New Poems by Francis Thompson Part 11

A small thing, a wee thing, A brown amaze withal, That fly a pitch more azure Because you're so small.

Bird, I'm a small thing-- My angel descries; With winging and singing That who could surmise?

Ah, small things, ah, wee things, Are the poets all, Whose tour's the more azure Because they're so small.

The angels hang watching The tiny men-things:- 'The dear speck of flesh, see, With such daring wings!

'Come, tell us, O tell us, Thou strange mortality!

What's THY thought of us, Dear?-- Here's OUR thought of thee.'

'Alack! you tall angels, I can't think so high!

I can't think what it feels like Not to be I.'

Come tell me, O tell me, My poet of the blue!

What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?-- Here's MY thought of you.

FIELD-FLOWER.

A Phantasy.

G.o.d took a fit of Paradise-wind, A slip of coerule weather, A thought as simple as Himself, And ravelled them together.

Unto His eyes He held it there, To teach it gazing debonair With memory of what, perdie, A G.o.d's young innocences were.

His fingers pushed it through the sod-- It came up redolent of G.o.d, Garrulous of the eyes of G.o.d To all the breezes near it; Musical of the mouth of G.o.d To all had eyes to hear it; Mystical with the mirth of G.o.d, That glow-like did ensphere it.

And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said; 'I'll tell the whole world one day!'

There was no blossom half so glad, Since sun of Christ's first Sunday.

A poet took a flaw of pain, A hap of skiey pleasure, A thought had in his cradle lain, And mingled them in measure.

That chrism he laid upon his eyes, And lips, and heart, for euphrasies, That he might see, feel, sing, perdie, The simple things that are the wise.

Beside the flower he held his ways, And leaned him to it gaze for gaze-- He took its meaning, gaze for gaze, As baby looks on baby; Its meaning pa.s.sed into his gaze, Native as meaning may be; He rose with all his s.h.i.+ning gaze As children's eyes at play be.

And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said; 'I'll tell the whole world one day!'

There was no poet half so glad, Since man grew G.o.d that Sunday.

THE CLOUD'S SWAN-SONG.

There is a parable in the pathless cloud, There's prophecy in heaven,--they did not lie, The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud, To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye.

A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills, And all the glory fallen from my song, Here do I walk among the windy hills, The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue.

Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar Over my soul's cold peaks; and one by one They loose their little rain, and are no more; And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none.

For 'tis an alien tongue, of alien things, From all men's care, how miserably apart!

Even my friends say: 'Of what is this he sings?'

And barren is my song, and barren is my heart.

For who can work, unwitting his work's worth?

Better, meseems, to know the work for naught, Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth, And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought.

And visitations, that do often use, Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse, And what dark 'gan, dark ended, in me did commence.

I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills, And my flesh rotting on my fate's dull stake; And how self-scorn-ed they the bounty fills Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take.

I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time, In predecease of his just-sickening song; Of him that set, wrapt in his radiant rhyme, Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long.

But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,-- O then, no more but even a soulless corse!

Nay, my Delight dies not; 'tis I should be Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force.

Of my wild lot I thought; from place to place, Apollo's song-bowed Scythian, I go on; Making in all my home, with pliant ways, But, provident of change, putting forth root in none.

Now, with starved brain, sick body, patience galled With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky Fell sudden little rain, scarce to be called A shower, which of the instant was gone wholly by.

What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair.

Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:- 'Even so,' I said, 'even so, my brother the good Cloud?'

It was a pilgrim of the fields of air, Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest, And in a little forth again did fare, And in all places was a stranger and a guest.

It harked all breaths of heaven, and did obey With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills; It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay, And with the thunder walked upon the lonely hills.

And from the subject earth it seemed to scorn, It drew the sustenance whereby it grew Perfect in bosom for the married Morn, And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new.

Its also darkness of the face withdrawn, And the long waiting for the little light, So long in life so little. Like a fawn It fled with tempest breathing hard at heel of flight;

And having known full East, did not disdain To sit in shadow and oblivious cold, Save what all loss doth of its loss retain, And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold.

Right poet! who thy rightness to approve, Having all liberty, didst keep all measure, And with a firmament for ranging, move But at the heavens' uncomprehended pleasure.

With amplitude unchecked, how sweetly thou Didst wear the ancient custom of the skies, And yoke of used prescription; and thence how Find gay variety no license could devise!

As we the quested beauties better wit Of the one grove our own than forests great, Restraint, by the delighted search of it, Turns to right scope. For lovely moving intricate

Is put to fair devising in the curb Of ordered limit; and all-changeful Hermes Is Terminus as well. Yet we perturb Our souls for lat.i.tude, whose strength in bound and term is.

How far am I from heavenly liberty, That play at policy with change and fate, Who should my soul from foreign broils keep free, In the fast-guarded frontiers of its single state!

Could I face firm the Is, and with To-be Trust Heaven; to Heaven commit the deed, and do; In power contained, calm in infirmity, And fit myself to change with virtue ever new;

Thou hadst not shamed me, cousin of the sky, Thou wandering kinsman, that didst sweetly live Unnoted, and unnoted sweetly die, Weeping more gracious song than any I can weave;

Which these gross-tissued words do sorely wrong.

Thou hast taught me on powerlessness a power; To make song wait on life, not life on song; To hold sweet not too sweet, and bread for bread though sour;

By law to wander, to be strictly free.

With tears ascended from the heart's sad sea, Ah, such a silver song to Death could I Sing, Pain would list, forgetting Pain to be, And Death would tarry marvelling, and forget to die!