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diff --git a/1731-0.txt b/1731-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..970b6a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/1731-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1827 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sister Songs, by Francis Thompson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Sister Songs + An Offering to Two Sisters + + +Author: Francis Thompson + + + +Release Date: February 1, 2015 [eBook #1731] +[This file was first posted on November 4, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER SONGS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1908 Burns and Oates edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + SISTER SONGS + _An Offering to Two Sisters_ + + + _BY_ + FRANCIS THOMPSON + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + BURNS & OATES + 28, ORCHARD STREET + LONDON, W.: 1908 + + + + +PREFACE + + +THIS poem, though new in the sense of being now for the first time +printed, was written some four years ago, about the same date as the +_Hound of Heaven_ in my former volume. + +One image in the _Proem_ was an unconscious plagiarism from the beautiful +image in Mr. Patmore’s _St. Valentine’s Day_:— + + “O baby Spring, + That flutter’st sudden ’neath the breast of Earth, + A month before the birth!” + +Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the passage in which +it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with this acknowledgment to +a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor. + + FRANCIS THOMPSON. + +1895. + + * * * * * + + _To_ + Monica and Madeline (Sylvia) Meynell + + * * * * * + + + + +SISTER SONGS +An Offering to Two Sisters + + +The Proem + + + SHREWD winds and shrill—were these the speech of May? + A ragged, slag-grey sky—invested so, + Mary’s spoilt nursling! wert thou wont to go? + Or _thou_, Sun-god and song-god, say + Could singer pipe one tiniest linnet-lay, + While Song did turn away his face from song? + Or who could be + In spirit or in body hale for long,— + Old Æsculap’s best Master!—lacking thee? + At length, then, thou art here! + On the earth’s lethèd ear + Thy voice of light rings out exultant, strong; + Through dreams she stirs and murmurs at that summons dear: + From its red leash my heart strains tamelessly, + For Spring leaps in the womb of the young year! + Nay, was it not brought forth before, + And we waited, to behold it, + Till the sun’s hand should unfold it, + What the year’s young bosom bore? + Even so; it came, nor knew we that it came, + In the sun’s eclipse. + Yet the birds have plighted vows, + And from the branches pipe each other’s name; + Yet the season all the boughs + Has kindled to the finger-tips,— + Mark yonder, how the long laburnum drips + Its jocund spilth of fire, its honey of wild flame! + Yea, and myself put on swift quickening, + And answer to the presence of a sudden Spring. + From cloud-zoned pinnacles of the secret spirit + Song falls precipitant in dizzying streams; + And, like a mountain-hold when war-shouts stir it, + The mind’s recessèd fastness casts to light + Its gleaming multitudes, that from every height + Unfurl the flaming of a thousand dreams. + Now therefore, thou who bring’st the year to birth, + Who guid’st the bare and dabbled feet of May; + Sweet stem to that rose Christ, who from the earth + Suck’st our poor prayers, conveying them to Him; + Be aidant, tender Lady, to my lay! + Of thy two maidens somewhat must I say, + Ere shadowy twilight lashes, drooping, dim + Day’s dreamy eyes from us; + Ere eve has struck and furled + The beamy-textured tent transpicuous, + Of webbèd coerule wrought and woven calms, + Whence has paced forth the lambent-footed sun. + And Thou disclose my flower of song upcurled, + Who from Thy fair irradiant palms + Scatterest all love and loveliness as alms; + Yea, Holy One, + Who coin’st Thyself to beauty for the world! + + _Then_, _Spring’s little children_, _your lauds do ye upraise_ + _To Sylvia_, _O Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_! + _Your lovesome labours lay away_, + _And trick you out in holiday_, + _For syllabling to Sylvia_; + _And all you birds on branches_, _lave your mouths with May_, + _To bear with me this burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_. + + + +Part the First + + + THE leaves dance, the leaves sing, + The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring. + I bid them dance, + I bid them sing, + For the limpid glance + Of my ladyling; + For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring, + For God’s good grace of this ladyling! + I know in the lane, by the hedgerow track, + The long, broad grasses underneath + Are warted with rain like a toad’s knobbed back; + But here May weareth a rainless wreath. + In the new-sucked milk of the sun’s bosom + Is dabbled the mouth of the daisy-blossom; + The smouldering rosebud chars through its sheath; + The lily stirs her snowy limbs, + Ere she swims + Naked up through her cloven green, + Like the wave-born Lady of Love Hellene; + And the scattered snowdrop exquisite + Twinkles and gleams, + As if the showers of the sunny beams + Were splashed from the earth in drops of light. + Everything + That is child of Spring + Casts its bud or blossoming + Upon the stream of my delight. + + _Their voices_, _that scents are_, _now let them upraise_ + _To Sylvia_, _O Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_! + _Their lovely mother them array_, + _And prank them out in holiday_, + _For syllabling to Sylvia_; + _And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_, + _To bear with me this burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_. + + +2. + + + While thus I stood in mazes bound + Of vernal sorcery, + I heard a dainty dubious sound, + As of goodly melody; + Which first was faint as if in swound, + Then burst so suddenly + In warring concord all around, + That, whence this thing might be, + To see + The very marrow longed in me! + It seemed of air, it seemed of ground, + And never any witchery + Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string, + Made such dulcet ravishing. + ’Twas like no earthly instrument, + Yet had something of them all + In its rise, and in its fall; + As if in one sweet consort there were blent + Those archetypes celestial + Which our endeavouring instruments recall. + So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain + To heavenly viols, that again + —Aching with music—wailed back pain; + Regals release their notes, which rise + Welling, like tears from heart to eyes; + And the harp thrills with thronging sighs. + Horns in mellow flattering + Parley with the cithern-string:— + Hark!