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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse  »  Alfred Noyes (1880–1958)

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

On the Death of Francis Thompson

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958)

HOW grandly glow the bays

Purpureally enwound

With those rich thorns, the brows

How infinitely crown’d

That now thro’ Death’s dark house

Have pass’d with royal gaze:

Purpureally enwound

How grandly glow the bays!

Sweet, sweet and three-fold sweet,

Pulsing with three-fold pain,

Where the lark fails of flight

Soar’d the celestial strain;

Beyond the sapphire height

Flew the gold-wingèd feet

Beautiful, pierced with pain,

Sweet, sweet and three-fold sweet;

And where Is not and Is

Are wed in one sweet name,

And the world’s rootless vine

With dew of stars aflame

Laughs, from those deep divine

Impossibilities,

Our reason all to shame—

This cannot be, but is;

Into the Vast, the Deep

Beyond all mortal sight,

The Nothingness that conceived

The worlds of day and night,

The Nothingness that heaved

Pure sides in virgin sleep,

Brought out of darkness, light;

And man from out the Deep.

Into that Mystery

Let not thine hand be thrust:

Nothingness is a world

Thy science well may trust …

But lo, a leaf unfurl’d,

Nay, a cry mocking thee

From the first grain of dust—

I am, yet cannot be!

Adventuring unafraid

Into that last deep shrine,

Must not the child-heart see

Its deepest symbol shine—

The world’s Birth-mystery,

Whereto the suns are shade?

Lo, the white breast divine—

The Holy Mother-maid!

How miss that Sacrifice,

That cross of Yea and Nay,

That paradox of heaven

Whose palms point either way,

Thro’ each a nail being driven

That the arms outspan the skies

And our earth-dust this day

Out-sweeten Paradise!

We part the seamless robe,

Our wisdom would divide

The raiment of the King,

Our spear is in His side,

Even while the angels sing

Around our perishing globe,

And Death re-knits in pride

The seamless purple robe …

And grandly glow the bays

Purpureally enwound

With those rich thorns, the brows

How infinitely crown’d

That now thro’ Death’s dark house

Have pass’d with royal gaze:

Purpureally crown’d

How grandly glow the bays!