Part 7

When the bird quits the cage, We set the cage outside, With seed and with water, And the door wide, Haply we may win it so Back to abide. Hang her cage of earth out O'er Heaven's sunward wall, Its four gates open, winds in watch By reinèd cars at all; Relume in hanging hedgerows The rain-quenched blossom, And roses sob their tears out On the gale's warm heaving bosom; Shake the lilies till their scent Over-drip their rims, That our runaway may see We do know her whims: Sleek the tumbled waters out For her travelled limbs; Strew and smooth blue night thereon, There will--O not doubt her!-- The lovely sleepy lady lie, With all her stars about her!

ANY SAINT

His shoulder did I hold Too high that I, o'erbold Weak one, Should lean thereon.

But He a little hath Declined His stately path And my Feet set more high;

That the slack arm may reach His shoulder, and faint speech Stir His unwithering hair.

And bolder now and bolder I lean upon that shoulder, So dear He is and near.

And with His aureole The tresses of my soul Are blent In wished content.

Yea, this too gentle Lover Hath flattering words to move her To pride By His sweet side.

Ah, Love! somewhat let be! Lest my humility Grow weak When Thou dost speak!

Rebate Thy tender suit, Lest to herself impute Some worth Thy bride of earth!

A maid too easily Conceits herself to be Those things Her lover sings;

And being straitly wooed, Believes herself the Good And Fair He seeks in her.

Turn something of Thy look, And fear me with rebuke, That I May timorously

Take tremors in Thy arms, And with contrivèd charms Allure A love unsure.

Not to me, not to me, Builded so flawfully, O God, Thy humbling laud!

Not to this man, but Man,-- Universe in a span; Point Of the spheres conjoint;

In whom eternally Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!-- Didst pave The way o' the wave,

Rivet with stars the Heaven, For causeways to Thy driven Car In its coming far

Unto him, only him; In Thy deific whim Didst bound Thy works' great round

In this small ring of flesh; The sky's gold-knotted mesh Thy wrist Did only twist

To take him in that net.-- Man! swinging-wicket set Between The Unseen and Seen,

Lo, God's two worlds immense, Of spirit and of sense, Wed In this narrow bed;

Yea, and the midge's hymn Answers the seraphim Athwart Thy body's court!

Great arm-fellow of God! To the ancestral clod Kin, And to cherubin;

Bread predilectedly O' the worm and Deity! Hark, O God's clay-sealed Ark,

To praise that fits thee, clear To the ear within the ear, But dense To clay-sealed sense.

Thee God's great utterance bore, O secret metaphor Of what Thou dream'st no jot!

Cosmic metonymy; Weak world-unshuttering key; One Seal of Solomon!

Trope that itself not scans Its huge significance, Which tries Cherubic eyes.

Primer where the angels all God's grammar spell in small, Nor spell The highest too well.

Point for the great descants Of starry disputants; Equation Of creation.

Thou meaning, couldst thou see, Of all which dafteth thee; So plain, It mocks thy pain;

Stone of the Law indeed, Thine own self couldst thou read, Thy bliss Within thee is.

Compost of Heaven and mire, Slow foot and swift desire! Lo, To have Yes, choose No;

Gird, and thou shalt unbind; Seek not, and thou shalt find; To eat, Deny thy meat;

And thou shalt be fulfilled With all sweet things unwilled: So best God loves to jest

With children small--a freak Of heavenly hide-and-seek Fit For thy wayward wit,

Who art thyself a thing Of whim and wavering; Free When His wings pen thee;

Sole fully blest, to feel God whistle thee at heel; Drunk up As a dew-drop,

When He bends down, sun-wise, Intemperable eyes; Most proud, When utterly bowed,

To feel thyself and be His dear nonentity-- Caught Beyond human thought

In the thunder-spout of Him, Until thy being dim And be Dead deathlessly.

Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fear The nettle's wrathful spear, So slight Art thou of might!

Rise; for Heaven hath no frown When thou to thee pluck'st down, Strong clod! The neck of God.

_From_ "THE VICTORIAN ODE"

_Written for the Queen's Golden Jubilee Day_, 1897

Lo, in this day we keep the yesterdays, And those great dead of the Victorian line.[D] They passed, they passed, but cannot pass away, For England feels them in her blood like wine. She was their mother, and she is their daughter, This lady of the water, And from their loins she draws the greatness which they were. And still their wisdom sways, Their power lives in her. Their thews it is, England, that lift thy sword, They are the splendour, England, in thy song, They sit unbidden at thy council-board, Their fame doth compass all thy coasts from wrong, And in thy sinews they are strong. Their absence is a presence and a guest In this day's feast; This living feast is also of the dead, And this, O England, is thine All Souls' Day. And when thy cities flake the night with flames, Thy proudest torches yet shall be their names.

