文档介绍：Sister Songs
Sister Songs
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Sister Songs
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
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Sister Songs
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
-lay, While Song did turn away his face from song? Or who could be
In spirit or in body hale for long, - Old AEsculap's best Master!--lacking
thee? At length, then, thou art here! On the earth's lethed 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, T