The Project Gutenberg eBook of Selected Poems Of Francis Thompson, by Francis Thompson.

I The Father of Heaven. Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Twirl your wheel with silver din; Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Spin a tress for Viola.

Angels. Spin, Queen Mary, a Brown tress for Viola!

II The Father of Heaven. Weave, hands angelical, Weave a woof of flesh to pall— Weave, hands angelical— Flesh to pall our Viola.

Angels. Weave, singing brothers, a Velvet flesh for Viola!

III The Father of Heaven. Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes, Wood-browned pools of Paradise— Young Jesus, for the eyes, For the eyes of Viola.

Angels. Tint, Prince Jesus, a Duskèd eye for Viola!

IV The Father of Heaven. Cast a star therein to drown, Like a torch in cavern brown, Sink a burning star to drown Whelmed in eyes of Viola.

Angels. Lave, Prince Jesus, a Star in eyes of Viola!

V The Father of Heaven. Breathe, Lord Paraclete, To a bubbled crystal meet— Breathe, Lord Paraclete— Crystal soul for Viola.

Angels. Breathe, Regal Spirit, a Flashing soul for Viola!

VI The Father of Heaven. Child-angels, from your wings Fall the roseal hoverings, Child-angels, from your wings On the cheeks of Viola.

Angels. Linger, rosy reflex, a Quenchless stain, on Viola!

VII All things being accomplished, saith the Father of Heaven: Bear her down, and bearing, sing, Bear her down on spyless wing, Bear her down, and bearing, sing, With a sound of viola.

Angels. Music as her name is, a Sweet sound of Viola!

VIII Wheeling angels, past espial, Danced her down with sound of viol; Wheeling angels, past espial, Descanting on "Viola."

Angels. Sing, in our footing, a Lovely lilt of "Viola!"

IX Baby smiled, mother wailed, Earthward while the sweetling sailed; Mother smiled, baby wailed, When to earth came Viola. And her elders shall say: So soon have we taught you a Way to weep, poor Viola!

X Smile, sweet baby, smile, For you will have weeping-while; Native in your Heaven is smile,— But your weeping, Viola?

Whence your smiles, we know, but ah! Whence your weeping, Viola?— Our first gift to you is a Gift of tears, my Viola!

TO MY GODCHILD

This labouring, vast, Tellurian galleon, Riding at anchor off the orient sun, Had broken its cable, and stood out to space Down some frore Arctic of the aerial ways: And now, back warping from the inclement main, Its vapourous shroudage drenched with icy rain, It swung into its azure roads again; When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you Lit, a white halcyon auspice, 'mid our frozen crew.

To the Sun, stranger, surely you belong, Giver of golden days and golden song; Nor is it by an all-unhappy plan You bear the name of me, his constant Magian. Yet ah! from any other that it came, Lest fated to my fate you be, as to my name. When at the first those tidings did they bring, My heart turned troubled at the ominous thing: Though well may such a title him endower, For whom a poet's prayer implores a poet's power. The Assisian, who kept plighted faith to three, To Song, to Sanctitude, and Poverty, (In two alone of whom most singers prove A fatal faithfulness of during love!); He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken How God he could love more, he so loved men; The crown and crowned of Laura and Italy; And Fletcher's fellow—from these, and not from me, Take you your name, and take your legacy!

Or, if a right successive you declare When worms, for ivies, intertwine my hair, Take but this Poesy that now followeth My clayey best with sullen servile breath, Made then your happy freedman by testating death. My song I do but hold for you in trust, I ask you but to blossom from my dust. When you have compassed all weak I began, Diviner poet, and ah! diviner man— The man at feud with the perduring child In you before song's altar nobly reconciled— From the wise heavens I half shall smile to see How little a world, which owned you, needed me. If, while you keep the vigils of the night, For your wild tears make darkness all too bright, Some lone orb through your lonely window peeps, As it played lover over your sweet sleeps, Think it a golden crevice in the sky, Which I have pierced but to behold you by!