Come hither, proud and ancient East, Gather ye to this Lady of the North, And sit down with her at her solemn feast, Upon this culminant day of all her days; For ye have heard the thunder of her goings-forth, And wonder of her large imperial ways. Let India send her turbans, and Japan Her pictured vests from that remotest isle Seated in the antechambers of the Sun: And let her Western sisters for a while Remit long envy and disunion, And take in peace Her hand behind the buckler of her seas, 'Gainst which their wrath has splintered; come, for she Her hand ungauntlets in mild amity.

Victoria! Queen, whose name is victory, Whose woman's nature sorteth best with peace, Bid thou the cloud of war to cease Which ever round thy wide-girt empery Fumes, like to smoke about a burning brand, Telling the energies which keep within The light unquenched, as England's light shall be; And let this day hear only peaceful din. For, queenly woman, thou art more than woman; Thy name the often-struck barbarian shuns: Thou art the fear of England to her foemen, The love of England to her sons. And this thy glorious day is England's; who Can separate the two? Now unto thee The plenitude of the glories thou didst sow Is garnered up in prosperous memory; And, for the perfect evening of thy day, An untumultuous bliss, serenely gay, Sweetened with silence of the after-glow.

Nor does the joyous shout Which all our lips give out Jar on that quietude; more than may do A radiant childish crew, With well-accordant discord fretting the soft hour, Whose hair is yellowed by the sinking blaze Over a low-mouthed sea. Exult, yet be not twirled, England, by gusts of mere Blind and insensate lightness; neither fear The vastness of thy shadow on the world. If in the East Still strains against its leash the unglutted beast Of war; if yet the cannon's lip be warm; Thou, whom these portents warn but not alarm, Feastest, but with thine hand upon the sword, As fits a warrior race. Not like the Saxon fools of olden days, With the mead dripping from the hairy mouth, While all the South Filled with the shaven faces of the Norman horde.

[D] Who had passed before him in ghostly procession--the "holy poets," the soldiers, sailors, and men of science.

ST MONICA

At the Cross thy station keeping With the mournful mother weeping, Thou, unto the sinless Son, Weepest for thy sinful one. Blood and water from His side Gush; in thee the streams divide: From thine eyes the one doth start, But the other from thy heart.

Mary, for thy sinner, see, To her Sinless mourns with thee: Could that Son the son not heed, For whom two such mothers plead? So thy child had baptism twice, And the whitest from thine eyes.

The floods lift up, lift up their voice, With a many-watered noise! Down the centuries fall those sweet Sobbing waters to our feet, And our laden air still keeps Murmur of a Saint that weeps.

Teach us but, to grace our prayers, Such divinity of tears,-- Earth should be lustrate again With contrition of that rain: Till celestial floods o'er rise The high tops of Paradise.

TO THE SINKING SUN

How graciously thou wear'st the yoke Of use that does not fail! The grasses, like an anchored smoke, Ride in the bending gale; This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, And fire-dropt as a seraph's mail.

Here every eve thou stretchest out Untarnishable wing, And marvellously bring'st about Newly an olden thing; Nor ever through like-ordered heaven Moves largely thy grave progressing.

Here every eve thou goest down Behind the self-same hill, Nor ever twice alike go'st down Behind the self-same hill; Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower Possessed with glory past its will.

Not twice alike! I am not blind, My sight is live to see; And yet I do complain of thy Weary variety. O Sun! I ask thee less or more, Change not at all, or utterly!

O give me unprevisioned new, Or give to change reprieve! For new in me is olden too, That I for sameness grieve. O flowers! O grasses! be but once The grass and flower of yester-eve!

Wonder and sadness are the lot Of change: thou yield'st mine eyes Grief of vicissitude, but not Its penetrant surprise. Immutability mutable Burthens my spirit and the skies.

O altered joy, all joyed of yore, Plodding in unconned ways! O grief grieved out, and yet once more A dull, new, staled amaze! I dream, and all was dreamed before, Or dream I so? the dreamer says.

DREAM-TRYST

The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, And dawn's grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up the sky, And mine to Lucidé.

There was no change in her sweet eyes Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine; There was no change in her deep heart Since last that deep heart knocked at mine. Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope's, Wherein did ever come and go The sparkle of the fountain drops From her sweet soul below.

The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air, That Time's hoar wings grow young therein, And they who walk there are most fair. I joyed for me, I joyed for her, Who with the Past meet girt about: Where our last kiss still warms the air, Nor can her eyes go out.

