This section is from the book "Selected Poems Of Francis Thompson", by Francis Thompson and Wilfrid Meynell. Also available from Amazon: Selected Poems of Francis Thompson.
AS an Arab journeyeth
Through a sand of Ayaman,
Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue,
Lagging by his side along;
And a rusty-wingèd Death
Gräting its low flight before,
Casting ribbèd shadows o9er
The blank desert, blank and tan:
He lifts by hap toward where the morning's roots are
His weary stare,-
Sees, although they plashless mutes are,
Set in a silver air
Fountains of gelid shoots are,
Making the daylight fairest fair;
Sees the palm and tamarind
Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind ;-
A sight like innocence when one has sinned !
A green and maiden freshness smiling there,
While with unblinking giare
The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.
'Tis a vision :
Yet the greeneries Elysian
He has known in tracts afar ;
Thus the enamouring fountains flow,
Those the very palms that grow,
By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.-
Such a watered dream has tarried
Trembl i ng on my desert arid ;
Even so
Its lovely gleamings
Seemings show
Of things not seemings ;
And I gaze,
Knowing that, beyond my ways,
Verily
AU thèse arey for thèse are She.
Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek
On the burning brow of the sick earth,
Sick with death, and sick with birth,
Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,
Than thy shadow soothes this weak
And distempered being of mine.
In all I work, my hand includeth thine;
Thou rushest down in every stream
Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge ;
Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream ;
Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge ;
As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.
Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought
in me,
And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled,
As in the eut fern lies the imaged tree.
This poor song that sings of thee,
This fragile song, is but a curled
Shell outgathered from thy sea,
And murmurous still of its nativity.
 
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