<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=392035" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Sister Songs-An Offering To Two Sisters - Part The First</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The leaves dance, the leaves sing,<br>The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring.<br>I bid them dance,<br>I bid them sing,<br>For the limpid glance<br>Of my ladyling;<br>For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring,<br>For God's good grace of this ladyling!<br>I know in the lane, by the hedgerow track,<br>The long, broad grasses underneath<br>Are warted with rain like a toad's knobbed back;<br>But here May weareth a rainless wreath.<br>In the new-sucked milk of the sun's bosom<br>Is dabbled the mouth of the daisy-blossom;<br>The smouldering rosebud chars through its sheath;<br>The lily stirs her snowy limbs,<br>Ere she swims<br>Naked up through her cloven green,<br>Like the wave-born Lady of Love Hellene;<br>And the scattered snowdrop exquisite<br>Twinkles and gleams,<br>As if the showers of the sunny beams<br>Were splashed from the earth in drops of light.<br>Everything<br>That is child of Spring<br>Casts its bud or blossoming<br>Upon the stream of my delight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their voices, that scents are, now let them upraise<br>To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways!<br>Their lovely mother them array,<br>And prank them out in holiday,<br>For syllabling to Sylvia;<br>And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,<br>To bear with me this burthen,<br>For singing to Sylvia.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">2.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While thus I stood in mazes bound<br>Of vernal sorcery,<br>I heard a dainty dubious sound,<br>As of goodly melody;<br>Which first was faint as if in swound,<br>Then burst so suddenly<br>In warring concord all around,<br>That, whence this thing might be,<br>To see<br>The very marrow longed in me!<br>It seemed of air, it seemed of ground,<br>And never any witchery<br>Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string,<br>Made such dulcet ravishing.<br>'Twas like no earthly instrument,<br>Yet had something of them all<br>In its rise, and in its fall;<br>As if in one sweet consort there were blent<br>Those archetypes celestial<br>Which our endeavouring instruments recall.<br>So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain<br>To heavenly viols, that again<br>- Aching with music--wailed back pain;<br>Regals release their notes, which rise<br>Welling, like tears from heart to eyes;<br>And the harp thrills with thronging sighs.<br>Horns in mellow flattering<br>Parley with the cithern-string:-<br>Hark!--the floating, long-drawn note<br>Woos the throbbing cithern-string!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their pretty, pretty prating those citherns sure upraise<br>For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways:<br>Those flutes do flute their vowelled lay,<br>Their lovely languid language say,<br>For lisping to Sylvia;<br>Those viols' lissom bowings break the heart of May,<br>And harps harp their burthen,<br>For singing to Sylvia.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">3.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now at that music and that mirth<br>Rose, as 'twere, veils from earth;<br>And I spied<br>How beside<br>Bud, bell, bloom, an elf<br>Stood, or was the flower itself<br>'Mid radiant air<br>All the fair<br>Frequence swayed in irised wavers.<br>Some against the gleaming rims<br>Their bosoms prest<br>Of the kingcups, to the brims<br>Filled with sun, and their white limbs<br>Bathed in those golden lavers;<br>Some on the brown, glowing breast<br>Of that Indian maid, the pansy,<br>(Through its tenuous veils confest<br>Of swathing light), in a quaint fancy<br>Tied her knot of yellow favours;<br>Others dared open draw<br>Snapdragon's dreadful jaw:<br>Some, just sprung from out the soil,<br>Sleeked and shook their rumpled fans<br>Dropt with sheen<br>Of moony green;<br>Others, not yet extricate,<br>On their hands leaned their weight,<br>And writhed them free with mickle toil,<br>Still folded in their veiny vans:<br>And all with an unsought accord<br>Sang together from the sward;<br>Whence had come, and from sprites<br>Yet unseen, those delights,<br>As of tempered musics blent,<br>Which had given me such content.<br>For haply our best instrument,<br>Pipe or cithern, stopped or strung,<br>Mimics but some spirit tongue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their amiable voices, I bid them upraise<br>To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;<br>Their lovesome labours laid away,<br>To linger out this holiday<br>In syllabling to Sylvia;<br>While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,<br>To bear with me this burthen,<br>For singing to Sylvia.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">4.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Next I saw, wonder-whist,<br>How from the atmosphere a mist,<br>So it seemed, slow uprist;<br>And, looking from those elfin swarms,<br>I was 'ware<br>How the air<br>Was all populous with forms<br>Of the Hours, floating down,<br>Like Nereids through a watery town.<br>Some, with languors of waved arms,<br>Fluctuous oared their flexile way;<br>Some were borne half resupine<br>On the aerial hyaline,<br>Their fluid limbs and rare array<br>Flickering on the wind, as quivers<br>Trailing weed in running rivers;<br>And others, in far prospect seen,<br>Newly loosed on this terrene,<br>Shot in piercing swiftness came,<br>With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame.