Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CARMEN GENESIS, by FRANCIS THOMPSON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CARMEN GENESIS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Sing how the uncreated light
Last Line: Of the prime water's font.
Subject(s): Creation


I

SING how the uncreated Light
Moved first upon the deep and night,
And, at Its fiat lux,
Created light unfurled, to be
God's pinions -- stirred perpetually
In flux and in reflux.

From light create, and the vexed ooze,
God shaped to potency and thews
All things we see, and all
Which lessen, beyond human mark,
Into the spaces Man calls dark
Because his day is small.

Far-storied, lanterned with the skies,
All Nature, magic-palace-wise,
Did from the waters come:
The angelic singing-masons knew
How many centuried centuries through
The awful courses clomb.

The regent light his strong decree
Then laid upon the snarling sea;
Shook all its wallowing girth
The shaggy brute, and did (for wrath
Low bellowing in its chafed path)
Sullen disglut the Earth.

Meanwhile the universal light
Broke itself into bounds; and Night
And Day were two, yet one:
Dividual splendour did begin
Its procreant task, and, globing, spin
In moon, and stars, and sun.

With interspheral counterdance
Consenting contraries advance,
And plan is hid for plan:
In roaring harmonies would burst
The thunder's throat; the heavens, uncurst,
Restlessly steady ran.

All day Earth waded in the sun,
Free-bosomed; and, when Night begun,
Spelt in the secret stars.
Day unto Day did utter speech,
Night unto Night the knowledge teach
Barred in its golden bars.

And, last, Man's self, the little world
Where was Creation's semblance furled,
Rose at the linking nod:
For the first world, the moon and sun
Swung orbed. That human second one
Was dark, and waited God.

His locks He spread upon the breeze,
His feet He lifted on the seas,
Into His worlds He came:
Man made confession: 'There is Light!'
And named, while Nature to its height
Quailed, the enormous Name.

II

Poet! still, still thou dost rehearse,
In the great fiat of thy Verse,
Creation's primal plot;
And what thy Maker in the whole
Worked, little maker, in thy soul
Thou work'st, and men know not.

Thine intellect, a luminous voice,
Compulsive moved above the noise
Of thy still-fluctuous sense;
And Song, a water-child like Earth,
Stands with feet sea-washed, a wild birth
Amid their subsidence.

Bold copyist! who dost relimn
The traits, in man's gross mind grown dim,
Of the first Masterpiece --
Re-marking all in thy one Day: --
God give thee Sabbath to repay
Thy sad work with full peace!

Still Nature, to the clang of doom,
Thy Verse rebeareth in her womb;
Thou makest all things new,
Elias, when thou comest! yea,
Mak'st straight the intelligential way
For God to pace into.

His locks perturb man's eddying thought,
His feet man's surgy breast have sought,
To man, His World, He came;
Man makes confession: 'There is Light!'
And names, while Being to its height
Rocks, the desired Name.

III

God! if not yet the royal siege
Of Thee, my terrible sweet Liege,
Hath shook my soul to fall;
If, 'gainst Thy great investment, still
Some broken bands of rebel Will
Do man the desperate wall;

Yet, yet, Thy graciousness! I tread,
All quick, through tribes of moving dead --
Whose life's a sepulchre
Sealed with the dull stone of a heart
No angel can roll round. I start,
Thy secrets lie so bare!

With beautiful importunacy
All things plead, 'We are fair!' To me
Thy world's a morning haunt,
A bride whose zone no man hath slipt
But I, with baptism still bedript
Of the prime water's font.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net