And when, immortal mortal, droops your head, And you, the child of deathless song, are dead; Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance The ranks of Paradise for my countenance, Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod Among the bearded counsellors of God; For, if in Eden as on earth are we, I sure shall keep a younger company: Pass where beneath their rangèd gonfalons The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns, The dreadful mass of their enridgèd spears; Pass where majestical the eternal peers, The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet— A silvern segregation, globed complete In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet; Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer, Your cousined clusters, emulous to share With you the roseal lightnings burning 'mid their hair; Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:— Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.

EX ORE INFANTIUM

Little Jesus, wast Thou shy Once, and just so small as I? And what did it feel like to be Out of Heaven, and just like me? Didst Thou sometimes think of there, And ask where all the angels were? I should think that I would cry For my house all made of sky; I would look about the air, And wonder where my angels were; And at waking 'twould distress me— Not an angel there to dress me!

Hadst Thou ever any toys, Like us little girls and boys? And didst Thou play in Heaven with all The angels, that were not too tall, With stars for marbles? Did the things Play Can you see me? through their wings?

Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way? And did they tire sometimes, being young, And make the prayer seem very long? And dost Thou like it best, that we Should join our hands to pray to Thee? I used to think, before I knew, The prayer not said unless we do. And did Thy Mother at the night Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right? And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, Kissed, and sweet, and Thy prayers said?

Thou canst not have forgotten all That it feels like to be small: And Thou know'st I cannot pray To Thee in my father's way— When Thou wast so little, say, Couldst Thou talk Thy Father's way?— So, a little Child, come down And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; Take me by the hand and walk, And listen to my baby-talk. To Thy Father show my prayer (He will look, Thou art so fair), And say: "O Father, I, Thy Son, Bring the prayer of a little one."

And He will smile, that children's tongue Has not changed since Thou wast young!

From "Sister Songs"

A CHILD'S KISS

Where its umbrage [A] was enrooted, Sat, white-suited, Sat, green-amiced and bare-footed, Spring, amid her minstrelsy; There she sat amid her ladies, Where the shade is Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades' Gloom fell thwart Persephone. Dewy buds were interstrown Through her tresses hanging down, And her feet Were most sweet, Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown. A throng of children like to flowers were sown About the grass beside, or clomb her knee: I looked who were that favoured company. And one there stood Against the beamy flood Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance, Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face; As see I might Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun Dispread its gracile curls of light. I knew what chosen child was there in place! I knew there might no brows be, save of one, With such Hesperian fulgence compassèd, Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head.

O Spring's little children, more loud your lauds upraise, For this is even Sylvia with her sweet, feat ways! Your lovesome labours lay away, And prank 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!

Spring, goddess, is it thou, desirèd long? And art thou girded round with this young train?— If ever I did do thee ease in song, Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain, And list thou to one plain. Oh, keep still in thy train, After the years when others therefrom fade, This tiny, well-belovèd maid! To whom the gate of my heart's fortalice, With all which in it is, And the shy self who doth therein immew him 'Gainst what loud leaguerers battailously woo him, I, bribèd traitor to him, Set open for one kiss.

A kiss? for a child's kiss? Aye, goddess, even for this. Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far, Once—in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant— Forlorn, and faint, and stark, I had endured through watches of the dark The abashless inquisition of each star, Yea, was the outcast mark Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny; Stood bound and helplessly For Time to shoot his barbèd minutes at me; Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour In night's slow-wheelèd car; Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength, I waited the inevitable last. Then there came past A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, And through the city-streets blown withering. She passed,—O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!— And of her own scant pittance did she give, That I might eat and live: Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive. Therefore I kissed in thee The heart of Childhood, so divine for me; And her, through what sore ways, And what unchildish days, Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive. Therefore I kissed in thee Her, child! and innocency, And spring, and all things that have gone from me, And that shall never be; All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss, Came with thee to my kiss. And ah! so long myself had strayed afar From child, and woman, and the boon earth's green, And all wherewith life's face is fair beseen; Journeying its journey bare Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun Unkissed of one; Almost I had forgot The healing harms, And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that Authentic cestus of two girdling arms: And I remembered not The subtle sanctities which dart From childish lips' unvalued precious brush, Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push Between the loosening fibres of the heart. Then, that thy little kiss Should be to me all this, Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat; Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat! And straightway charts me out the empyreal air. Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth: And howso thou and I may be disjoint, Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point Over the covert where Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!