<br>As crystelline ice in water,<br>Lay in air each faint daughter;<br>Inseparate (or but separate dim)<br>Circumfused wind from wind-like vest,<br>Wind-like vest from wind-like limb.<br>But outward from each lucid breast,<br>When some passion left its haunt,<br>Radiate surge of colour came,<br>Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant,<br>Dying all the filmy frame.<br>With some sweet tenderness they would<br>Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold;<br>Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold,<br>Would sweep them as the sun and wind's joined flood<br>Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea;<br>Or they would glow enamouredly<br>Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood;<br>Or with mantling poetry<br>Curd to the tincture which the opal hath,<br>Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath.<br>So paled they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their chanting, soon fading, let them, too, upraise<br>For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;<br>Weave with suave float their waved way,<br>And colours take of holiday,<br>For syllabling to Sylvia;<br>And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,<br>To bear with me this burthen,<br>For singing to Sylvia.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">5.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, through those translucencies,<br>As grew my senses clearer clear,<br>Did I see, and did I hear,<br>How under an elm's canopy<br>Wheeled a flight of Dryades<br>Murmuring measured melody.<br>Gyre in gyre their treading was,<br>Wheeling with an adverse flight,<br>In twi-circle o'er the grass,<br>These to left, and those to right;<br>All the band<br>Linked by each other's hand;<br>Decked in raiment stained as<br>The blue-helmed aconite.<br>And they advance with flutter, with grace,<br>To the dance<br>Moving on with a dainty pace,<br>As blossoms mince it on river swells.<br>Over their heads their cymbals shine,<br>Round each ankle gleams a twine<br>Of twinkling bells -<br>Tune twirled golden from their cells.<br>Every step was a tinkling sound,<br>As they glanced in their dancing-ground,<br>Clouds in cluster with such a sailing<br>Float o'er the light of the wasting moon,<br>As the cloud of their gliding veiling<br>Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune.<br>There was the clash of their cymbals clanging,<br>Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet;<br>And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging,<br>Hovering round their dancing so fleet. -<br>I stirred, I rustled more than meet;<br>Whereat they broke to the left and right,<br>With eddying robes like aconite<br>Blue of helm;<br>And I beheld to the foot o' the elm.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They have not tripped those dances, betrayed to my gaze,<br>To glad the heart of Sylvia, beholding of their maze;<br>Through barky walls have slid away,<br>And tricked them in their holiday,<br>For other than for Sylvia;<br>While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,<br>And bear with me this burthen,<br>For singing to Sylvia.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">6.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where its umbrage was enrooted,<br>Sat white-suited,<br>Sat green-amiced, and bare-footed,<br>Spring amid her minstrelsy;<br>There she sat amid her ladies,<br>Where the shade is<br>Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades'<br>Gloom fell thwart Persephone.<br>Dewy buds were interstrown<br>Through her tresses hanging down,<br>And her feet<br>Were most sweet,<br>Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown.<br>A throng of children like to flowers were sown<br>About the grass beside, or clomb her knee:<br>I looked who were that favoured company.<br>And one there stood<br>Against the beamy flood<br>Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance,<br>Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance<br>Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face;<br>As see I might<br>Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun<br>Dispread its gracile curls of light<br>I knew what chosen child was there in place!<br>I knew there might no brows be, save of one,<br>With such Hesperian fulgence compassed,<br>Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Spring's little children, more loud your lauds upraise,<br>For this is even Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways!<br>Your lovesome labours lay away,<br>And prank you out in holiday,<br>For syllabling to Sylvia;<br>And all you birds on branches, lave your mouths with May,<br>To bear with me this burthen<br>For singing to Sylvia!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">7.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Spring, goddess, is it thou, desired long?<br>And art thou girded round with this young train? -<br>If ever I did do thee ease in song,<br>Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain,<br>And list thou to one plain.<br>Oh, keep still in thy train<br>After the years when others therefrom fade,<br>This tiny, well-beloved maid!<br>To whom the gate of my heart's fortalice,<br>With all which in it is,<br>And the shy self who doth therein immew him<br>'Gainst what loud leagurers battailously woo him,<br>I, bribed traitor to him,<br>Set open for one kiss.