These tidings from the vast to bring Needeth not doctor nor divine, Too well, too well My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; That dread theology alone Is mine, Most native and my own; And ever with victorious toil When I have made Of the delfic peaks dim escalade, My soul with anguish and recoil Doth like a city in an earthquake rock, As at my feet the abyss is cloven then, With deeper menace than for other men, Of my potential cousinship with mire; That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, My fearful powers retire, No longer strong, Reversing the shook banners of their song. Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, Or for a will accipitrine to pursue!-- The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew. TO MY GODCHILD--FRANCIS M. W. M. BY FRANCIS THOMPSON This labouring, vast, Tellurian galleon, Riding at anchor off the orient sun, Had broken its cable, and stood out to space Down some froze Arctic of the aerial ways: And now, back warping from the inclement main, Its vapourous shroudage drenched with icy rain, It swung into its azure roads again; When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you Lit, a white halcyon auspice, ’mid our frozen crew. To the Sun, stranger, surely you belong, Giver of golden days and golden song; Nor is it by an all-unhappy plan You bear the name of me, his constant Magian. Yet, ah! from any other that it came, Lest fated to my fate you be, as to my name. When at the first those tidings did they bring, My heart turned troubled at the ominous thing: Though well may such a title him endower, For when a poet’s prayer implores a poet’s power. The Assisian, who kept plighted faith to three, To Song, to Sanctitude, and Poverty, (In two alone of whom most singers prove A fatal faithfulness of during love!); He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken How God he could love more, he so loved men; The crown and crowned of Laura and Italy; And Fletcher’s fellow--from these, and not from me, Take you your name, and take your legacy!