—the floating, long-drawn note + Woos the throbbing cithern-string! + + _Their pretty_, _pretty prating those citherns sure upraise_ + _For homage unto Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_: + _Those flutes do flute their vowelled lay_, + _Their lovely languid language say_, + _For lisping to Sylvia_; + _Those viols’ lissom bowings break the heart of May_, + _And harps harp their burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_. + + +3. + + + Now at that music and that mirth + Rose, as ’twere, veils from earth; + And I spied + How beside + Bud, bell, bloom, an elf + Stood, or was the flower itself + ’Mid radiant air + All the fair + Frequence swayed in irised wavers. + Some against the gleaming rims + Their bosoms prest + Of the kingcups, to the brims + Filled with sun, and their white limbs + Bathèd in those golden lavers; + Some on the brown, glowing breast + Of that Indian maid, the pansy, + (Through its tenuous veils confest + Of swathing light), in a quaint fancy + Tied her knot of yellow favours; + Others dared open draw + Snapdragon’s dreadful jaw: + Some, just sprung from out the soil, + Sleeked and shook their rumpled fans + Dropt with sheen + Of moony green; + Others, not yet extricate, + On their hands leaned their weight, + And writhed them free with mickle toil, + Still folded in their veiny vans: + And all with an unsought accord + Sang together from the sward; + Whence had come, and from sprites + Yet unseen, those delights, + As of tempered musics blent, + Which had given me such content. + For haply our best instrument, + Pipe or cithern, stopped or strung, + Mimics but some spirit tongue. + + _Their amiable voices_, _I bid them upraise_ + _To Sylvia_, _O Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_; + _Their lovesome labours laid away_, + _To linger out this holiday_ + _In syllabling to Sylvia_; + _While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_, + _To bear with me this burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_. + + +4. + + + Next I saw, wonder-whist, + How from the atmosphere a mist, + So it seemed, slow uprist; + And, looking from those elfin swarms, + I was ’ware + How the air + Was all populous with forms + Of the Hours, floating down, + Like Nereids through a watery town. + Some, with languors of waved arms, + Fluctuous oared their flexile way; + Some were borne half resupine + On the aërial hyaline, + Their fluid limbs and rare array + Flickering on the wind, as quivers + Trailing weed in running rivers; + And others, in far prospect seen, + Newly loosed on this terrene, + Shot in piercing swiftness came, + With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame. + As crystálline ice in water, + Lay in air each faint daughter; + Inseparate (or but separate dim) + Circumfused wind from wind-like vest, + Wind-like vest from wind-like limb. + But outward from each lucid breast, + When some passion left its haunt, + Radiate surge of colour came, + Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant, + Dying all the filmy frame. + With some sweet tenderness they would + Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold; + Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold, + Would sweep them as the sun and wind’s joined flood + Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea; + Or they would glow enamouredly + Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood; + Or with mantling poetry + Curd to the tincture which the opal hath, + Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath. + So paled they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously. + + _Their chanting_, _soon fading_, _let them_, _too_, _upraise_ + _For homage unto Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_; + _Weave with suave float their wavèd way_, + _And colours take of holiday_, + _For syllabling to Sylvia_; + _And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_, + _To bear with me this burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_. + + +5. + + + Then, through those translucencies, + As grew my senses clearer clear, + Did I see, and did I hear, + How under an elm’s canopy + Wheeled a flight of Dryades + Murmuring measured melody. + Gyre in gyre their treading was, + Wheeling with an adverse flight, + In twi-circle o’er the grass, + These to left, and those to right; + All the band + Linkèd by each other’s hand; + Decked in raiment stainèd as + The blue-helmèd aconite. + And they advance with flutter, with grace, + To the dance + Moving on with a dainty pace, + As blossoms mince it on river swells. + Over their heads their cymbals shine, + Round each ankle gleams a twine + Of twinkling bells— + Tune twirled golden from their cells. + Every step was a tinkling sound, + As they glanced in their dancing-ground, + Clouds in cluster with such a sailing + Float o’er the light of the wasting moon, + As the cloud of their gliding veiling + Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune. + There was the clash of their cymbals clanging, + Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet; + And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging, + Hovering round their dancing so fleet.— + I stirred, I rustled more than meet; + Whereat they broke to the left and right, + With eddying robes like aconite + Blue of helm; + And I beheld to the foot o’ the elm. + + _They have not tripped those dances_, _betrayed to my gaze_, + _To glad the heart of Sylvia_, _beholding of their maze_; + _Through barky walls have slid away_, + _And tricked them in their holiday_, + _For other than for Sylvia_; + _While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_, + _And bear with me this burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_. + + +6. + + + Where its umbrage was enrooted, + Sat white-suited, + Sat green-amiced, and bare-footed, + Spring amid her minstrelsy; + There she sat amid her ladies, + Where the shade is + Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades’ + Gloom fell thwart Persephone. + Dewy buds were interstrown + Through her tresses hanging down, + And her feet + Were most sweet, + Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown. + A throng of children like to flowers were sown + About the grass beside, or clomb her knee: + I looked who were that favoured company. + And one there stood + Against the beamy flood + Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance, + Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance + Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face; + As see I might + Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun + Dispread its gracile curls of light + I knew what chosen child was there in place! + I knew there might no brows be, save of one, + With such Hesperian fulgence compassèd, + Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head. + + _O Spring’s little children_, _more loud your lauds upraise_, + _For this is even Sylvia_, _with her sweet_, _feat ways_! + _Your lovesome labours lay away_, + _And prank you out in holiday_, + _For syllabling to Sylvia_; + _And all you birds on branches_, _lave your mouths with May_, + _To bear with me this burthen_ + _For singing to Sylvia_! + + +7. + + + Spring, goddess, is it thou, desirèd long? + And art thou girded round with this young train?