The works of Francis Thompson :: :: University of Virginia Library

AD CASTITATEM

Through thee, Virginity, endure
The stars, most integral and pure,
And ever contemplate
Themselves inviolate

In waters, and do love unknown
Beauty they dream not is their own!
Through thee the waters bare
Their bosoms to the air,

And with confession never done
Admit the sacerdotal sun,
Absolved eternally
By his asperging eye.

To tread the floor of lofty souls,
With thee Love mingles aureoles;
Who walk his mountain-peak
Thy sister-hand must seek.

A hymen all unguessed of men
In dreams thou givest to my ken;
For lacking of like mate,
Eternally frustrate:

Where, that the soul of either spouse
Securelier clasp in either's house,
They never breach at all
Their walls corporeal.

This was the secret of the great
And primal Paradisal state,
Which Adam and which Eve
Might not again retrieve.

Yet hast thou toward my vision taught
A way to draw in vernal thought,
Not all too far from that
Great Paradisal state,

Which for that earthy men might wrong,
Were 't uttered in this earthless song,
Thou layest cold finger-tips
Upon my histed lips.

But thou, who knowest the hidden thing
Thou hast instructed me to sing,
Teach Love the way to be
A new Virginity!

Do thou with thy protecting hand
Shelter the flame thy breath has fanned;
Let my heart's reddest glow
Be but as sun-flushed snow.

And if they say that snow is cold,
O Chastity, must they be told
The hand that's chafed with snow
Takes a redoubled glow?—

That extreme cold like heat doth sear?
O to this heart of love draw near,
And feel how scorching rise
Its white-cold purities!

Life, ancient and o'er-childed nurse,
To turn my thirsting mouth averse,
Her breast embittereth
With wry foretaste of death:

But thou, sweet Lady Chastity,
Thou, and thy brother Love with thee,
Upon her lap may'st still
Sustain me, if thou will.

Out of the terrors of the tomb,
And unclean shapes that haunt sleep's gloom,
Yet, yet I call on thee,—
‘Abandon thou not me!’

Now sung is all the singing of this chant.
Lord, Lord, be nigh unto me in my want!
For to the idols of the Gentiles I
Will never make me an hierophant:—
Their false-fair gods of gold and ivory,
Which have a mouth, nor any speech thereby,
Save such as soundeth from the throat of hell
The aboriginal lie;
And eyes, nor any seeing in the light,—
Gods of the obscene night,
To whom the darkness is for diadem.

Let them that serve them be made like to them,
Yea, like to him who fell
Shattered in Gaza, as the Hebrews tell,
Before the simple presence of the Ark.

My singing is gone out upon the dark.