Selected Poems of Francis Thompson Part 5

Whereso your angel is, My angel goeth; I am left guardianless, Paradise knoweth!

I have no Heaven left To weep my wrongs to; Heaven, when you went from us, Went with my songs too.

_Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

I have no angels left Now, Sweet, to pray to: Where you have made your shrine They are away to.

They have struck Heaven's tent, And gone to cover you: Whereso you keep your state Heaven is pitched over you!

_Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

She that is Heaven's Queen Her t.i.tle borrows, For that she, pitiful, Beareth our sorrows.

So thou, _Regina mi, Spes infirmorum_; With all our grieving crowned _Mater dolorum!

Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

Yet, envious coveter Of other's grieving!

This lonely longing yet 'Scapeth your reaving.

Cruel to take from a Sinner his Heaven!

Think you with contrite smiles To be forgiven?

_Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

Penitent! give me back Angels, and Heaven; Render your stolen self, And be forgiven!

How frontier Heaven from you?

For my soul prays, Sweet, Still to your face in Heaven, Heaven in your face, Sweet!

_Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

HER PORTRAIT

Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold!

So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognate tongue.

Or if that language yet with us abode Which Adam in the garden talked with G.o.d!

But our untempered speech descends--poor heirs!

Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers: Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to d.a.m.n, not memorise, a spirit!

A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they Move with light ease in speech of working-day; And women we do use to praise even so.

But here the gates we burst, and to the temple go.

Their praise were her dispraise; who dare, who dare, Adulate the seraphim for their burning hair?

How, if with them I dared, here should I dare it?

How praise the woman, who but know the spirit?

How praise the colour of her eyes, uncaught While they were coloured with her varying thought?

How her mouth's shape, who only use to know What tender shape her speech will fit it to?

Or her lips' redness, when their joined veil Song's fervid hand has parted till it wore them pale?

If I would praise her soul (temerarious if!) All must be mystery and hieroglyph.

Heaven, which not oft is prodigal of its more To singers, in their song too great before-- By which the hierarch of large poesy is Restrained to his one sacred benefice-- Only for her the salutary awe Relaxes and stern canon of its law; To her alone concedes pluralities, In her alone to reconcile agrees The Muse, the Graces, and the Charities; To her, who can the trust so well conduct, To her it gives the use, to us the usufruct.

What of the dear administress then may I utter, though I spoke her own carved perfect way?

What of her daily gracious converse known, Whose heavenly despotism must needs dethrone And subjugate all sweetness but its own?

Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.

What of her silence, that outsweetens speech?

What of her thoughts, high marks for mine own thoughts to reach?

Yet (Chaucer's antique sentence so to turn), Most gladly will she teach, and gladly learn; And teaching her, by her enchanting art, The master threefold learns for all he can impart.

Now all is said, and all being said,--aye me!

There yet remains unsaid the very She.

Nay, to conclude (so to conclude I dare), If of her virtues you evade the snare, Then for her faults you'll fall in love with her.

Alas, and I have spoken of her Muse-- Her Muse, that died with her auroral dews!

Learn, the wise cherubim from harps of gold Seduce a trepidating music manifold; But the superior seraphim do know None other music but to flame and glow.

So she first lighted on our frosty earth, A sad musician, of cherubic birth, Playing to alien ears--which did not prize The uncomprehended music of the skies-- The exiled airs of her far Paradise.

But soon, from her own harpings taking fire, In love and light her melodies expire.

Now Heaven affords her, for her silenced hymn, A double portion of the seraphim.

At the rich odours from her heart that rise, My soul remembers its lost Paradise, And antenatal gales blow from Heaven's sh.o.r.es of spice; I grow essential all, uncloaking me From this enc.u.mbering virility, And feel the primal s.e.x of heaven and poetry: And parting from her, in me linger on Vague s.n.a.t.c.hes of Uranian antiphon.

How to the petty prison could she shrink Of femineity?--Nay, but I think In a dear courtesy her spirit would Woman a.s.sume, for grace to womanhood.

