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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ORISON - TRYST by FRANCIS THOMPSON

Poet Analysis

First Line: SHE TOLD ME, IN THE MORNING HER WHITE THOUGHT
Last Line: CONJOINS THY NAME WITH HERS, AUXILIATRIX.
SHE told me, in the morning her white thought
Did beat to Godward, like a carrier-dove,
My name beneath its wing. And I -- how long! --
That, like a bubble from a water-flower
Released as it withdraws itself up-curled
Into the nightly lake, her sighed name
So loosened from my sleepward-sinking heart;
And in the morning did like Phosphor set it
To lead the vanward of my orient soul
When it storms Heaven; and did all alone,
Methought, upon the live coals of my love
Those distillations of rich memory cast
To feed the fumes of prayer: -- oh! I was then
Like one who, dreaming solitude, awakes
In sobbing from his dream; and, straining arms
That ache for their own void, with sudden shock
Takes a dear form beside him.
Now, when light
Pricks at my lids, I never rouse but think --
'Is't orison-time with her?' -- And then my hand
Presses thy letters in my pulses shook;
Where, neighboured on my heart with those pure lines
In amity of kindred pureness, lies
Image of Her conceived Immaculate;
And on the purple inward, thine, -- ah! thine
O' the purple-lined side.
And I do set
Tryst with thy soul in its own Paradise;
As lovers of an earthly rate that use,
In severance, for their sweet messages
Some concave of a tree, and do their hearts
Enharbour in its continent heart -- I drop
My message in the hollow breast of God.
Thy name is known in Heaven; yea, Heaven is weary
With the reverberation of thy name;
I fill with it the gap between two sleeps,
The inter-pause of dream: hell's gates have learned
To shake in it; and their fierce forayers
Before the iterate echoing recoil,
In armed watches when my preparate soul
(A war-cry in the alarums of the Night)
Conjoins thy name with Hers, Auxiliatrix.



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