BUONA NOTTE

Jane Williams, in her last letter to Shelley, wrote:

"Why do you talk of never enjoying moments like the past? Are you going to join your friend Plato, or do you expect I shall do so soon? Buona Notte." That letter was dated July 6th; Shelley was drowned on the 8th; and this is his imagined reply to it from another world:--

Ariel to Miranda:--hear This good-night the sea-winds bear; And let thine unacquainted ear Take grief for their interpreter.

Good-night; I have risen so high Into slumber's rarity, Not a dream can beat its feather Through the unsustaining ether. Let the sea-winds make avouch How thunder summoned me to couch, Tempest curtained me about And turned the sun with his own hand out: And though I toss upon my bed My dream is not disquieted; Nay, deep I sleep upon the deep, And my eyes are wet, but I do not weep; And I fell to sleep so suddenly That my lips are moist yet--could'st thou see-- With the good-night draught I have drunk to thee. Thou can'st not wipe them; for it was Death Damped my lips that has dried my breath. A little while--it is not long-- The salt shall dry on them like the song.

Now know'st thou, that voice desolate, Mourning ruined joy's estate, Reached thee through a closing gate. "Go'st thou to Plato?" Ah, girl, no! It is to Pluto that I go.

ARAB LOVE SONG

The hunchèd camels of the night[E] Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon. The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering. Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come! And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.

Leave thy father, leave thy mother And thy brother; Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart! Am I not thy father and thy brother, And thy mother? And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?

[E] Cloud-shapes often observed by travellers in the East.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

"IN NO STRANGE LAND"

O World Invisible, we view thee, O World intangible, we touch thee, O World unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air-- That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars!-- The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;-- Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water, Not of Genesareth, but Thames![F]

[F] This Poem (found among his papers when he died) Francis Thompson might yet have worked upon to remove, here a defective rhyme, there an unexpected elision. But no altered mind would he have brought to its main purport; and the prevision of "Heaven in Earth and God in Man," pervading his earlier published verse, we find here accented by poignantly local and personal allusions. For in these triumphing stanzas, he held in retrospect those days and nights of human dereliction he spent beside London's River, and in the shadow--but all radiance to him--of Charing Cross.

ENVOY

Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: And some are sung, and that was yesterday, And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow.

Go forth; and if it be o'er stony way, Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow: And it was sweet, and that was yesterday, And sweet is sweet, though purchasèd with sorrow.

Go, songs, and come not back from your far way; And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow, Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day, Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow.

[Illustration]

_Appreciations of Francis Thompson_

_"Such pronouncements proved at least that a poet, who had no friend save such as his published poems gained for him, could count on an immediate recognition for high merit. For these tributes, and many more of like welcoming, placed him instantly out of range of the common casualties of criticism."--From the_ "NOTE ON FRANCIS THOMPSON" (p. xii). _As the writer of the "Note" has not attempted a critical estimate of the poetry, some of these Appreciations, forming a part of the poet's life-history and even of the literary history of his time, are here reproduced._

Mr Francis Thompson is a writer whom it is impossible that any qualified judge should deny to be a "new poet." And while most poets of his quality have usually to wait a quarter of a century or more for adequate recognition, this poet is pretty sure of a wide and immediate acknowledgement.... We find that in these poems profound thought, far-fetched splendour of imagery, and nimble-witted discernment of those analogies which are the roots of the poet's language, abound ... qualities which ought to place him in the permanent ranks of fame, with COWLEY and with CRASHAW.... _The Hound of Heaven_ has so great and passionate and such a metre-creating motive, that we are carried over all obstructions of the rhythmical current, and are compelled to pronounce it, at the end, one of the very few "great" odes of which the language can boast. In a lesser degree this metre-making passion prevails in the seven remarkable pieces called _Love in Dian's Lap_, poems of which LAURA might have been proud, and LUCRETIA not ashamed, to have had addressed to her. The main region of MR THOMPSON'S poetry is the inexhaustible and hitherto almost unworked mine of Catholic philosophy. Not but that he knows better than to make his religion the direct subject of any of his poems, unless it presents itself to him as a human passion, and the most human of passions, as it does in the splendid ode just noticed, in which God's long pursuit and final conquest of the resisting soul is described in a torrent of as humanly impressive verse as was ever inspired by a natural affection. MR THOMPSON places himself, by these poems, in the front rank of the pioneers of the movement which, if it be not checked, as in the history of the world it has once or twice been checked before, by premature formulation and by popular and profane perversion, must end in creating a "new heaven and a new earth."--COVENTRY PATMORE, in _The Fortnightly Review._

