Poems

by Francis Thompson
Contents:

Dedication
Love in Dian's Lap

Before Her Portrait in Youth
To a Poet Breaking Silence

Manus Animam Pinxit
A Carrier-Song

Scala Jacobi Portaque Eburnea
Gilded Gold

Her Portrait
Miscellaneous Poems

To the Dead Cardinal of Westminster
A Fallen Yew

Dream-Tryst
A Corymbus for Autumn

The Hound of Heaven
A Judgment in Heaven

Poems on Children
Daisy

The Making of Viola
To My Godchild

To Poppy
To Monica Thought Dying

DEDICATION--TO WILFRID AND ALICE MEYNELL
If the rose in meek duty

May dedicate humbly
To her grower the beauty

Wherewith she is comely;
If the mine to the miner

The jewels that pined in it,
Earth to diviner

The springs he divined in it;
To the grapes the wine-pitcher

Their juice that was crushed in it,
Viol to its witcher

The music lay hushed in it;
If the lips may pay Gladness

In laughters she wakened,
And the heart to its sadness

Weeping unslakened,
If the hid and sealed coffer,

Whose having not his is,
To the loosers may proffer

Their finding--here this is;
Their lives if all livers

To the Life of all living, -
To you, O dear givers!

I give your own giving.
BEFORE HER PORTRAIT IN YOUTH

As lovers, banished from their lady's face
And hopeless of her grace,

Fashion a ghostlysweetness in its place,
Fondly adore

Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,
A kerchief or a glove:

And at the lover's beck
Into the glove there fleets the hand,

Or at impetuous command
Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:

So I, in very lowlihead of love, -
Too shyly reverencing

To let one thought's light footfall smooth
Tread near the living, consecrated thing, -

Treasure me thy cast youth.
This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee,

Hath yet my knee,
For that, with show and semblance fair

Of the past Her
Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare,

It cheateth me.
As gale to gale drifts breath

Of blossoms' death,
So dropping down the years from hour to hour

This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day:
I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower.

So, then, she looked (I say);
And so her front sunk down

Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown:
On her mouth museful sweet -

(Even as the twin lips meet)
Did thought and sadness greet:

Sighs
In those mournful eyes

So put on visibilities;
As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes.

Thus, long ago,
She kept her meditative paces slow

Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and gleam
Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream,

Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow.
Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine!

This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall
I, faring in the cockshut-light, astray,

Find on my 'lated way,
And stoop, and gather for memorial,

And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine.
To this, the all of love the stars allow me,

I dedicate and vow me.
I reach back through the days

A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise.
The water-wraith that cries

From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes
Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!

TO A POET BREAKING SILENCE
Too wearily had we and song

Been left to look and left to long,
Yea, song and we to long and look,

Since thine acquainted feet forsook
The mountain where the Muses hymn

For Sinai and the Seraphim.
Now in both the mountains' shine

Dress thy countenance, twice divine!
From Moses and the Muses draw

The Tables of thy double Law!
His rod-born fount and Castaly

Let the one rock bring forth for thee,
Renewing so from either spring

The songs which both thy countries sing:
Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long,

Thou should'st forget thy native song,
And mar thy mortal melodies

With broken stammer of the skies.
Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord

With earth's waters make accord;
Teach how the crucifix may be

Carven from the laurel-tree,
Fruit of the Hesperides

Burnish take on Eden-trees,
The Muses' sacred grove be wet

With the red dew of Olivet,
And Sappho lay her burning brows

In white Cecilia's lap of snows!
Thy childhood must have felt the stings

Of too divine o'ershadowings;
Its odorous heart have been a blossom

That in darkness did unbosom,
Those fire-flies of God to invite,

Burning spirits, which by night
Bear upon their laden wing

To such hearts impregnating.
For flowers that night-wings fertilize

Mock down the stars' unsteady eyes,
And with a happy, sleepless glance

Gaze the moon out of countenance.
I think thy girlhood's watchers must

Have took thy folded songs on trust,
And felt them, as one feels the stir

Of still lightnings in the hair,
When conscious hush expects the cloud

To speak the golden secret loud
Which tacit air is privy to;

Flasked in the grape the wine they knew,
Ere thy poet-mouth was able

For its first young starry babble.
Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace?

Yea, in this silent interspace,
God sets His poems in thy face!