— + If ever I did do thee ease in song, + Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain, + And list thou to one plain. + Oh, keep still in thy train + After the years when others therefrom fade, + This tiny, well-belovèd maid! + To whom the gate of my heart’s fortalice, + With all which in it is, + And the shy self who doth therein immew him + ’Gainst what loud leagurers battailously woo him, + I, bribèd traitor to him, + Set open for one kiss. + + _Then suffer_, _Spring_, _thy children_, _that lauds they should + upraise_ + _To Sylvia_, _this Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_; + _Their lovely labours lay away_, + _And trick them out in holiday_, + _For syllabling to Sylvia_; + _And that all birds on branches lave their mouths with May_, + _To bear with me this burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_. + + +8. + + + A kiss? for a child’s kiss? + Aye, goddess, even for this. + Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far, + Once—in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt + My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant— + Forlorn, and faint, and stark, + I had endured through watches of the dark + The abashless inquisition of each star, + Yea, was the outcast mark + Of all those heavenly passers’ scrutiny; + Stood bound and helplessly + For Time to shoot his barbèd minutes at me; + Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour + In night’s slow-wheelèd car; + Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length + From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength, + I waited the inevitable last. + Then there came past + A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower + Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, + And through the city-streets blown withering. + She passed,—O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!— + And of her own scant pittance did she give, + That I might eat and live: + Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive. + Therefore I kissed in thee + The heart of Childhood, so divine for me; + And her, through what sore ways, + And what unchildish days, + Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive. + Therefore I kissed in thee + Her, child! and innocency, + And spring, and all things that have gone from me, + And that shall never be; + All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss, + Came with thee to my kiss. + And ah! so long myself had strayed afar + From child, and woman, and the boon earth’s green, + And all wherewith life’s face is fair beseen; + Journeying its journey bare + Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun + Unkissed of one; + Almost I had forgot + The healing harms, + And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that + Authentic cestus of two girdling arms: + And I remembered not + The subtle sanctities which dart + From childish lips’ unvalued precious brush, + Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push + Between the loosening fibres of the heart. + Then, that thy little kiss + Should be to me all this, + Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat; + Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat! + And straightway charts me out the empyreal air. + Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth + Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth: + And howso thou and I may be disjoint, + Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point + Over the covert where + Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her! + + (_Soul_, _hush these sad numbers_, _too sad to upraise_ + _In hymning bright Sylvia_, _unlearn’d in such ways_! + _Our mournful moods lay we away_, + _And prank our thoughts in holiday_, + _For syllabling to Sylvia_; + _When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_, + _To bear with us this burthen_, + _For singing to Sylvia_!) + + +9. + + + Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made reply: + “O lover of me and all my progeny, + For grace to you + I take her ever to my retinue. + Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art + Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising + Touch I lay upon thy heart. + Thy soul’s fair shape + In my unfading mantle’s green I drape, + And thy white mind shall rest by my devising + A Gideon-fleece amid life’s dusty drouth. + If Even burst yon globèd yellow grape + (Which is the sun to mortals’ sealèd sight) + Against her stainèd mouth; + Or if white-handed light + Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools, + Still lucencies and cools, + Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams; + Like to the sign which led the Israelite, + Thy soul, through day or dark, + A visible brightness on the chosen ark + Of thy sweet body and pure, + Shall it assure, + With auspice large and tutelary gleams, + Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams.” + + _Cease_, _Spring’s little children_, _now cease your lauds to raise_; + _That dream is past_, _and Sylvia_, _with her sweet_, _feat ways_. + _Our lovèd labour_, _laid away_, + _Is smoothly ended_; _said our say_, + _Our syllable to Sylvia_. + _Make sweet_, _you birds on branches_! _make sweet your mouths with + May_! + _But borne is this burthen_, + _Sung unto Sylvia_. + + + +Part the Second + + + AND now, thou elder nursling of the nest; + Ere all the intertangled west + Be one magnificence + Of multitudinous blossoms that o’errun + The flaming brazen bowl o’ the burnished sun + Which they do flower from, + How shall I ’stablish _thy_ memorial? + Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come + To plead in my defence + For loving thee at all? + I who can scarcely speak my fellows’ speech, + Love their love, or mine own love to them teach; + A bastard barred from their inheritance, + Who seem, in this dim shape’s uneasy nook, + Some sun-flower’s spirit which by luckless chance + Has mournfully its tenement mistook; + When it were better in its right abode, + Heartless and happy lackeying its god. + How com’st thou, little tender thing of white, + Whose very touch full scantly me beseems, + How