New Poems   By: Francis Thompson (1859-1907)

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