I Dreamed Of Ancient Music

[for Gerard Manley Hopkins]

I dreamed of ancient music
fresh as cream; all honied
dulcet, a bright stream

visionary, winding through
the wanded wounded
worlds: trellised, trellised lily,

and rose and star you are
and deep embellishing.

strummed on a lute in
private chamber; recollected
for the tarnished days impending;

on the execution eves;
failing towers long past Illium crumbling
not yet not yet

the sound of linnets lilting,
don't forget!
princess, queen, or shepherdess.

he sang the unknown;
of the bright- through vanishing vanishing.
though kings are poisoned and

kingdoms withold through the
terrible nights their gates, their gleams
she sings, she sings at her work

and it's a fine embroidery;
porcelain, quaint, of the
highest order,

o that
the earth could be: just this.
earth trembles and then quakes,

not long in bliss;
evoking everything made.
in praise in direst straits sweet

music remains in the sifted ruins.
trembling in the leaves again
on the mystical air, darning darling

floating towards you, after a while
a festive festooned tune in bloom

forever its own Spring, sprung
imagination's queen recoronated:
beyond death beyond dooms

beyond all this so out of tune;

stirring the withered blossoms in the courtyards
the begonias of the poor who only hear begone
in the semi golden world so rickety raggedy

they may build their castles

flame tipped on the tip of
what could be said, even out-of-doors
though it's said no more,

say again! cried the Lord
dream again your dream driven out
and cleaved though it may be.

I
poured you out in my secret heart
that you would adore 

even Beauty's shadow and not
not rend it, not buy or sell it
or quelled, never may it be

by any catastrophe.
oh minstrelsy of the honey buttered
livelong, livelong mornings.

mary angela douglas 25 september 2015