Sister Songs
An Offering to Two Sisters

BY
FRANCIS THOMPSON

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

PREFACE

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.

To
Monica and Madeline (Sylvia) Meynell

SISTER 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?
         At 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
   Song 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!

Then, 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.

Part 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,
         Ere 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.

2.

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.