com’st thou resting on my vaporous dreams, + Kindling a wraith there of earth’s vernal green? + Even so as I have seen, + In night’s aërial sea with no wind blust’rous, + A ribbèd tract of cloudy malachite + Curve a shored crescent wide; + And on its slope marge shelving to the night + The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous + Medusa newly washed up from the tide, + Lay in an oozy pool of its own deliquious light. + + Yet hear how my excuses may prevail, + Nor, tender white orb, be thou opposite! + Life and life’s beauty only hold their revels + In the abysmal ocean’s luminous levels. + There, like the phantasms of a poet pale, + The exquisite marvels sail: + Clarified silver; greens and azures frail + As if the colours sighed themselves away, + And blent in supersubtile interplay + As if they swooned into each other’s arms; + Repured vermilion, + Like ear-tips ’gainst the sun; + And beings that, under night’s swart pinion, + Make every wave upon the harbour-bars + A beaten yolk of stars. + But where day’s glance turns baffled from the deeps, + Die out those lovely swarms; + And in the immense profound no creature glides or creeps. + + Love and love’s beauty only hold their revels + In life’s familiar, penetrable levels: + What of its ocean-floor? + I dwell there evermore. + From almost earliest youth + I raised the lids o’ the truth, + And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight; + Ever I knew me Beauty’s eremite, + In antre of this lowly body set. + Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul. + Nathless I not forget + How I have, even as the anchorite, + I too, imperishing essences that console. + Under my ruined passions, fallen and sere, + The wild dreams stir like little radiant girls, + Whom in the moulted plumage of the year + Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls. + Yet, though their dedicated amorist, + How often do I bid my visions hist, + Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills; + Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist + Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills: + And their tears wash them lovelier than before, + That from grief’s self our sad delight grows more, + Fair are the soul’s uncrispèd calms, indeed, + Endiapered with many a spiritual form + Of blosmy-tinctured weed; + But scarce itself is conscious of the store + Suckled by it, and only after storm + Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore. + To this end my deeps are stirred; + And I deem well why life unshared + Was ordainèd me of yore. + In pairing-time, we know, the bird + Kindles to its deepmost splendour, + And the tender + Voice is tenderest in its throat; + Were its love, for ever nigh it, + Never by it, + It might keep a vernal note, + The crocean and amethystine + In their pristine + Lustre linger on its coat. + Therefore must my song-bower lone be, + That my tone be + Fresh with dewy pain alway; + She, who scorns my dearest care ta’en, + An uncertain + Shadow of the sprite of May. + And is my song sweet, as they say? + ’Tis sweet for one whose voice has no reply, + Save silence’s sad cry: + And are its plumes a burning bright array? + They burn for an unincarnated eye + A bubble, charioteered by the inward breath + Which, ardorous for its own invisible lure, + Urges me glittering to aërial death, + I am rapt towards that bodiless paramour; + Blindly the uncomprehended tyranny + Obeying of my heart’s impetuous might. + The earth and all its planetary kin, + Starry buds tangled in the whirling hair + That flames round the Phoebean wassailer, + Speed no more ignorant, more predestined flight, + Than I, _her_ viewless tresses netted in. + As some most beautiful one, with lovely taunting, + Her eyes of guileless guile o’ercanopies, + Does her hid visage bow, + And miserly your covetous gaze allow, + By inchmeal, coy degrees, + Saying—“Can you see me now?” + Yet from the mouth’s reflex you guess the wanting + Smile of the coming eyes + In all their upturned grievous witcheries, + Before that sunbreak rise; + And each still hidden feature view within + Your mind, as eager scrutinies detail + The moon’s young rondure through the shamefast veil + Drawn to her gleaming chin: + After this wise, + From the enticing smile of earth and skies + I dream my unknown Fair’s refusèd gaze; + And guessingly her love’s close traits devise, + Which she with subtile coquetries + Through little human glimpses slow displays, + Cozening my mateless days + By sick, intolerable delays. + And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways; + And so my touch, to golden poesies + Turning love’s bread, is bought at hunger’s price. + So,—in the inextinguishable wars + Which roll song’s Orient on the sullen night + Whose ragged banners in their own despite + Take on the tinges of the hated light,— + So Sultan Phoebus has his Janizars. + But if mine unappeasèd cicatrices + Might get them lawful ease; + Were any gentle passion hallowed me, + Who must none other breath of passion feel + Save such as winnows to the fledgèd heel + The tremulous Paradisal plumages; + The conscious sacramental trees + Which ever be + Shaken celestially, + Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my love for thee. + Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love! + Upon the ending of my deadly night + (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight + Is all that any mortal knows thereof), + Thou wert to me that earnest of day’s light, + When, like the back of a gold-mailèd saurian + Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime, + The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian + Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime. + Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea + Whence they had rescued me, + With faint and painful pulses was I lying; + Not yet discerning well + If I had ’scaped, or were an icicle, + Whose thawing is its dying. + Like one who sweats before a despot’s gate, + Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate, + And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait; + And all so sickened is his countenance, + The courtiers buzz, “Lo, doomed!” and look at him askance:— + At Fate’s dread portal then + Even so stood I, I ken, + Even so stood I, between a joy and fear, + And said to mine own heart, “Now if the end be here!” + + They say, Earth’s beauty seems completest + To them that on their death-beds rest; + Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest + Just ere she clasp us to her breast. + And I,—now _my_ Earth’s countenance grew bright, + Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night? + But whileas on such dubious bed I lay, + One unforgotten day, + As a sick child waking sees + Wide-eyed daisies + Gazing on it from its hand, + Slipped there for its dear amazes; + So between thy father’s knees + I saw _thee_ stand, + And through my hazes + Of pain and fear thine eyes’ young wonder shone. + Then, as flies scatter from a carrion, + Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke + Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke, + Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn: + The heart which I had questioned spoke, + A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,— + “I take the omen of this face of dawn!” + And with the omen to my heart cam’st thou. + Even with a spray of tears + That one light draft was fixed there for the years. + + And now?