Francis Thompson

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 estrangčd faces,
That miss the many-splendored 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 to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

To A Snowflake

WHAT heart could have thought you? --
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapor? --
"God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapor,
To lust of His mind --
Thou could'st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost."

The Hound of Heaven

I FLED Him down the nights and down the days
    I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
    Up vistaed hopes I sped;
    And shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
    From those strong feet that followed, followed after
    But with unhurrying chase
    And unperturbčd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
    They beat, and a Voice beat,
    More instant than the feet:
"All things betray thee who betrayest me."

    I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
    Trellised with inter-twining charities,
(For though I knew His love who followčd,
    Yet was I sore adread,
Lest having Him, I should have nought beside);
But if one little casement parted wide,
    The gust of his approach would clash it to.
    Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
    And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
    Smiting for shelter on their clangčd bars,
    Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: be sudden, to Eve: be soon,
    With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over
    From this tremendous Lover!
Float thy vague veil about me lest He see!
    I tempted all His servitors but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
    Their traitorous trueness and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue,
    Clung to the whistling mane of every wind,
    But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue,
     Or whether, Thunder-driven,
    They clanged His chariot thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet --
    Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
    Still with unhurrying chase
    And unperturbe d pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
    Came on the following Feet,
    And a Voice above their beat --
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of Man or Maid.
But still within the little childrens' eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's -- share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
    Wantoning,
With our Lady Mother's vagrant tresses,
    Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dais,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
    From a chalice,
Lucent weeping out of the dayspring."
    So it was done.
I in their delicate fellowship was one.
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies,
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies,
I knew how the clouds arise,
Spumčd of the wild sea-snortings.
    All that's born or dies,
Rose and drooped with, made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine.
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart,
I laid my own to beat
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know what each other says,
These things and I; In sound I speak,
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake my drouth.
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness;
Never did any milk of hers once bless
    My thirsting mouth.
    Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
    With unperturbčd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
    And past those noisčd Feet,
    A Voice comes yet more fleet:
"Lo, naught contents thee who content'st nought Me."

Naked, I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke!
My harness, piece by piece, Thou hast hewn from me
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless, utterly.
I slept methinks, and woke.
And slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours,
And pulled my life upon me. grimed with smears,
I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yeah, faileth now even dream
The dreamer and the lute, the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies in whose blossomy twist,
I swung the Earth, a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding: cords of all too weak account
For earth, with heavy grief so overplussed.
Ah! is thy Love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must --
Designer Infinite --
Ah! must thou char the wood 'ere thou canst limn with it ?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust.
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be ?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds,
Yet ever and anon, a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity.
Those shaken mists a space unsettle,
Then round the half-glimpsečd turrets, slowly wash again.
But not 'ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal; cypress-crowned.
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields
Be dunged with rotten death ?

    Now of that long pursuit,
    Comes at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
    "And is thy Earth so marred,
    Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me.
    Strange, piteous, futile thing;
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting;
How hast thou merited --
Of all Man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot?
Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee, I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms,
All which thy childs mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home --
Rise, clasp My hand, and come."

    Halts by me that footfall --
    Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
    "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
    I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."