Soul, hush these sad numbers, too sad to upraise In hymning bright Sylvia, unlearn'd in such ways! Our mournful moods lay me away, And prank our thoughts in holiday, For syllabling to Sylvia; When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear with us this burthen For singing to Sylvia!

POET AND ANCHORITE

Love and love's beauty only hold their revels In life's familiar, penetrable levels: What of its ocean-floor? I dwell there evermore. From almost earliest youth I raised the lids o' the truth, And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight; Ever I knew me Beauty's eremite, In antre of this lowly body set, Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul. Natheless I not forget How I have, even as the anchorite, I too, imperishing essences that console. Under my ruined passions, fallen and sere, The wild dreams stir, like little radiant girls, Whom in the moulted plumage of the year Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls. Yet, though their dedicated amorist, How often do I bid my visions hist, Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills; Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills: And their tears wash them lovelier than before, That from grief's self our sad delight grows more. Fair are the soul's uncrispèd calms, indeed, Endiapered with many a spiritual form Of blosmy-tinctured weed; But scarce itself is conscious of the store Suckled by it, and only after storm Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore. To this end my deeps are stirred; And I deem well why life unshared Was ordainèd me of yore. In pairing-time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat: Were its love for ever nigh it, Never by it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine Lustre linger on its coat. Therefore must my song-bower lone be, That my tone be Fresh with dewy pain alway; She, who scorns my dearest care ta'en, An uncertain Shadow of the sprite of May.

THE OMEN

Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love! Upon the ending of my deadly night (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight Is all that any mortal knows thereof), Thou wert to me that earnest of day's light, When, like the back of a gold-mailèd saurian Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime, The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime. Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea Whence they had rescued me, With faint and painful pulses was I lying; Not yet discerning well If I had 'scaped, or were an icicle, Whose thawing is its dying. Like one who sweats before a despot's gate, Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate, And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait; And all so sickened is his countenance, The courtiers buzz, "Lo, doomed!" and look at him askance:— At Fate's dread portal then Even so stood I, I ken, Even so stood I, between a joy and fear, And said to mine own heart, "Now if the end be here!"

They say, Earth's beauty seems completest To them that on their death-beds rest; Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest Just ere she clasps us to her breast. And I,—now my Earth's countenance grew bright, Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night? But, whileas on such dubious bed I lay, One unforgotten day, As a sick child waking sees Wide-eyed daisies Gazing on it from its hand, Slipped there for its dear amazes; So between thy father's knees I saw thee stand, And through my hazes Of pain and fear thine eyes' young wonder shone. Then, as flies scatter from a carrion, Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke, Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn: The heart which I had questioned spoke, A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,— "I take the omen of this face of dawn!" And with the omen to my heart cam'st thou. Even with a spray of tears That one light draft was fixed there for the years. And now?— The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet, Beneath my casual feet. With rainfall as the lea, The day is drenched with thee; In little exquisite surprises Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises From sudden places, Under the common traces Of my most lethargied and customed paces.

THE MIRAGE

As an Arab journeyeth Through a sand of Ayaman, Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue, Lagging by his side along; And a rusty-wingèd Death Grating its low flight before, Casting ribbèd shadows o'er The blank desert, blank and tan: He lifts by hap toward where the morning's roots are His weary stare,— Sees, although they plashless mutes are, Set in a silver air Fountains of gelid shoots are, Making the daylight fairest fair; Sees the palm and tamarind Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;— A sight like innocence when one has sinned! A green and maiden freshness smiling there, While with unblinking glare The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her. 'Tis a vision: Yet the greeneries Elysian He has known in tracts afar; Thus the enamouring fountains flow, Those the very palms that grow, By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.— Such a watered dream has tarried Trembling on my desert arid; Even so Its lovely gleamings Seemings show Of things not seemings; And I gaze, Knowing that, beyond my ways, Verily All these are, for these are She.

Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth, Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, Than thy shadow soothes this weak And distempered being of mine. In all I work, my hand includeth thine; Thou rushest down in every stream Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge; Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream; Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge; As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, Moves all the labouring surges of the world. Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree. This poor song that sings of thee, This fragile song, is but a curled Shell outgathered from thy sea, And murmurous still of its nativity.

THE CHILD-WOMAN

O thou most dear! Who art thy sex's complex harmony God-set more facilely; To thee may love draw near Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility: Thou Perseus' Shield! wherein I view secure The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure! Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free; With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind The barèd limbs of the rebukeless mind. Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree, With which indissolubly The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole; Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole: Who wear'st thy femineity Light as entrailèd blossoms, that shalt find It erelong silver shackles unto thee. Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul;— As, hoarded in the vine, Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine, As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:— In whom the mystery which lures and sunders, Grapples and thrusts apart, endears, estranges, —The dragon to its own Hesperides— Is gated under slow-revolving changes, Manifold doors of heavy-hingèd years. So once, ere Heaven's eyes were filled with wonders To see Laughter rise from Tears, Lay in beauty not yet mighty, Conchèd in translucencies, The antenatal Aphrodite, Caved magically under magic seas; Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.

"Whose sex is in thy soul!" What think we of thy soul? Which has no parts, and cannot grow, Unfurled not from an embryo; Born of full stature, lineal to control; And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo. Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind, With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind; Must be obsequious to the body's powers, Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways; Must do obeisance to the days, And wait the little pleasure of the hours; Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be Captive in statuted minority! So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee. So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule, And wisdom weaves itself i' the loom o' the fool. The splendent sun no splendour can display, Till on gross things he dash his broken ray, From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray. Did not obstruction's vessel hem it in, Force were not force, would spill itself in vain; We know the Titan by his champèd chain. Stay is heat's cradle, it is rocked therein, And by check's hand is burnished into light; If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright? God's Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin; Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well, Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell. The heavens decree All power fulfil itself as soul in thee. For supreme Spirit subject was to clay, And Law from its own servants learned a law, And Light besought a lamp unto its way, And Awe was reined in awe, At one small house of Nazareth; And Golgotha Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath, And Life do homage for its crown to death.

TO A CHILD HEARD REPEATING HER MOTHER'S VERSES

As a nymph's carven head sweet water drips, For others oozing so the cool delight Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone— Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains. Memnonian lips! Smitten with singing from thy mother's east, And murmurous with music not their own: Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone A passionless statue stands. Oh, pardon, innocent one! Pardon at thine unconscious hands! "Murmurous with music not their own," I say? And in that saying how do I missay, When from the common sands Of poorest common speech of common day Thine accents sift the golden musics out! And ah, we poets, I misdoubt, Are little more than thou! We speak a lesson taught we know not how, And what it is that from us flows The hearer better than the utterer knows.

And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat Idly the music from thy mother caught; Not vainly has she wrought, Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret Of her aerial mind, for thy weak feet, Let down the silken ladder of her thought. She bare thee with a double pain, Of the body and the spirit; Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta'en, Thy diviner weeds inherit! The precious streams which through thy young lips roll Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul: Where sprites of so essential kind Set their paces, Surely they shall leave behind The green traces Of their sportance in the mind; And thou shalt, ere we well may know it, Turn that daintiness, a poet,— Elfin-ring Where sweet fancies foot and sing. So it may be, so it shall be,— O, take the prophecy from me! What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time, This crescent marvel of his hands Carveth all too painfully, And I who prophesy shall never see? What if the niche of its predestined rhyme, Its aching niche, too long expectant stands? Yet shall he after sore delays On some exultant day of days The white enshrouding childhood raise From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze; While we (but 'mongst that happy "we" The prophet cannot be!) While we behold with no astonishments, With that serene fulfilment of delight Wherewith we view the sight When the stars pitch the golden tents Of their high encampment on the plains of night. Why should amazement be our satellite? What wonder in such things? If angels have hereditary wings, If not by Salic law is handed down The poet's crown, To thee, born in the purple of the throne, The laurel must belong: Thou, in thy mother's right Descendant of Castilian-chrismèd kings— O Princess of the Blood of Song!