— + The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet! + Beneath my casual feet. + With rainfall as the lea, + The day is drenched with thee; + In little exquisite surprises + Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises + From sudden places, + Under the common traces + Of my most lethargied and customed paces. + + As an Arab journeyeth + Through a sand of Ayaman, + Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue, + Lagging by his side along; + And a rusty-wingèd Death + Grating its low flight before, + Casting ribbèd shadows o’er + The blank desert, blank and tan: + He lifts by hap toward where the morning’s roots are + His weary stare,— + Sees, although they plashless mutes are, + Set in a silver air + Fountains of gelid shoots are, + Making the daylight fairest fair; + Sees the palm and tamarind + Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;— + A sight like innocence when one has sinned! + A green and maiden freshness smiling there, + While with unblinking glare + The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her. + + ’Tis a vision: + Yet the greeneries Elysian + He has known in tracts afar; + Thus the enamouring fountains flow, + Those the very palms that grow, + By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.— + + Such a watered dream has tarried + Trembling on my desert arid; + Even so + Its lovely gleamings + Seemings show + Of things not seemings; + And I gaze, + Knowing that, beyond my ways, + Verily + All these _are_, for these are she. + Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek + On the burning brow of the sick earth, + Sick with death, and sick with birth, + Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, + Than thy shadow soothes this weak + And distempered being of mine. + In all I work, my hand includeth thine; + Thou rushest down in every stream + Whose passion frets my spirit’s deepening gorge; + Unhood’st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream; + Thou swing’st the hammers of my forge; + As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, + Moves all the labouring surges of the world. + Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, + And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, + As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree. + This poor song that sings of thee, + This fragile song, is but a curled + Shell outgathered from thy sea, + And murmurous still of its nativity. + Princess of Smiles! + Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles! + Cunning pit for gazers’ senses, + Overstrewn with innocences! + Purities gleam white like statues + In the fair lakes of thine eyes, + And I watch the sparkles that use + There to rise, + Knowing these + Are bubbles from the calyces + Of the lovely thoughts that breathe + Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit’s floor beneath. + + O thou most dear! + Who art thy sex’s complex harmony + God-set more facilely; + To thee may love draw near + Without one blame or fear, + Unchidden save by his humility: + Thou Perseus’ Shield! wherein I view secure + The mirrored Woman’s fateful-fair allure! + Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, + As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free; + With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind + The barèd limbs of the rebukeless mind. + Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree, + With which indissolubly + The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole; + Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole: + Who wear’st thy femineity + Light as entrailèd blossoms, that shalt find + It erelong silver shackles unto thee. + Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul;— + As hoarded in the vine + Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine, + As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:— + In whom the mystery which lures and sunders, + Grapples and thrusts apart; endears, estranges; + —The dragon to its own Hesperides— + Is gated under slow-revolving changes, + Manifold doors of heavy-hingèd years. + So once, ere Heaven’s eyes were filled with wonders + To see Laughter rise from Tears, + Lay in beauty not yet mighty, + Conchèd in translucencies, + The antenatal Aphrodite, + Caved magically under magic seas; + Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas. + + “Whose sex is in thy soul!” + What think we of thy soul? + Which has no parts, and cannot grow, + Unfurled not from an embryo; + Born of full stature, lineal to control; + And yet a pigmy’s yoke must undergo. + Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind, + With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind; + Must be obsequious to the body’s powers, + Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways; + Must do obeisance to the days, + And wait the little pleasure of the hours; + Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be + Captive in statuted minority! + So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee. + So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule, + And wisdom weaves itself i’ the loom o’ the fool. + The splendent sun no splendour can display, + Till on gross things he dash his broken ray, + From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray. + Did not obstruction’s vessel hem it in, + Force were not force, would spill itself in vain + We know the Titan by his champèd chain. + Stay is heat’s cradle, it is rocked therein, + And by check’s hand is burnished into light; + If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright? + God’s Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin; + Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well, + Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell. + The heavens decree + All power fulfil itself as soul in thee. + For supreme Spirit subject was to clay, + And Law from its own servants learned a law, + And Light besought a lamp unto its way, + And