The Mistress Of Vision

By Francis Thompson

I

    Secret was the garden;

    Set i' the pathless awe

    Where no star its breath can draw.

    Life, that is its warden,

Sits behind the fosse of death.  Mine eyes saw not,

      and I saw.

          II

    It was a mazeful wonder;

    Thrice three times it was enwalled

    With an emerald--

    Seal-ed so asunder.

All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their

      music thralled.

          III

    The Lady of fair weeping,

    At the garden's core,

    Sang a song of sweet and sore

    And the after-sleeping;

In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore.

          IV

    With sweet-panged singing,

    Sang she through a dream-night's day;

    That the bowers might stay,

    Birds bate their winging,

Nor the wall of emerald float in wreath-ed haze away.

          V

    The lily kept its gleaming,

    In her tears (divine conservers!)

    Wash-ed with sad art;

    And the flowers of dreaming

    Pal-ed not their fervours,

    For her blood flowed through their nervures;

And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in

      her heart.

          VI

    There was never moon,

    Save the white sufficing woman:

    Light most heavenly-human--

    Like the unseen form of sound,

    Sensed invisibly in tune,--

    With a sun-deriv-ed stole

    Did inaureole

    All her lovely body round;

Lovelily her lucid body with that light was inter-

      strewn.

          VII

    The sun which lit that garden wholly,

    Low and vibrant visible,

    Tempered glory woke;

    And it seem-ed solely

    Like a silver thurible

    Solemnly swung, slowly,

Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense-

      smoke.

          VIII

    But woe's me, and woe's me,

    For the secrets of her eyes!

    In my visions fearfully

    They are ever shown to be

    As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies

    Pallid-dark beneath the skies

    Of a night that is

    But one blear necropolis.

And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her

      own sighs.

          IX

    Many changes rise on

    Their phantasmal mysteries.

    They grow to an horizon

    Where earth and heaven meet;

    And like a wing that dies on

    The vague twilight-verges,

    Many a sinking dream doth fleet

    Lessening down their secrecies.

    And, as dusk with day converges,

    Their orbs are troublously

Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear

      of things to be.

          X

    There is a peak on Himalay,

    And on the peak undeluged snow,

    And on the snow not eagles stray;

    There if your strong feet could go,--

    Looking over tow'rd Cathay

    From the never-deluged snow--

    Farthest ken might not survey

Where the peoples underground dwell whom

      antique fables know.

          XI

    East, ah, east of Himalay,

    Dwell the nations underground;

    Hiding from the shock of Day,

    For the sun's uprising-sound:

    Dare not issue from the ground

    At the tumults of the Day,

    So fearfully the sun doth sound

    Clanging up beyond Cathay;

For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up

      beyond Cathay.

          XII

    Lend me, O lend me

    The terrors of that sound,

    That its music may attend me.

    Wrap my chant in thunders round;

While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady's

      singing found.

          XIII

    On Ararat there grew a vine,

    When Asia from her bathing rose;

    Our first sailor made a twine

    Thereof for his prefiguring brows.

    Canst divine

Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster

      grows?

          XIV

    On Golgotha there grew a thorn

    Round the long-prefigured Brows.

    Mourn, O mourn!

For the vine have we the spine?  Is this all the

      Heaven allows?

          XV

    On Calvary was shook a spear;

    Press the point into thy heart--

    Joy and fear!

All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils

      start.

          XVI

    O, dismay!

    I, a wingless mortal, sporting

    With the tresses of the sun?

    I, that dare my hand to lay

    On the thunder in its snorting?

    Ere begun,

Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old

      Icarian way.

          XVII

    From the fall precipitant

    These dim snatches of her chant

    Only have remain-ed mine;--

    That from spear and thorn alone

    May be grown

For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine.

          XVIII

    Her song said that no springing

    Paradise but evermore

    Hangeth on a singing

    That has chords of weeping,

    And that sings the after-sleeping

    To souls which wake too sore.

'But woe the singer, woe!' she said; 'beyond the

      dead his singing-lore,

    All its art of sweet and sore,

    He learns, in Elenore!'

          XIX

    Where is the land of Luthany,

    Where is the tract of Elenore?

    I am bound therefor.

          XX

    'Pierce thy heart to find the key;

    With thee take

    Only what none else would keep;

    Learn to dream when thou dost wake,

    Learn to wake when thou dost sleep.

    Learn to water joy with tears,

    Learn from fears to vanquish fears;

    To hope, for thou dar'st not despair,

    Exult, for that thou dar'st not grieve;

    Plough thou the rock until it bear;

    Know, for thou else couldst not believe;

    Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive;

    Die, for none other way canst live.

    When earth and heaven lay down their veil,

    And that apocalypse turns thee pale;

    When thy seeing blindeth thee

    To what thy fellow-mortals see;

    When their sight to thee is sightless;

    Their living, death; their light, most light-

      less;

    Search no more--

Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.'

          XXI

    Where is the land of Luthany,

    And where the region Elenore?

    I do faint therefor.

    'When to the new eyes of thee

    All things by immortal power,

    Near or far,

    Hiddenly

    To each other link-ed are,

    That thou canst not stir a flower

    Without troubling of a star;

    When thy song is shield and mirror

    To the fair snake-curl-ed Pain,

    Where thou dar'st affront her terror

    That on her thou may'st attain

    Persean conquest; seek no more,

    O seek no more!

Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.'

          XXII

    So sang she, so wept she,

    Through a dream-night's day;

    And with her magic singing kept she--

    Mystical in music--

    That garden of enchanting

    In visionary May;

    Swayless for my spirit's haunting,

Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mor-

      tal mornings grey.

          XXIII

    And as a necromancer

    Raises from the rose-ash

    The ghost of the rose;

    My heart so made answer

    To her voice's silver plash,--

    Stirred in reddening flash,

And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom

      blows.

          XXIV

    Her tears made dulcet fretting,

    Her voice had no word,

    More than thunder or the bird.

    Yet, unforgetting,

The ravished soul her meanings knew.  Mine ears

      heard not, and I heard.

          XXV

    When she shall unwind

    All those wiles she wound about me,

    Tears shall break from out me,

    That I cannot find

Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt

      me!