The loom which mortal verse affords,
Out of weak and mortal words,

Wovest thou thy singing-weed in,
To a rune of thy far Eden.

Vain are all disguises! Ah,
Heavenly incognita!

Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong
The great Uranian House of Song!

As the vintages of earth
Taste of the sun that riped their birth,

We know what never cadent Sun
Thy lamped clusters throbbed upon,

What plumed feet the winepress trod;
Thy wine is flavorous of God.

Whatever singing-robe thou wear
Has the Paradisal air;

And some gold feather it has kept
Shows what Floor it lately swept!

"MANUS ANIMAM PINXIT"
Lady who hold'st on me dominion!

Within your spirit's arms I stay me fast
Against the fell

Immitigate ravening of the gates of hell;
And claim my right in you, most hardly won,

Of chastefidelity upon the chaste:
Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall

(O in high escalade high companion!)
Even in the breach of Heaven's assaulted wall.

Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from
The clift, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul, -

Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome
By all its clouds incumbent: O be true

To your soul, dearest, as my life to you!
For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole

Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot
Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through,

Dry down and perish to the foodless root.
Sweet Summer! unto you this swallow drew,

By secret instincts inappeasable,
That did direct him well,

Lured from his gelid North which wrought him wrong,
Wintered of sunning song; -

• maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
• eternal [i´tə:nəl] a.永远的；永恒的 (初中英语单词)
• countenance [´kauntinəns] n.面部表情；脸色；面容 (初中英语单词)
• sacred [´seikrid] a.神圣的；庄严的 (初中英语单词)
• childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
• divine [di´vain] a.神圣的 v.预言 (初中英语单词)
• conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
• feather [´feðə] n.羽毛 (初中英语单词)
• lately [´leitli] ad.近来，不久前 (初中英语单词)
• perish [´periʃ] v.灭亡；消灭；(使)死去 (初中英语单词)
• swallow [swɔləu] n.燕子 v.吞，咽；淹没 (初中英语单词)
• wrought [rɔ:t] work 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
• portrait [´pɔ:trit] n.肖像；相片；雕像 (高中英语单词)
• cardinal [´kɑ:dinəl] a.主要的 n.深红色 (高中英语单词)
• dedicate [´dedikeit] vt.献给；献身于 (高中英语单词)
• hopeless [´həupləs] a.无望的，无可救药的 (高中英语单词)
• sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
• attire [ə´taiə] vt.装饰；穿 n.衣服 (高中英语单词)
• virgin [´və:dʒin] a.处女(般)的 n.处女 (高中英语单词)
• fragrance [´freigrəns] n.芬芳，芳香 (高中英语单词)
• sadness [´sædnis] n.悲哀；悲痛；凄惨 (高中英语单词)
• mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
• stammer [´stæmə] v.&n.口吃 (高中英语单词)
• breach [bri:tʃ] n.&v.破坏；违犯 (高中英语单词)
• semblance [´sembləns] n.外表；伪装；相似 (英语四级单词)
• raiment [´reimənt] n.衣饰 (英语四级单词)
• mournful [´mɔ:nful] a.令人沮丧的 (英语四级单词)
• voluntary [´vɔləntəri] a.自愿的；义务的 (英语四级单词)
• wearily [´wiərili] ad.疲倦地；厌烦地 (英语四级单词)
• starry [´stɑ:ri] a.星光照耀的，闪亮的 (英语四级单词)
• chaste [tʃeist] a.贞洁的；高雅的 (英语四级单词)
• fidelity [fi´deliti] n.忠实；精确；保真度 (英语四级单词)
• grower [´grəuə] n.种植者，栽培者 (英语六级单词)
• ghostly [´gəustli] a.鬼的；朦胧的 (英语六级单词)
• kerchief [´kə:tʃif] n.头巾，围巾 (英语六级单词)
• impetuous [im´petjuəs] a.急促的；猛烈的 (英语六级单词)
• sleepless [´sli:pləs] a.失眠的；寂静的 (英语六级单词)
• sapling [´sæpliŋ] n.树苗，幼树 (英语六级单词)
• sterile [´sterail] a.不育的；无结果的 (英语六级单词)
• shrivel [´ʃrivəl] v.(使)枯萎；(使)卷缩 (英语六级单词)