Selected Poems of Francis Thompson. Francis Thompson
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!
DEDICATION OF "NEW POEMS"
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.
Poems on Children
DAISY
Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill— O the breath of the distant surf!—
The hills look over on the South, And southward dreams the sea; And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand, Came innocence and she.
Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry Red for the gatherer springs, Two children did we stray and talk Wise, idle, childish things.
She listened with big-lipped surprise, Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine: Her skin was like a grape, whose veins Run snow instead of wine.
She knew not those sweet words she spake, Nor knew her own sweet way; But there's never a bird so sweet a song Thronged in whose throat that day!
Oh, there were flowers in Storrington On the turf and on the spray; But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills Was the Daisy-flower that day!
Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face! She gave me tokens three:— A look, a word of her winsome mouth, And a wild raspberry.
A berry red, a guileless look, A still word—strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to her little hand.
For, standing artless as the air, And candid as the skies, She took the berries with her hand, And the love with her sweet eyes.
The fairest things have fleetest end: Their scent survives their close, But the rose's scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose!
She looked a little wistfully, Then went her sunshine way:— The sea's eye had a mist on it, And the leaves fell from the day.
She went her unremembering way, She went, and left in me The pang of all the partings gone, And partings yet to be.
She left me marvelling why my soul Was sad that she was glad; At all the sadness in the sweet, The sweetness in the sad.
Still, still I seemed to see her, still Look up with soft replies, And take the berries with her hand, And the love with her lovely eyes.
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain, And perish in our own.
THE POPPY
To Monica
Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there: Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.
With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank, And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine When the eastern conduits ran with wine;
Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss, And hot as a swinkèd gipsy is, And drowsed in sleepy savageries, With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.
A child and man paced side by side, Treading the skirts of eventide; But between the clasp of his hand and hers Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.
She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair, And saw the sleeping gipsy there; And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim, With—"Keep it, long as you live!"—to him.
And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres, Trembled up from a bath of tears; And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart, Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart.
For he saw what she did not see, That—as kindled by its own fervency— The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly:
And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers He knew the twenty withered years— No flower, but twenty shrivelled years.
"Was never such thing until this hour," Low to his heart he said; "the flower Of sleep brings wakening to me, And of oblivion memory.
"Was never this thing to me," he said, "Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!" And again to his own heart very low: "O child! I love, for I love and know;
"But you, who love nor know at all The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall, Where some rise early, few sit long: In how differing accents hear the throng His great Pentecostal tongue;
"Who know not love from amity, Nor my reported self from me; A fair fit gift is this, meseems, You give—this withering flower of dreams.
"O frankly fickle, and fickly true, Do you know what the days will do to you? To your Love and you what the days will do, O frankly fickle, and fickly true?
"You have loved me, Fair, three lives—or days: 'Twill pass with the passing of my face. But where I go, your face goes too, To watch lest I play false to you.
"I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover, Knowing well when certain years are over You vanish from me to another; Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother.
"So, frankly fickle, and fickly true, For my brief life-while I take from you This token, fair and fit, meseems, For me—this withering flower of dreams."
The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head, Heavy with dreams, as that with bread: The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.
I hang 'mid men my needless head, And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread: The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper Time shall reap; but after the reaper The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper!
Love, love! your flower of withered dream In leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem, Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme, From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.
Love! I fall into the claws of Time: But lasts within a leavèd rhyme All that the world of me esteems— My withered dreams, my withered dreams.
TO MONICA THOUGHT DYING
You, O the piteous you! Who all the long night through Anticipatedly Disclose yourself to me Already in the ways Beyond our human comfortable days; How can you deem what Death Impitiably saith To me, who listening wake For your poor sake? When a grown woman dies, You know we think unceasingly What things she said, how sweet, how wise; And these do make our misery. But you were (you to me The dead anticipatedly!) You—eleven years, was 't not, or so?— Were just a child, you know; And so you never said Things sweet immeditatably and wise To interdict from closure my wet eyes: But foolish things, my dead, my dead! Little and laughable, Your age that fitted well. And was it such things all unmemorable, Was it such things could make Me sob all night for your implacable sake?
Yet, as you said to me, In pretty make-believe of revelry, So, the night long, said Death With his magniloquent breath; (And that remembered laughter, Which in our daily uses followed after, Was all untuned to pity and to awe). "A cup of chocolate, One farthing is the rate, You drink it through a straw."
How could I know, how know Those laughing words when drenched with sobbing so? Another voice than yours, than yours, he hath! My dear, was't worth his breath, His mighty utterance?—yet