Selected Poems of Francis Thompson

Name: Selected Poems of Francis Thompson
Author: Thompson, Francis

Thompson, Francis

English poetry

How could I know, how know
    Those laughing words when drenched with sobbing so?
    Another voice than yours, than yours, he hath!
            My dear, was 't worth his breath,
    His mighty utterance?--yet he saith, and saith!
    This dreadful Death to his own dreadfulness
            Doth dreadful wrong,
    This dreadful childish babble on his tongue!
    That iron tongue, made to speak sentences
    And wisdom insupportably complete,
    Why should it only say the long night through,
            In mimicry of you,--
            "_A cup of chocolate,
            One farthing is the rate,
    You drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw!_"

            Oh, of all sentences,
            Piercingly incomplete!
    Why did you teach that fatal mouth to draw,
            Child, impermissible awe
            From your old trivialness?
            Why have you done me this
            Most unsustainable wrong,
            And into Death's control
    Betrayed the secret places of my soul?
            Teaching him that his lips,
    Uttering their native earthquake and eclipse,
            Could never so avail
    To rend from hem to hem the ultimate veil
            Of this most desolate
    Spirit, and leave it stripped and desecrate,--
            Nay, never so have wrung
    From eyes and speech weakness unmanned, unmeet;
    As when his terrible dotage to repeat
    Its little lesson learneth at your feet;
            As when he sits among
            His sepulchres, to play
    With broken toys your hand has cast away,
    With derelict trinkets of the darling young.
    Why have you taught--that he might so complete
            His awful panoply
            From your cast playthings--why,
    This dreadful childish babble to his tongue,
            Dreadful and sweet?




 THE MAKING OF VIOLA

                I

    _The Father of Heaven._
                Spin, daughter Mary, spin,
                Twirl your wheel with silver din;
                Spin, daughter Mary, spin,
                    Spin a tress for Viola.

    _Angels._
                Spin, Queen Mary, a
                Brown tress for Viola!

                II

    _The Father of Heaven._
                Weave, hands angelical,
                Weave a woof of flesh to pall--
                Weave, hands angelical--
                    Flesh to pall our Viola.

    _Angels._
                Weave, singing brothers, a
                Velvet flesh for Viola!

               III

    _The Father of Heaven._
                Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes,
                Wood-browned pools of Paradise--
                Young Jesus, for the eyes,
                     For the eyes of Viola.

    _Angels._
                Tint, Prince Jesus, a
                Duskèd eye for Viola!

                IV

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Selected Poems of Francis Thompson

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