Or, votaress to the virgin Sanct.i.tude Of reticent withdrawal's sweet, courted pale, She took the cloistral flesh, the s.e.xual veil, Of her sad, aboriginal sisterhood; The habit of cloistral flesh which founding Eve indued.

Thus do I know her: but for what men call Beauty--the loveliness corporeal, Its most just praise a thing unproper were To singer or to listener, me or her.

She wears that body but as one indues A robe, half careless, for it is the use; Although her soul and it so fair agree, We sure may, unattaint of heresy, Conceit it might the soul's begetter be.

The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait.

G.o.d laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothed keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies.

I'll speak a little proudly:--I disdain To count the beauty worth my wish or gain, Which the dull daily fool can covet or obtain.

I do confess the fairness of the spoil, But from such rivalry it takes a soil.

For her I'll proudlier speak:--how could it be That I should praise the gilding on the psaltery?

'Tis not for her to hold that prize a prize, Or praise much praise, though proudest in its wise, To which even hopes of merely women rise.

Such strife would to the vanquished laurels yield, Against _her_ suffered to have lost a field.

Herself must with herself be sole compeer, Unless the people of her distant sphere Some gold migration send to melodise the year.

Yet I have felt what terrors may consort In women's cheeks, the Graces' soft resort; My hand hath shook at gentle hands' access, And trembled at the waving of a tress; My blood known panic fear, and fled dismayed, Where ladies' eyes have set their ambuscade.

The rustle of a robe hath been to me The very rattle of love's musketry; Although my heart hath beat the loud advance, I have recoiled before a challenging glance, Proved gay alarms where warlike ribbons dance.

And from it all, this knowledge have I got,-- The whole that others have, is less than they have not; All which makes other women noted fair, Unnoted would remain and overshone in her.

How should I gauge what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the cas.e.m.e.nt for the sky?

And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by, I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind.

Hers is the face whence all should copied be, Did G.o.d make replicas of such as she; Its presence felt by what it does abate, Because the soul s.h.i.+nes through tempered and mitigate: Where--as a figure labouring at night Beside the body of a splendid light-- Dark Time works hidden by its luminousness; And every line he labours to impress Turns added beauty, like the veins that run Athwart a leaf which hangs against the sun.

There regent Melancholy wide controls; There Earth-and Heaven-Love play for aureoles; There Sweetness out of Sadness breaks at fits, Like bubbles on dark water, or as flits A sudden silver fin through its deep infinites; There amorous Thought has sucked pale Fancy's breath, And Tenderness sits looking towards the lands of death; There Feeling stills her breathing with her hand, And Dream from Melancholy part wrests the wand And on this lady's heart, looked you so deep, Poor Poetry has rocked himself to sleep: Upon the heavy blossom of her lips Hangs the bee Musing; nigh, her lids eclipse Each half-occulted star beneath that lies; And in the contemplation of those eyes, Pa.s.sionless pa.s.sion, wild tranquillities.

EPILOGUE TO THE POET'S SITTER

_Wherein he excuseth himself for the Manner of the Portrait_

Alas! now wilt thou chide, and say (I deem) My figured descant hides the simple theme: Or, in another wise reproving, say I ill observe thine own high reticent way.

Oh, pardon, that I testify of thee What thou couldst never speak, nor others be!

Yet (for the book is not more innocent Of what the gazer's eyes makes so intent), She will but smile, perhaps, that I find my fair Sufficing scope in such strait theme as her.

"Bird of the sun! the stars' wild honey bee!

Is your gold browsing done so thoroughly?

Or sinks a singed wing to narrow nest in me?"

(Thus she might say: for not this lowly vein Out-deprecates her deprecating strain.) Oh, you mistake, dear lady, quite; nor know Ether was strict as you, its loftiness as low!

The heavens do not advance their majesty Over their marge; beyond his empery The ensigns of the wind are not unfurled, His reign is hooped in by the pale o' the world.

'Tis not the continent, but the contained, That pleasaunce makes or prison, loose or chained.

Too much alike or little captives me, For all oppression is captivity.

What groweth to its height demands no higher; The limit limits not, but the desire.