ampler gyre Toward the far completion, wherewith crowned, Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire.

How many trampled and deciduous joys Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, Before the distance shall fulfil Cyclic unrest with solemn equipoise!

Happiness is the shadow of things past, Which fools still take for that which is to be!

And not all foolishly: For all the past, read true, is prophecy, And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring.

Then leaf, and flower, and fall-less fruit Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough; And silence shall be Music mute For her surcharged heart. Hush thou!

These things are far too sure that thou should'st dream Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem.

Nature, enough! within thy gla.s.s Too many and too stern the shadows pa.s.s.

In this delighted season, flaming For thy resurrection-feast, Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, Than stony winter rolled From the unsealed mouth of the holy East; The snowdrop's saintly stoles less heed Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed.

'Tis the weak flesh reclaiming Against the ordinance Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans.

Earth waits, and patient heaven, Self-bonded G.o.d doth wait Thrice-promulgated bans Of his fair nuptial-date.

And power is man's, With that great word of "wait,"

To still the sea of tears, And shake the iron heart of Fate.

In that one word is strong An else, alas, much-mortal song; With sight to pa.s.s the frontier of all spheres, And voice which does my sight such wrong.

Not without fort.i.tude I wait The dark majestical ensuit Of destiny, nor peevish rate Calm-knowledged Fate.

I do hear From the revolving year A voice which cries: "All dies; Lo, how all dies! O seer, And all things too arise: All dies, and all is born; But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn."

Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast Of Fortune's game, and the iniquitous hour, Whose falcon soul sits fast, And not intends her high sagacious tour Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past To slow much sweet from little instant sour, And in the first does always see the last.

A COUNSEL OF MODERATION

On him the unpet.i.tioned heavens descend, Who heaven on earth proposes not for end; The perilous and celestial excess Taking with peace, lacking with thankfulness.

Bliss in extreme befits thee not, until Thou'rt not extreme in bliss; be equal still: Sweets to be granted think thyself unmeet Till thou have learned to hold sweet not too sweet.

This thing not far is he from wise in art Who teacheth; nor who doth, from wise in heart.

_From_ "a.s.sUMPTA MARIA"

_"Thou needst not make new songs, but say the old."_--COWLEY.

"_Mortals, that behold a Woman, Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun; Who am I the heavens a.s.sume? an All am I, and I am one._

"Mult.i.tudinous ascend I, Dreadful as a battle arrayed, For I bear you whither tend I; Ye are I: be undismayed!

I, the Ark that for the graven Tables of the Law was made; Man's own heart was one, one Heaven, Both within my womb were laid.

For there Anteros with Eros Heaven with man conjoined was,-- Twin-stone of the Law, _Ischyros, Agios Athanatos_.

"I, the flesh-girt Paradises Gardenered by the Adam new, Daintied o'er with sweet devices Which He loveth, for He grew.

I, the boundless strict savannah Which G.o.d's leaping feet go through; I, the heaven whence the Manna, Weary Israel, slid on you!

He the Anteros and Eros, I the body, He the Cross; He upbeareth me, _Ischyros, Agios Athanatos_!

"I am Daniel's mystic Mountain, Whence the mighty stone was rolled; I am the four Rivers' fountain, Watering Paradise of old; Cloud down-raining the Just One am, Danae of the Shower of Gold; I the Hostel of the Sun am; He the Lamb, and I the Fold.

He the Anteros and Eros, I the body, He the Cross; He is fast to me, _Ischyros, Agios Athanatos_!

"I, the presence-hall where Angels Do enwheel their placed King-- Even my thoughts which, without change else, Cyclic burn and cyclic sing.

To the hollow of Heaven transplanted, I a breathing Eden spring, Where with venom all outpanted Lies the slimed Curse shrivelling.

For the brazen Serpent clear on That old fanged knowledge shone; I to Wisdom rise, _Ischyron, Agion Athanaton_!

"Then commanded and spake to me He who framed all things that be; And my Maker entered through me, In my tent His rest took He.