Awe was reined in awe, + At one small house of Nazareth; + And Golgotha + Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath, + And Life do homage for its crown to death. + + So is all power, as soul in thee increased! + But, knowing this, in knowledge’s despite + I fret against the law severe that stains + Thy spirit with eclipse; + When—as a nymph’s carven head sweet water drips, + For others oozing so the cool delight + Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone— + Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains. + Memnonian lips! + Smitten with singing from thy mother’s east, + And murmurous with music not their own: + Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone + A passionless statue stands. + Oh, pardon, innocent one! + Pardon at thine unconscious hands! + “Murmurous with music not their own,” I say? + And in that saying how do I missay, + When from the common sands + Of poorest common speech of common day + Thine accents sift the golden musics out! + And ah, we poets, I misdoubt, + Are little more than thou! + We speak a lesson taught we know not how, + And what it is that from us flows + The hearer better than the utterer knows. + + Thou canst foreshape thy word; + The poet is not lord + Of the next syllable may come + With the returning pendulum; + And what he plans to-day in song, + To-morrow sings it in another tongue. + Where the last leaf fell from his bough, + He knows not if a leaf shall grow, + Where he sows he doth not reap, + He reapeth where he did not sow; + He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep + To meet him on his waking way. + Vision will mate him not by law and vow: + Disguised in life’s most hodden-grey, + By the most beaten road of everyday + She waits him, unsuspected and unknown. + The hardest pang whereon + He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob’s stone. + In the most iron crag his foot can tread + A Dream may strew her bed, + And suddenly his limbs entwine, + And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might through brine. + But, unlike those feigned temptress-ladies who + In guerdon of a night the lover slew, + When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled, + Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead! + And, though he cherisheth + The babe most strangely born from out her death, + Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe,— + It is not she! + + Yet, even as the air is rumorous of fray + Before the first shafts of the sun’s onslaught + From gloom’s black harness splinter, + And Summer move on Winter + With the trumpet of the March, and the pennon of the May; + As gesture outstrips thought; + So, haply, toyer with ethereal strings! + Are thy blind repetitions of high things + The murmurous gnats whose aimless hoverings + Reveal song’s summer in the air; + The outstretched hand, which cannot thought declare, + Yet is thought’s harbinger. + These strains the way for thine own strains prepare; + We feel the music moist upon this breeze, + And hope the congregating poesies. + Sundered yet by thee from us + Wait, with wild eyes luminous, + All thy wingèd things that are to be; + They flit against thee, Gate of Ivory! + They clamour on the portress Destiny,— + “Set her wide, so we may issue through! + Our vans are quick for that they have to do!” + Suffer still your young desire; + Your plumes but bicker at the tips with fire, + Tarry their kindling; they will beat the higher. + And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat + Idly the music from thy mother caught; + Not vainly has she wrought, + Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret + Of her aërial mind, for thy weak feet, + Let down the silken ladder of her thought. + She bare thee with a double pain, + Of the body and the spirit; + Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta’en, + Thy diviner weeds inherit! + The precious streams which through thy young lips roll + Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul: + Where sprites of so essential kind + Set their paces, + Surely they shall leave behind + The green traces + Of their sportance in the mind, + And thou shalt, ere we well may know it, + Turn that daintiness, a poet,— + Elfin-ring + Where sweet fancies foot and sing. + So it may be, so it _shall_ be,— + Oh, take the prophecy from me! + What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time, + This crescent marvel of his hands + Carveth all too painfully, + And I who prophesy shall never see? + What if the niche of its predestined rhyme, + Its aching niche, too long expectant stands? + Yet shall he after sore delays + On some exultant day of days + The white enshrouding childhood raise + From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze; + While we (but ’mongst that happy “we” + The prophet cannot be!) + While we behold with no astonishments, + With that serene fulfilment of delight + Wherewith we view the sight + When the stars pitch the golden tents + Of their high campment on the plains of night. + Why should amazement be our satellite? + What wonder in such things? + If angels have hereditary wings, + If not by Salic law is handed down + The poet’s crown, + To thee, born in the purple of the throne, + The laurel must belong: + Thou, in thy mother’s right + Descendant of Castalian-chrismed kings— + O Princess of the Blood of Song! + + Peace; too impetuously have I been winging + Toward vaporous heights which beckon and beguile + I sink back, saddened to my inmost mind; + Even as I list a-dream that mother singing + The poesy of sweet tone, and sadden, while + Her voice is cast in troubled wake behind + The keel of her keen spirit. Thou art enshrined + In a too primal innocence for this eye— + Intent on such untempered radiancy— + Not to be pained; my clay can scarce endure + Ungrieved the effluence near of essences so pure. + Therefore, little, tender maiden, + Never be thou overshaden + With a mind whose canopy + Would shut out the sky from thee; + Whose tangled branches intercept Heaven’s light: + I will not feed my unpastured heart + On thee, green pleasaunce as thou art, + To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white. + The water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet + Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk + Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit? + If through long fret and irk + Thine eyes within their browed recesses were + Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair; + Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth! + With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth; + Our contact might run smooth. + But life’s Eoan dews still moist thy ringèd hair; + Dian’s chill finger-tips + Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips; + The flying fringes of the sun’s cloak frush + The fragile leaves which on those warm lips blush; + And joy only lurks retirèd + In the dim gloaming of thine irid. + Then since my love drags this poor shadow, me, + And one without the other may not be, + From both I guard thee free. + It still is much, yes, it is much, + Only—my dream!