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TITLE: NEW POEMS
AUTHOR: FRANCIS THOMPSON
EBOOK: E03476 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

New Poems, 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

     The sun which lit that garden wholly,
     Low and vibrant visible,
     Tempered glory woke;
     And it seem-ed solely
     Like a silver thurible
     Solemnly swung, slowly,
Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense-
       smoke.

          VIII

     But woe's me, and woe's me,
     For the secrets of her eyes!
     In my visions fearfully
     They are ever shown to be
     As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies
     Pallid-dark beneath the skies
     Of a night that is
     But one blear necropolis.
And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her
       own sighs.

          IX

     Many changes rise on
     Their phantasmal mysteries.
     They grow to an horizon
     Where earth and heaven meet;
     And like a wing that dies on
     The vague twilight-verges,
     Many a sinking dream doth fleet
     Lessening down their secrecies.
     And, as dusk with day converges,
     Their orbs are troublously
Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear
       of things to be.

          X

     There is a peak on Himalay,

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