Francis Thompson: Verses about Evil

Can I forget her cruelty
Who, brown miracle, gave you me?
Or with unmoisted eyes think on
The proud surrender overgone,
(Lowlihead in haughty dress),
Of the tender tyranness?
And ere thou for my joy was given,
How rough the road to that blest heaven!
With what pangs I fore-expiated
Thy cold outlawry from her head;
How was I trampled and brought low,
Because her virgin neck was so;
How thralled beneath the jealous state
She stood at point to abdicate;
How sacrificed, before to me
She sacrificed her pride and thee;
How did she, struggling to abase
Herself to do me strange, sweet grace,
Enforce unwitting me to share
Her throes and abjectness with her;
Thence heightening that hour when her lover
Her grace, with trembling, should discover,
And in adoring trouble be
Humbled at her humility!
And with what pitilessness was I
After slain, to pacify
The uneasy manes of her shame,
Her haunting blushes!--Mine the blame:
What fair injustice did I rue
For what I--did not tempt her to?
Nor aught the judging maid might win
Me to assoil from HER sweet sin.
But nought were extreme punishment
For that beyond-divine content,
When my with-thee-first-giddied eyes
Stooped ere their due on Paradise!
O hour of consternating bliss
When I heavened me in thy kiss;
Thy softness (daring overmuch!)
Profan-ed with my licensed touch;
Worshipped, with tears, on happy knee,
Her doubt, her trust, her shyness free,
Her timorous audacity!

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!

'His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed,
Call up a burning blot:
I hate him, for his shameful craft
That asked by asking not!'

Luckless boy! and all for hair
He never asked, you said?
'Not just--but then he gazed--I swear
He gazed it from my head!

'His silence on my cheek like breath
I felt in subtle way;
More sweet than aught another saith
Was what he did not say.

'He'll think me vanquished, for this lapse,
Who should be above him;
Perhaps he'll think me light; perhaps--
Perhaps he'll think I--love him!

'Are his eyes conscious and elate,
I hate him that I blush;
Or are they innocent, still I hate--
They mean a thing's to hush.

'Before he nought amiss could do,
Now all things show amiss;
'Twas all my fault, I know that true,
But all my fault was his.

'I hate him for his mute distress,
'Tis insult he should care!
Because my heart's all humbleness,
All pride is in my air.

'With him, each favour that I do
Is bold suit's hallowing text;
Each gift a bastion levelled, to
The next one and the next.

'Each wish whose grant may him befall
Is clogged by those withstood;
He trembles, hoping one means all,
And I, lest perhaps it should.

'Behind me piecemeal gifts I cast,
My fleeing self to save;
And that's the thing must go at last,
For that's the thing he'd have.

'My lock the enforc-ed steel did grate
To cut; its root-thrills came
Down to my bosom. It might sate
His lust for my poor shame!

'His sifted dainty this should be
For a score ambrosial years!
But his too much humility
Alarums me with fears.

'My gracious grace a breach he counts
For graceless escalade;
And, though he's silent ere he mounts,
My watch is not betrayed.

'My heart hides from my soul he's sweet:
Ah dread, if he divine!
One touch, I might fall at his feet,
And he might rise from mine.

'To hear him praise my eyes' brown gleams
Was native, safe delight;
But now it usurpation seems,
Because I've given him right.

'Before I'd have him not remove,
Now would not have him near;
With sacrifice I called on Love,
And the apparition's Fear.'

Foolish to give it!--'Twas my whim,
When he might parted be,
To think that I should stay by him
In a little piece of me.

'He always said my hair was soft--
What touches he will steal!
Each touch and look (and he'll look oft)
I almost thought I'd feel.

'And then, when first he saw the hair,
To think his dear amazement!
As if he wished from skies a star,
And found it in his casement.

'He's kiss the lock--and I had toyed
With dreamed delight of this:
But ah, in proof, delight was void--
I could not SEE his kiss!'

So, fond one, half this agony
Were spared, which my hand hushes,
Could you have played, Sweet, the sweet spy,
And blushed not for your blushes!

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.

Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his great advent
driven,
Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty echoing so was
given,
As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clanged gates of Heaven.

Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars,
Went a waver of ribbed fire *--as night-seas on phosphoric bars
Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach of
crumbling stars.

At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His
aged dominions
The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their
hauberked minions,
The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involved dread of those
mounted pinions.

As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet
earth
At momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts break forth
The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a
witched birth;

Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges
soon,
Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune,
Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the
moon:-

With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt
plumes so burned their charge;
Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,--disclosed from their
kindling marge,
Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God's
light lay large.

Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer's glories
clings
A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork
things,
Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs'
versicoloured wings.

A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through
Eden-ways
Into the shade of the poet's glory, * darkened under his prevalent
rays,
Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.

The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: *--'Who has done this
sorry deed in
The garden of our Father, God? * 'mid his blossoms to sow this weed
in?
Never our fingers knew this stuff: * not so fashion the looms of
Eden!'

The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork
through and through,
Feeling God's lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit
too:
The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come
'mid their sacred crew,
Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self
knew.

But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent
doth,
Laid them at the rhymer's feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,
Stood in a dim and shamed stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty
moth.

'Thou gav'st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are
solely Thine,
And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;
The life I textured, Thou the song *--MY handicraft is not divine!'

He wrested o'er the rhymer's head * that garmenting which wrought
him wrong;
A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers
long:-
'Better thou wov'st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy
woof of song!'

Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;
Never an eye looked mild on him * 'mid all the angel myriads ten,
Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *--the Mary titled Magdalen.

'Turn yon robe,' spake Magdalen, * 'of torn bright song, and see and
feel.'
They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did
reveal -
All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs of
steel.

'Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head.'
They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonished:
Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst and
bled.

'See his torn flesh through those rents; * see the punctures round
his hair,
As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to nourish
there -
Lord, who gav'st him robe and wreath, * WHAT was this Thou gav'st
for wear?'

'Fetch forth the Paradisal garb!' * spake the Father, sweet and low;
Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary's throne made
irised bow -
'Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, * two spirits greater than
they know.'