—to love my love of thee; + And it is much, yes, it is much, + In hands which thou hast touched to feel thy touch + In voices which have mingled with thine own + To hear a double tone. + As anguish, for supreme expression prest, + Borrows its saddest tongue from jest, + Thou hast of absence so create + A presence more importunate; + And thy voice pleads its sweetest suit + When it is mute. + I thank the once accursèd star + Which did me teach + To make of Silence my familiar, + Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech, + Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear, + Cast off, fall to that pale attendant’s share; + And thank the gift which made my mind + A shadow-world, wherethrough the shadows wind + Of all the loved and lovely of my kind. + + Like a maiden Saxon, folden, + As she flits, in moon-drenched mist; + Whose curls streaming flaxen-golden, + By the misted moonbeams kist, + Dispread their filmy floating silk + Like honey steeped in milk: + So, vague goldenness remote, + Through my thoughts I watch thee float. + When the snake summer casts her blazoned skin + We find it at the turn of autumn’s path, + And think it summer that rewinded hath, + Joying therein; + And this enamouring slough of thee, mine elf, + I take it for thyself; + Content. Content? Yea, title it content. + The very loves that belt thee must prevent + My love, I know, with their legitimacy: + As the metallic vapours, that are swept + Athwart the sun, in his light intercept + The very hues + Which _their_ conflagrant elements effuse. + But, my love, my heart, my fair, + That only I should see thee rare, + Or tent to the hid core thy rarity,— + This were a mournfulness more piercing far + Than that those other loves my own must bar, + Or thine for others leave thee none for me. + + But on a day whereof I think, + One shall dip his hand to drink + In that still water of thy soul, + And its imaged tremors race + Over thy joy-troubled face, + As the intervolved reflections roll + From a shaken fountain’s brink, + With swift light wrinkling its alcove. + From the hovering wing of Love + The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek, + Then, sweet blushet! whenas he, + The destined paramount of thy universe, + Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee, + Àscends his vermeil throne of empery, + One grace alone I seek. + Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, + Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme, + Set with a towering press of fantasies, + Drop safely down the time, + Leaving mine islèd self behind it far + Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas, + (As down the years the splendour voyages + From some long ruined and night-submergèd star), + And in thy subject sovereign’s havening heart + Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore; + Adding its wasteful more + To his own overflowing treasury. + So through his river mine shall reach thy sea, + Bearing its confluent part; + In his pulse mine shall thrill; + And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that’s still. + + Ah! help, my Dæmon that hast served me well! + Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace! + I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight, + As, poised upon this unprevisioned height, + I lift into its place + The utmost aery traceried pinnacle. + So; it is builded, the high tenement, + —God grant—to mine intent! + Most like a palace of the Occident, + Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze, + Its mounded blaze, + And washèd by the sunset’s rosy waves, + Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves. + Yet wail, my spirits, wail! + So few therein to enter shall prevail! + Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire + A dragon baulked, with involuted spire, + And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire. + For at the elfin portal hangs a horn + Which none can wind aright + Save the appointed knight + Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born. + All others stray forlorn, + Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled + Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously + In half obscurity; + With mystic images, inhuman, cold, + That flameless torches hold. + But who can wind that horn of might + (The horn of dead Heliades) aright,— + Straight + Open for him shall roll the conscious gate; + And light leap up from all the torches there, + And life leap up in every torchbearer, + And the stone faces kindle in the glow, + And into the blank eyes the irids grow, + And through the dawning irids ambushed meanings show. + Illumined this wise on, + He threads securely the far intricacies, + With brede from Heaven’s wrought vesture overstrewn; + Swift Tellus’ purfled tunic, girt upon + With the blown chlamys of her fluttering seas; + And the freaked kirtle of the pearlèd moon: + Until he gain the structure’s core, where stands— + A toil of magic hands— + The unbodied spirit of the sorcerer, + Most strangely rare, + As is a vision remembered in the noon; + Unbodied, yet to mortal seeing clear, + Like sighs exhaled in eager atmosphere. + From human haps and mutabilities + It rests exempt, beneath the edifice + To which itself gave rise; + Sustaining centre to the bubble of stone + Which, breathed from it, exists by it alone. + Yea, ere Saturnian earth her child consumes, + And I lie down with outworn ossuaries, + Ere death’s grim tongue anticipates the tomb’s + _Siste viator_, in this storied urn + My living heart is laid to throb and burn, + Till end be ended, and till ceasing cease. + + And thou by whom this strain hath parentage; + Wantoner between the yet untreacherous claws + Of newly-whelped existence! ere he pause, + What gift to thee can yield the archimage? + For coming seasons’ frets + What aids, what amulets, + What softenings, or what brightenings? + As Thunder writhes the lash of his long lightnings + About the growling heads of the brute main + Foaming at mouth, until it wallow again + In the scooped oozes of its bed of pain; + So all the gnashing jaws, the leaping heads + Of hungry menaces, and of ravening dreads, + Of pangs + Twitch-lipped, with quivering nostrils and immitigate fangs, + I scourge beneath the torment of my charms + That their repentless