water.

FRANCIS THOMPSON (1860-1907)

Daisy

WHERE the thistle lifts a purple crown

Six foot out of the turf,

And the harebell shakes on the windy hill

O breath of the distant surf!

The hills look over on the South,

And southward dreams the sea; And with the sea-breeze hand in hand Came innocence and she.

Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry

Red for the gatherer springs, Two children did we stray and talk Wise, idle, childish things.

She listened with big-lipped surprise, Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine: Her skin was like a grape whose veins Run snow instead of wine.

She knew not those sweet words she

spake,

Nor knew her own sweet way;
But there's never a bird, so sweet a song
Thronged in whose throat that day.

Oh, there were flowers in Storrington
On the turf and on the spray;
But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills
Was the Daisy-flower that day!

Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face.

She gave me tokens three:

A look, a word of her winsome mouth,
And a wild raspberry.

A berry red, a guileless look,

A still word,-strings of sand!

And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to her little hand.

For standing artless as the air,
And candid as the skies,

She took the berries with her hand,
And the love with her sweet eyes.

The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose.
She looked a little wistfully,

Then went her sunshine way:The sea's eye had a mist on it,

And the leaves fell from the day.
She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling why my soul
Was sad that she was glad;
At all the sadness in the sweet,

The sweetness in the sad.

Still, still I seemed to see her, still

Look up with soft replies, And take the berries with her hand,

And the love with her lovely eyes.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in other's pain, And perish in our own.

The Poppy

SUMMER set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there:

Like a yawn of fire from the grass it

came,

And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping

flame.

With burnt mouth, red like a lion's, it drank

The blood of the sun as he slaughtered

sank,

And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine When the Eastern conduits ran with wine.

Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,
And hot as a swinked gipsy is,
And drowsed in sleepy savageries,
With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.

A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;

But between the clasp of his hand and hers

Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.

She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair,

And saw the sleeping gipsy there: And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim,

With "Keep it, long as you live!"—to him.

And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres,

Trembled up from a bath of tears;
And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart,
Tossed on the waves of his troubled heart.

For he saw what she did not see,
That-as kindled by its own fervency-
The verge shrivelled inward smoulder-
ingly:

And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers
He knew the twenty withered years-
No flower, but twenty shrivelled years.

"Was never such thing until this hour,"
Low to his heart he said; "the flower
Of sleep brings wakening to me,
And of oblivion, memory."

"Was never this thing to me," he said,
"Though with bruisèd poppies my feet
are red!"

And again to his own heart very low:

"Oh child! I love, for I love and know;

"But you, who love nor know at all
The diverse chambers in Love's guest-
hall,

Where some rise early, few sit long:
In how differing accents hear the throng
His great Pentecostal tongue;

"Who know not love from amity,
Nor my reported self from me;
A fair fit gift is this, meseems,
You give this withering flower of
dreams.

"O frankly fickle, and fickly true, Do you know what the days will do to you?

To your love and you what the days will do,

O frankly fickle, and fickly true?

"You have loved me, Fair, three lives-or days:

'Twill pass with the passing of my face. But where I go, your face goes too, To watch lest I play false to you.

"I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover, Knowing well when certain years are over You vanish from me to another; Yet I know, and love, like the fostermother.

"So, frankly fickle, and fickly true! For my brief life-while I take from you This token, fair and fit, meseems, For me-this withering flower of dreams."

The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,

Heavy with dreams, as that with bread: The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper

The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.

I hang 'mid men my needless head,
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap, but after the reaper
The world shall glean of me, me the
sleeper.

But still within the little children's eyes Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden
fair

With dawning answers there, Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.

"Come then, ye other children, Nature's -share

With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;

Let me greet you lip to lip,

Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning

With our Lady-Mother's vagrant

tresses,

Banqueting

With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
So it was done:

I in their delicate fellowship was one-
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;

I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;

All that's born or dies

Rose and drooped with; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;

With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.

I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal
mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,

And share commingling heat;

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.

For ah! we know not what each other says,

These things and I; in sound I speak

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;

Let her, if she would owe me, Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

The breasts o' her tenderness:

Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.

Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noised Feet

A voice comes yet more fleet"Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."