A Girls's Sin - In Her Eyes

Cross child! red, and frowning so?
'I, the day just over,
Gave a lock of hair to--no!
How DARE you say, my lover?'

He asked you?--Let me understand;
Come, child, let me sound it!
'Of course, he WOULD have asked it, and--
And so--somehow--he--found it.

'He told it out with great loud eyes--
Men have such little wit!
His sin I ever will chastise
Because I gave him it.

'Shameless in me the gift, alas!
In him his open bliss:
But for the privilege he has
A thousand he shall miss!

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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 swinked 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

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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:

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

To The Dead Cardinal Of Westminster

I will not perturbate
Thy Paradisal state
With praise
Of thy dead days;

To the new-heavened say, -
'Spirit, thou wert fine clay:'
This do,
Thy praise who knew.

Therefore my spirit clings
Heaven's porter by the wings,
And holds
Its gated golds

Apart, with thee to press
A private business; -
Whence,
Deign me audience.

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Assumpta Maria

Mortals, that behold a Woman,
Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun;
Who am I the heavens assume? an
All am I, and I am one.

Multitudinous ascend I,
Dreadful as a battle arrayed,
For I bear you whither tend I;
Ye are I: be undismayed!
I, the Ark that for the graven
Tables of the Law was made;
Man's own heart was one, one Heaven,
Both within my womb were laid.
For there Anteros with Eros
Heaven with man conjoin-ed was,--
Twin-stone of the Law, Ischyros,
Agios Athanatos.

I, the flesh-girt Paradises
Gardenered by the Adam new,

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Cloud's Swan-Song

There is a parable in the pathless cloud,
There's prophecy in heaven,--they did not lie,
The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud,
To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye.

A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills,
And all the glory fallen from my song,
Here do I walk among the windy hills,
The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue.

Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar
Over my soul's cold peaks; and one by one
They loose their little rain, and are no more;
And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none.

For 'tis an alien tongue, of alien things,
From all men's care, how miserably apart!
Even my friends say: 'Of what is this he sings?'
And barren is my song, and barren is my heart.

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Heard On The Mountain

From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'.

Have you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise
Up to the mountain's summit, in the presence of the skies?
Was't on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne coast?
And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed?
And there, leaned o'er the wave and o'er the immeasurableness,
Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it says!
One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicens-ed to muse,
Had drooped its wing above the beach-ed margent of the ooze,
And, plunging from the mountain height into the immensity,
Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea.
I harkened, comprehended,--never, as from those abysses,
No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as this is!

A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, confused,
Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused,
Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is
The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Judgment In Heaven

Athwart the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with his
splendid eyes;
Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of
Paradise,
Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter-tangled
relucent dyes.

The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wings
rustled his guides' cymars)
Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted each
other with handfuls of stars;
And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, by
their tethered cars.

With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured, * of Saints, his
guided steps held on
To where on the far crystelline pale * of that transtellar Heaven
there shone
The immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father's Throne.

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Corymbus For Autumn

Hearken my chant, 'tis
As a Bacchante's,
A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis!
Suffer my singing,
Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging;
Ere Winter throws
His slaking snows
In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows!
The sopped sun--toper as ever drank hard -
Stares foolish, hazed,
Rubicund, dazed,
Totty with thine October tankard.
Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet,
And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip,
And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it,
But her cheek unvow its vestalship;
Thy mists enclip
Her steel-clear circuit illuminous,
Until it crust
Rubiginous

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!