nature fear to work thee harms. + And as yon Apollonian harp-player, + Yon wandering psalterist of the sky, + With flickering strings which scatter melody, + The silver-stolèd damsels of the sea, + Or lake, or fount, or stream, + Enchants from their ancestral heaven of waters + To Naiad it through the unfrothing air; + My song enchants so out of undulous dream + The glimmering shapes of its dim-tressèd daughters, + And missions each to be thy minister. + Saying; “O ye, + The organ-stops of being’s harmony; + The blushes on existence’s pale face, + Lending it sudden grace; + Without whom we should but guess Heaven’s worth + By blank negations of this sordid earth, + (So haply to the blind may light + Be but gloom’s undetermined opposite); + Ye who are thus as the refracting air + Whereby we see Heaven’s sun before it rise + Above the dull line of our mortal skies; + As breathing on the strainèd ear that sighs + From comrades viewless unto strainèd eyes, + Soothing our terrors in the lampless night; + Ye who can make this world where all is deeming + What world ye list, being arbiters of seeming; + Attend upon her ways, benignant powers! + Unroll ye life a carpet for her feet, + And cast ye down before them blossomy hours, + Until her going shall be clogged with sweet! + All dear emotions whose new-bathèd hair, + Still streaming from the soul, in love’s warm air + Smokes with a mist of tender fantasies; + All these, + And all the heart’s wild growths which, swiftly bright, + Spring up the crimson agarics of a night, + No pain in withering, yet a joy arisen; + And all thin shapes more exquisitely rare, + More subtly fair, + Than these weak ministering words have spell to prison + Within the magic circle of this rhyme; + And all the fays who in our creedless clime + Have sadly ceased + Bearing to other children childhood’s proper feast; + Whose robes are fluent crystal, crocus-hued, + Whose wings are wind a-fire, whose mantles wrought + From spray that falling rainbows shake + These, ye familiars to my wizard thought, + Make things of journal custom unto her; + With lucent feet imbrued, + If young Day tread, a glorious vintager, + The wine-press of the purple-foamèd east; + Or round the nodding sun, flush-faced and sunken, + His wild bacchantes drunken + Reel, with rent woofs a-flaunt, their westering rout. + —But lo! at length the day is lingered out, + At length my Ariel lays his viol by; + We sing no more to thee, child, he and I; + The day is lingered out: + In slow wreaths folden + Around yon censer, spherèd, golden, + Vague Vesper’s fumes aspire; + And glimmering to eclipse + The long laburnum drips + Its honey of wild flame, its jocund spilth of fire. + + _Now pass your ways_, _fair bird_, _and pass your ways_, + _If you will_; + _I have you through the days_! + _A flit or hold you still_, + _And perch you where you list_ + _On what wrist_,— + _You are mine through the times_! + _I have caught you fast for ever in a tangle of sweet rhymes_. + _And in your young maiden morn_, + _You may scorn_, + _But you must be_ + _Bound and sociate to me_; + _With this thread from out the tomb my dead hand shall tether thee_! + + * * * * * + + Go, sister-songs, to that sweet sister-pair + For whom I have your frail limbs fashionèd, + And framèd feateously;— + For whom I have your frail limbs fashionèd + With how great shamefastness and how great dread, + Knowing you frail, but not if you be fair, + Though framèd feateously; + Go unto them from me. + Go from my shadow to their sunshine sight, + Made for all sights’ delight; + Go like twin swans that oar the surgy storms + To bate with pennoned snows in candent air: + Nigh with abasèd head, + Yourselves linked sisterly, that sister-pair, + And go in presence there; + Saying—“Your young eyes cannot see our forms, + Nor read the yearning of our looks aright; + But time shall trail the veilings from our hair, + And cleanse your seeing with his euphrasy, + (Yea, even your bright seeing make more bright, + Which is all sights’ delight), + And ye shall know us for what things we be. + + “Whilom, within a poet’s calyxed heart, + A dewy love we trembled all apart; + Whence it took rise + Beneath your radiant eyes, + Which misted it to music. We must long, + A floating haze of silver subtile song, + Await love-laden + Above each maiden + The appointed hour that o’er the hearts of you— + As vapours into dew + Unweave, whence they were wove,— + Shall turn our loosening musics back to love.” + + + + +Inscription + + + WHEN the last stir of bubbling melodies + Broke as my chants sank underneath the wave + Of dulcitude, but sank again to rise + Where man’s embaying mind those waters lave, + (For music hath its Oceanides + Flexuously floating through their parent seas, + And such are these), + I saw a vision—or may it be + The effluence of a dear desired reality? + I saw two spirits high,— + Two spirits, dim within the silver smoke + Which is for ever woke + By snowing lights of fountained Poesy. + Two shapes they were familiar as love; + They were those souls, whereof + One twines from finest gracious daily things, + Strong, constant, noticeless, as are heart-strings + The golden cage wherein this song-bird sings; + And the other’s sun gives hue to all my flowers, + Which else pale flowers of Tartarus would grow, + Where ghosts watch ghosts of blooms in ghostly bowers;— + For we do know + The hidden player by his harmonies, + And by my thoughts I know what still hands thrill the keys. + + And to these twain—as from the mind’s abysses + All thoughts draw toward the awakening heart’s sweet kisses, + With proffer of their wreathen fantasies,— + Even so to these + I saw how many brought their garlands fair, + Whether of song, or simple love, they were,— + Of simple love, that makes best garlands fair. + But one I marked who lingered still behind, + As for such souls no seemly gift had he: + He was not of their strain, + Nor worthy of so bright beings to entertain, + Nor fit compeer for such high company. + Yet was he, surely, born to them in mind, + Their youngest nursling of the spirit’s kind. + Last stole this one, + With timid glance, of watching eyes adread, + And dropped his frightened flower when all were gone; + And where the frail flower fell, it witherèd. + But yet methought those high souls smiled thereon; + As when a child, upstraining at your knees + Some fond and fancied nothings, says, “I give you these!” + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER SONGS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1731-0.txt or 1731-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/3/1731 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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