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To A Poet Breaking Silence

Too wearily had we and

Been left to look and left to long,

Yea, song and we to long and look,

Since thine acquainted feet

The mountain where the Muses

For Sinai and the Seraphim.

Now in both the mountains'

Dress thy countenance, twice divine!

From Moses and the Muses

The Tables of thy double Law!

His rod-born fount and

Let the one rock bring forth for thee,

Renewing so from either

The songs which both thy countries sing:

Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long,

Thou should'st forget thy native song,

And mar thy mortal

With broken stammer of the skies.

Ah! let the sweet birds of the

With earth's waters make accord;

Teach how the crucifix may

Carven from the laurel-tree,

Fruit of the

Burnish take on Eden-trees,

The Muses' sacred grove be

With the red dew of Olivet,

And Sappho lay her burning

In white Cecilia's lap of snows!

Thy childhood must have felt the

Of too divine o'ershadowings;

Its odorous heart have been a

That in darkness did unbosom,

Those fire-flies of God to invite,

Burning spirits, which by

Bear upon their laden

To such hearts impregnating.

For flowers that night-wings

Mock down the stars' unsteady eyes,

And with a happy, sleepless

Gaze the moon out of countenance.

I think thy girlhood's watchers

Have took thy folded songs on trust,

And felt them, as one feels the

Of still lightnings in the hair,

When conscious hush expects the

To speak the golden secret

Which tacit air is privy to;

Flasked in the grape the wine they knew,

Ere thy poet-mouth was

For its first young starry babble.

Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace?

Yea, in this silent interspace,

God sets His poems in thy face!

The loom which mortal verse affords,

Out of weak and mortal words,

Wovest thou thy singing-weed in,

To a rune of thy far Eden.

Vain are all disguises!  Ah,

Heavenly incognita!

Thy mien bewrayeth through that

The great Uranian House of Song!

As the vintages of

Taste of the sun that riped their birth,

We know what never cadent

Thy lamped clusters throbbed upon,

What plumed feet the winepress trod;

Thy wine is flavorous of God.

Whatever singing-robe thou

Has the Paradisal air;

And some gold feather it has

Shows what Floor it lately swept!

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Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson (16 December 1859 – 13 November 1907) was an English poet and Catholic mystic. At the behest of his father, a doctor, he entere…

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