Sister Songs: An Offering to Two Sisters

Transcribed from the 1908 Burns and Oates edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY FRANCIS THOMPSON
BURNS & OATES 28, ORCHARD STREET LONDON, W.: 1908
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
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!