Lo! He standeth, Spouse and Brother, I to Him, and He to me, Who upraised me where my mother Fell, beneath the apple-tree.

Risen 'twixt Anteros and Eros, Blood and Water, Moon and Sun, He upbears me, He _Ischyros_, I bear Him, the _Athanaton_!"

Where is laid the Lord arisen?

In the light we walk in gloom.

Though the sun has burst his prison, We know not his biding-room.

Tell us where the Lord sojourneth, For we find an empty tomb.

"Whence He sprung, there He returneth, Mystic Sun,--the Virgin's Womb."

Hidden Sun, His beams so near us, Cloud enpillared as He was From of old, there He, _Ischyros_, Waits our search, _Athanatos_!

Camp of Angels! Well we even Of this thing may doubtful be,-- If thou art a.s.sumed to Heaven, Or is Heaven a.s.sumed to thee!

_Consummatum._ Christ the promised, Thy maiden realm is won, O Strong!

Since to such sweet Kingdom comest, Remember me, poor Thief of Song!

Cadent fails the stars along:-- "_Mortals, that behold a woman Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun; Who am I the heavens a.s.sume? an All am I, and I am one._"

_From_ "AN ANTHEM OF EARTH"

In nescientness, in nescientness, Mother, we put these fleshly lendings on Thou yield'st to thy poor children; took thy gift Of life, which must, in all the after days Be craved again with tears,-- With fresh and still pet.i.tionary tears.

Being once bound thine almsmen for that gift, We are bound to beggary; nor our own can call The journal dole of customary life, But after suit obsequious for 't to thee.

Indeed this flesh, O Mother, A beggar's gown, a client's badging, We find, which from thy hands we simply took, Naught dreaming of the after penury, In nescientness.

In a little thought, in a little thought, We stand and eye thee in a grave dismay, With sad and doubtful questioning, when first Thou speak'st to us as men: like sons who hear Newly their mother's history, unthought Before, and say--"She is not as we dreamed: Ah me! we are beguiled!" What art thou, then, That art not our conceiving? Art thou not Too old for thy young children? Or perchance, Keep'st thou a youth perpetual-burnishable Beyond thy sons decrepit? It is long Since Time was first a fledgling; Yet thou may'st be but as a pendant bulla Against his stripling bosom swung. Alack!

For that we seem indeed To have slipped the world's great leaping-time, and come Upon thy pinched and dozing days: these weeds, These corporal leavings, thou not cast'st us new, Fresh from thy crafts.h.i.+p, like the lilies' coats, But foist'st us off With hasty tarnished piecings negligent, Snippets and waste From old ancestral wearings, That have seen sorrier usage; remainder-flesh After our father's surfeits; nay with c.h.i.n.ks, Some of us, that if speech may have free leave Our souls go out at elbows. We are sad With more than our sires' heaviness, and with More than their weakness weak; we shall not be Mighty with all their mightiness, nor shall not Rejoice with all their joy. Ay, Mother! Mother!

What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed, Thou l.u.s.tingly engender'st, To sweat, and make his brag, and rot, Crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?

From nightly towers He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens, Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust, And yet is he successive unto nothing But patrimony of a little mould, And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth Avid of all dominion and all mightiness, All sorrow, all delight, all topless grandeurs, All beauty, and all starry majesties, And dim transtellar things;--even that it may, Filled in the ending with a puff of dust, Confess--"It is enough." The world left empty What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded For pride, for potency, infinity, All heights, all deeps, and all immensities, Arrased with purple like the house of kings, To stall the grey-rat, and the carrion-worm Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries!

Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark As we ourselves, thy darkest! We the young, In a little thought, in a little thought, At last confront thee, and ourselves in thee, And wake disgarmented of glory: as one On a mount standing, and against him stands, On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays, The golden sun, and they two brotherly Gaze each on each; He faring down To the dull vale, his G.o.dhead peels from him Till he can scarcely spurn the pebble-- For nothingness of new-found mortality-- That mutinies against his galled foot.