Sister Songs An Offering to Two Sisters

BY FRANCIS THOMPSON

BURNS & OATES 28, ORCHARD STREET LONDON, W.: 1908

p. iiiPREFACE

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.

p. vTo Monica and Madeline (Sylvia) Meynell

p. 1SISTER 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? p. 2At 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 p. 3Song 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!

p. 4Then, 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.

p. 5Part 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, p. 6Ere 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.

p. 72.

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. p. 8So 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; p. 9And 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 p. 10Of 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, p. 11To 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, p. 12Shot 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. p. 13So 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, p. 14These 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, p. 15Hovering 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, p. 16Where 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, p. 17Which 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, p. 18And 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, p. 19I 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; p. 20And 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, p. 21Nor 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!)

p. 229.

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 p. 23Of 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.

p. 24Part 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; p. 25When 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 p. 26As 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. p. 27Girt 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