It is not only the religious ecstasy of CRASHAW that they recall; for all the daringly fantastic imagery, all the love-lyrical hyperbole, all that strange mixture and artifice, of spontaneous passion and studied conceit, which were so characteristic of the age of CRASHAW, are with the same astonishing fidelity reproduced. Where, unless, perhaps, in here and there a sonnet of ROSSETTI'S, has this sort of sublimated enthusiasm for the bodily and spiritual beauty of womanhood found such expression as in _Love in Dian's Lap_ between the age of the Stuarts and our own? To realize the full extent to which the religious, or semi-religious, emotions--now ecstatic, now awe-stricken--dominate and colour the entire fabric of these strange poems, they must be read throughout. In the lines _To the Dead Cardinal of Westminster_ we see them at their subtlest; and in the very powerful piece, _The Hound of Heaven_--a poem setting forth the pursuit of the human soul by divine grace--they are at their most intense.... That minority who can recognize the essentials under the accidents of poetry, and who feel that it is to poetic Form alone, and not to forms, that eternity belongs, will agree that, alike in wealth and dignity of imagination, in depth and subtlety of thought, and in magic and mastery of language, a new poet of the first rank is to be welcomed in the author of this volume.--H. D. TRAILL, in _The Nineteenth Century_.

The first thing to be done, and by far the most important, is to recognize that we are here face to face with a poet of the first order, a man of imagination all compact, a seer and singer of rare genius. He revels indeed in "orgiac imageries," and revelry implies excess. But when excess is an excess of strength, the debauch a debauch of beauty, who can condemn or even regret it? Would we had a few more poets who could exceed in such imagery as this! It is no minor Caroline singer he recalls, but the Jacobean SHAKESPEARE.--_The Daily Chronicle._

A volume of poetry has not appeared in QUEEN VICTORIA'S reign more authentic in greatness of utterance than this. In the rich and virile harmonies of his line, in strange and lovely vision, in fundamental meaning, he is possibly the first of Victorian poets, and at least is he of none the inferior.... In all sobriety do we believe him of all poets to be the most celestial in vision, the most august in faculty.... In a word, a new planet has swum into the ken of the watchers of the poetic skies. These are big words; but we have weighed them. For there is that in Mr FRANCIS THOMPSON'S poetry which discourages the flamboyant appreciations of the more facile impressionist, and gives him pause in his ready-made enthusiasms. It is patent on the first page that there is genius in this inspiration, and the great note in this utterance; but page after page reveals the rich and the strange, and the richer and the stranger in so many original moods and noble measures, that the reviewer feels the necessity of caution.... In nothing does THOMPSON appear more authentically a poet than in the fact that his sense of beauty is part of his religion. In this he is like SHELLEY, except that SHELLEY'S sense of beauty was his religion, and lived in an atmosphere of sensuousness, a sensuousness that has little of the grosser taints of earth about it indeed, but which is still sensuousness. Therefore, SHELLEY wrote the glorious _Epipsychidion_; therefore, Mr THOMPSON writes _Her Portrait_, the longest and greatest poem in his book; and, speaking for ourselves, we shall say at once that _Epipsychidion_, long unique in the language, has at last found its parallel, perhaps its peer, in _Her Portrait_. Of this "Her" of Mr THOMPSON'S we must say that she is the significance of his book. If his sense of beauty is part of his religion, his religion is that of a rapt Catholic, to whom the very heaven, with all that therein be, is open and palpable; his is the Catholicism of profound mysticism, and of the most universal temper.... It is perfectly safe to affirm that if Mr THOMPSON write no other line, by this volume alone he is as secure of remembrance as any poet of the century. His vocabulary is very great.... Mr THOMPSON'S first volume is no mere promise--it is itself among the great achievements of English poetry; it has reached the peak of Parnassus at a bound.

He has actually accomplished the high thing in metaphysical poetry that DONNE and CRASHAW only dreamed of. His mysticism is infinitely more profound and significant than theirs, as his imagination is more impulsive, ardent, and beautiful. He is the great Platonist of English poetry. If Mr THOMPSON had never written anything after his first volume, there would be but one Stuart poet with whom the author of _Her Portrait_ could be compared for orchestral majesties of song, and that one MILTON.... He is an argonaut of literature, far travelled in the realms of gold, and he has in a strange degree the assimilative mind.... We do not think we forget any of the splendid things of an English anthology when we say that _The Hound of Heaven_ seems to us, on the whole, the most wonderful lyric in the language. It fingers all the stops of the spirit, and we hear now a thrilling and dolorous note of doom, and now the quiring of the spheres, and now the very pipes of Pan, but under all the still, sad music of humanity. It is the return of the nineteenth century to THOMAS A KEMPIS.--J. L. GARVIN, in _The Newcastle Chronicle_ and in _The Bookman_.