A JUDGEMENT IN HEAVEN by FRANCIS THOMPSON

ATHWART the sod which is treading for God * the Poet paced with his splendid eyes;
Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of Paradise,
Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of intertangled relucent dyes.

The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wings rustled his guides' cymars)
Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted each other with handfuls of stars;
And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, by their tethered cars.

With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured * of Saints, his guided steps held on
To where on the far crystalline pale * of that transtellar Heaven there shone
The immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father's Throne.

Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his great advent driven,
Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty echoing so was given,
As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clanged gates of Heaven.

Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars,
Went a waver of ribbed fire * -- as night-seas on phosphoric bars
Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach of crumbling stars.

At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His aged dominions
The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their hauberked minions,
The Poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involved dread of those mounted pinions.

As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth
At momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts break forth
The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a witched birth;

Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges soon,
Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune,
Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the moon: --

With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes so burned their charge;
Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so, -- disclosed from their kindling marge,
Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the Poet there where God's light lay large.

Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the Poet's glories clings
A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork things,
Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs' versicoloured wings.

A Rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through Eden-ways
Into the shade of the Poet's glory, * darkened under his prevalent rays,
Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.

The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: * -- 'Who has done this sorry deed in
The garden of our Father, God? * 'mid his blossoms to sow this weed in?
Never our fingers knew this stuff: * not so fashion the looms of Eden!'

The Poet bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork through and through,
Feeling God's lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit too:
The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come 'mid their sacred crew.
Only the Poet that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self knew.

Then the Poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent doth,
Laid them at the Rhymer's feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,
Stood in a dim and shamed stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty moth.

(@3The Poet addresses his Maker@1)
'Thou gav'st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are solely Thine,
And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;
The life @3I@1 textured, Thou the song: * -- @3my@1 handicraft is not divine!'

(@3The Poet addresses the Rhymer@1)
He wrested o'er the Rhymer's head * that garmenting which wrought him wrong;
A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers long: --
'Better thou wov'st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy woof of song!'

Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;
Never an eye looked mild on him * 'mid all the angel myriads ten,
Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary * -- the Mary titled Magdalen.

'Turn yon robe,' spake Magdalen, * 'of torn bright song, and see and feel.'
They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did reveal --
All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs of steel.

'Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head.'
They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonished:
Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst and bled.

'See his torn flesh through those rents; * see the punctures round his hair,
As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to nourish there --
Lord, who gav'st him robe and wreath, * @3what@1 was this Thou gav'st for wear?'

'Fetch forth the Paradisal garb!' * spake the Father, sweet and low;
Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary's throne made irised bow --
'Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, * two spirits greater than they know.'

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