A FORETELLING OF THE CHILD'S HUSBAND

But on a day whereof I think, One shall dip his hand to drink In that still water of thy soul, And its imaged tremors race Over thy joy-troubled face, As the intervolved reflections roll From a shaken fountain's brink, With swift light wrinkling its alcove. From the hovering wing of Love The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek. Then, sweet blushet! whenas he, The destined paramount of thy universe, Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee, Ascends his vermeil throne of empery, One grace alone I seek. Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme, Set with a towering press of fantasies, Drop safely down the time, Leaving mine islèd self behind it far, Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas, (As down the years the splendour voyages From some long ruined and night-submergèd star), And in thy subject sovereign's havening heart Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore; Adding its wasteful more To his own overflowing treasury. So through his river mine shall reach thy sea, Bearing its confluent part; In his pulse mine shall thrill; And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that's still.

Now pass your ways, fair bird, and pass your ways, If you will; I have you through the days. And flit or hold you still, And perch you where you list On what wrist,— You are mine through the times. I have caught you fast for ever in a tangle of sweet rhymes. And in your young maiden morn, You may scorn, But you must be Bound and sociate to me; With this thread from out the tomb my dead hand shall tether thee!

Love in Dian's Lap

BEFORE HER PORTRAIT IN YOUTH

As lovers, banished from their lady's face, And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief, or a glove: And at the lover's beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:

So I, in very lowlihead of love,— Too shyly reverencing To let one thought's light footfall smooth Tread near the living, consecrated thing,— Treasure me thy cast youth. This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee, Hath yet my knee, For that, with show and semblance fair Of the past Her Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare, It cheateth me. As gale to gale drifts breath Of blossoms' death, So dropping down the years from hour to hour This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day: I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower. So, then, she looked (I say); And so her front sunk down Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown: On her mouth museful sweet— (Even as the twin lips meet) Did thought and sadness greet: Sighs In those mournful eyes So put on visibilities; As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes. Thus, long ago, She kept her meditative paces slow Through maiden meads, with wavèd shadow and gleam Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream, Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow. Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine, This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall I, faring in the cockshut-light, astray, Find on my 'lated way, And stoop, and gather for memorial, And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine. To this, the all of love the stars allow me, I dedicate and vow me. I reach back through the days A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise. The water-wraith that cries From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!

TO A POET BREAKING SILENCE

Too wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea, song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The mountain where the Muses hymn For Sinai and the Seraphim. Now in both the mountains' shine Dress thy countenance, twice divine! From Moses and the Muses draw The Tables of thy double Law! His rod-born fount and Castaly Let the one rock bring forth for thee, Renewing so from either spring 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 melodies With broken stammer of the skies.

Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord With earth's waters make accord; Teach how the crucifix may be Carven from the laurel-tree, Fruit of the Hesperides Burnish take on Eden-trees, The Muses' sacred grove be wet With the red dew of Olivet, And Sappho lay her burning brows In white Cecilia's lap of snows!

I think thy girlhood's watchers must Have took thy folded songs on trust, And felt them, as one feels the stir Of still lightnings in the hair, When conscious hush expects the cloud To speak the golden secret loud Which tacit air is privy to; Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, Ere thy poet-mouth was able 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 wrong The great Uranian House of Song! As the vintages of earth Taste of the sun that riped their birth, We know what never-cadent Sun Thy lampèd clusters throbbed upon, What plumèd feet the winepress trod; Thy wine is flavorous of God. Whatever singing-robe thou wear Has the paradisal air; And some gold feather it has kept Shows what Floor it lately swept.