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then suffer, Spring, thy children, that lauds they should upraise<br>To Sylvia, this Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;<br>Their lovely labours lay away,<br>And trick them out in holiday,<br>For syllabling to Sylvia;<br>And that all birds on branches lave their mouths with May,<br>To bear with me this burthen,<br>For singing to Sylvia.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">8.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A kiss? for a child's kiss?<br>Aye, goddess, even for this.<br>Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far,<br>Once--in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt<br>My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant -<br>Forlorn, and faint, and stark,<br>I had endured through watches of the dark<br>The abashless inquisition of each star,<br>Yea, was the outcast mark<br>Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny;<br>Stood bound and helplessly<br>For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me;<br>Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour<br>In night's slow-wheeled car;<br>Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length<br>From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength,<br>I waited the inevitable last.<br>Then there came past<br>A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower<br>Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,<br>And through the city-streets blown withering.<br>She passed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! -<br>And of her own scant pittance did she give,<br>That I might eat and live:<br>Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.<br>Therefore I kissed in thee<br>The heart of Childhood, so divine for me;<br>And her, through what sore ways,<br>And what unchildish days,<br>Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.<br>Therefore I kissed in thee<br>Her, child! and innocency,<br>And spring, and all things that have gone from me,<br>And that shall never be;<br>All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss,<br>Came with thee to my kiss.<br>And ah! so long myself had strayed afar<br>From child, and woman, and the boon earth's green,<br>And all wherewith life's face is fair beseen;<br>Journeying its journey bare<br>Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun<br>Unkissed of one;<br>Almost I had forgot<br>The healing harms,<br>And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that<br>Authentic cestus of two girdling arms:<br>And I remembered not<br>The subtle sanctities which dart<br>From childish lips' unvalued precious brush,<br>Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push<br>Between the loosening fibres of the heart.<br>Then, that thy little kiss<br>Should be to me all this,<br>Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat;<br>Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat!<br>And straightway charts me out the empyreal air.<br>Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth<br>Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth:<br>And howso thou and I may be disjoint,<br>Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point<br>Over the covert where<br>Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(Soul, hush these sad numbers, too sad to upraise<br>In hymning bright Sylvia, unlearn'd in such ways!<br>Our mournful moods lay we away,<br>And prank our thoughts in holiday,<br>For syllabling to Sylvia;<br>When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,<br>To bear with us this burthen,<br>For singing to Sylvia!)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">9.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made reply:<br>O lover of me and all my progeny,<br>For grace to you<br>I take her ever to my retinue.<br>Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art<br>Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising<br>Touch I lay upon thy heart.<br>Thy soul's fair shape<br>In my unfading mantle's green I drape,<br>And thy white mind shall rest by my devising<br>A Gideon-fleece amid life's dusty drouth.<br>If Even burst yon globed yellow grape<br>(Which is the sun to mortals' sealed sight)<br>Against her stained mouth;<br>Or if white-handed light<br>Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools,<br>Still lucencies and cools,<br>Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams;<br>Like to the sign which led the Israelite,<br>Thy soul, through day or dark,<br>A visible brightness on the chosen ark<br>Of thy sweet body and pure,<br>Shall it assure,<br>With auspice large and tutelary gleams,<br>Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Cease, Spring's little children, now cease your lauds to raise;<br>That dream is past, and Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways.<br>Our loved labour, laid away,<br>Is smoothly ended; said our say,<br>Our syllable to Sylvia.<br>Make sweet, you birds on branches! make sweet your mouths with<br>May!<br>But borne is this burthen,<br>Sung unto Sylvia.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Francis+Thompson">Francis Thompson</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=392035" data-title="Sister Songs-An Offering To Two Sisters - Part The First de Francis Thompson" data-description="The leaves dance, the leaves sing, The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring. I bid them dance, I bid them sing, For the limpid glance Of my ladyling; For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring, For God's good grace of this ladyling! I know ..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black