Transcribed from the 1908 Burns and Oates edition by DavidPrice,
Sister Songs
An Offering to Two Sisters
BY
FRANCIS THOMPSON
BURNS & OATES
28, ORCHARD STREET
LONDON, W.: 1908
p.iiiPREFACE
This poem, though new in the senseof being now for the first time printed, was written some fouryears ago, about the same date as the Hound of Heaven inmy former volume.
One image in the Proem was an unconscious plagiarismfrom 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 passagein which it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with thisacknowledgment to a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor.
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
1895.
p. vTo
Monica and Madeline (Sylvia) Meynell
p. 1SISTERSONGS
An Offering to Two Sisters
The Proem
Shrewd winds andshrill—were these the speech of May?
A ragged, slag-grey sky—invested so,
Mary’s spoilt nursling! wert thou wont togo?
Or thou, Sun-god andsong-god, say
Could singer pipe one tiniest linnet-lay,
While Song did turn away his face from song?
Or who couldbe
In spirit or in body hale for long,—
Old Æsculap’s bestMaster!—lacking thee?
p. 2At length,then, thou art here!
On theearth’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 heartstrains tamelessly,
For Spring leaps in the womb of the young year!
Nay, was it not brought forthbefore,
And we waited,to behold it,
Till thesun’s hand should unfold it,
What the year’s young bosombore?
Even so; it came, nor knew we that it came,
In thesun’s eclipse.
Yet the birds have plightedvows,
And from the branches pipe each other’s name;
Yet the season all the boughs
Has kindled to thefinger-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
p.3Song 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 thou