FRANCIS THOMPSON, a poet of high thinking, of celestial vision, and of imaginings that found literary images of answering splendour, died in London in the winter of 1907. His life- always a fragile...
To most incongruous modes of making a living he now put his hand. His assistantship in a shop near Leicester Square would have fitted him for the production of a record of Adventures among Boots; and ...
To Wilfrid And Alice Meynell IF the rose in meek duty May dedicate humbly To her grower the beauty Wherewith she is comely; If the mine to the miner The jewels that pined in it; E...
WHERE the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill- O the breath of the distant surf!- The hills look over on the South, And sout...
To Monica SUMMER set lip to earth's bosom bare, . And left the flushed print in a poppy there: Like a y a wn of fire from the grass it carne. And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping ñam...
YOU, O the piteous you! Who all the long night through Anticipatedly Disclose yourself to me Already in the ways Beyond our human comfortable days; How can you deem what Death Imp...
The Father of Heaven. SPIN, daughter Mary, spin, Twirl your wheel with silver din ; Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Spin a tress for Viola. Angels. Spin, Queen Mary, a Brown tress for ...
THIS labouring, vast, Tellurian galleon, Riding at anchor off the orient sun, Had broken its cable, and stood out to space Down some frore Arctic of the aerial ways: And now, back warping ...
LITTLE JESUS, wast Thou shy Once, and just so small as I ? And what did it feel like to be Out of Heaven, and just like me? Didst Thou sometimes think of there, And ask where all the an...
WHERE its umbrage, was enrooted, Sat, white-suited, Sat, green-amiced and bare-footed, Spring, amid her minstrelsy; There she sat amid her ladies, Where the shade is Sheen as Enna me...
LOVE and love's beauty only hold their revels In life's familiar, penetrable levels: What of its ocean-floor? I dwell there evermore. From almost earliest youth I raised the lids o' the...
YET is there more, whereat none guesseth, love! Upon the ending of my deadly night (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight Is all that any mortal knows thereof), Thou wert to me tha...
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 ri...
OTHOU most dear! Who art thy sex's complex harmony God-set more facilely; To thee may love draw near Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility: Thou Perseus' Shield !...
THEN-as a nymph's carven head sweet water drips, For others oozing so the cool delight Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone- Thy nescient Ups repeat maternal strains. Memnoni...
BUT on a day whereof I think, One shall dip his hand to drink In that still water of thy soul, And its imaged tremors race Over thy joy-troubled face, As the intervolved reflections rol...
AS lovers, banished from their lady's face, And hopeless of her grâce, Fashîon a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief, or a glo...
TOO wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea, song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The mountain where the Muses hymn For Sinai and th...
SINCE you have waned from us, Fairest of women! I am a darkened cage Song cannot hymn in. My songs have followed you, Like birds the summer; Ah! bring them back to me, Swiftly, de...
OH, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold! So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognat...
Wherein he excuseth himself for the M anner of the Portrait. ALAS ! now wilt thou chide, and say (I deem) My figured descant hides the simple thème: Or, in another wise reproving, say I...
THE after-even ! Ah, did I walk, Indeed, in her or even ? For nothing of me or around But absent She did leaven, Felt in my body as its soul, And in my soul its heaven. Ah me ! m y ...
IT seemed corrival of the world's great prime, Made to un-edge the scythe of Time, And last with stateliest rhyme. No tender Dryad ever did indue That rigid chiton of rough yew, To fret...
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and...
I WILL not perturbate Thy Paradisal state With praise Of thy dead days ; To the new-heavened say,- Spirit, thou wert fine clay : This do, Thy praise who knew. Therefore my sp...
STARRY amorist, starward gone, Thou art-what thou didst gaze upon! Passed through thy golden garden's bars, Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars. She, about whose mooned brows Seven sta...
HEARKEN, my chant,- 'tis As a Bacchante's, A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis ! Suffer my singing, Gipsy of Seasons, ère thou go winging; Ere Winter throw...
ON Ararat there grew a vine, When Asia from her bathing tose; Our first sailor made a twine Thereof for his prefiguring brows. Canst divine Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a c...
DAUGHTER of the ancient Eve, We know the gifts ye gave-and give. Who knows the gifts which you shall give, Daughter of the newer Eve ? You, if my soul be augur, you Shall-O what shall y...
OTREE of many branches! One thou hast Thou barest not, but grafted'st on thee. Now, Should all men's thunders break on thee, and leave Thee reft of bough and blossom, that one brandi Shall...
THE lover whose soul shaken is In some decuman billow of bliss, Who feels his gradual-wading feet Sink in some sudden hollow of sweet, And 'mid love's usèd converse cornes Sharp on a mo...
Prelude THE wailful sweetness of the violin Floats down the hushèd waters of the wind; The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin To long in aching music. Spirit-pined, In wafts that...
The mountainous wrack of a création hurled. Who made the splendid rose Saturate with purple glows; Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press. Whence the wind vintages Gushes of w...
VIRTUE may unlock hell, or even A sin turn in the wards of Heaven, (As ethics of the text-book go), So little men their own deeds know, Or through the intricate mêlée Guess whitherward ...
THE windy trammel of her dress, Her blown locks, took my soul in mesh. God's breath they spake, with visibleness That stirred the raiment of hér flesh : And sensible, as her blown locks we...
WHAT heart could have thought you ?- Past our devisai (O filigree petal !) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost ? ...
LO, in the sanctuaried East, Day, a dedicated priest In all his robes pontifical exprest, Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, Yon orbèd sacrament conf...
An Ode After Easter CAST wide the folding doorways of the East, For now is light increased ! And the wind-besomed chambers of the air. See they be garnished fair; And look the ways exha...
ON him the unpetitioned heavens descend, Who heaven on earth proposes not for end; The perilous and celestial excess Taking with peace, lacking with thankfulness. Bliss in extrême befits t...
Thou needst not sing new songs, but say the old-Cowley. MORTALS, that behold a Woman, Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun; Who am I the heavens assume? an All am I, and I am one. Multi...
FEAR to love you, Sweet, because Love 's the ambassador of loss ; White flake of childhood, clinging so To my soiled raiment, your shy snow At tenderest touch will shrink and go. Love m...
IN a little thought, in a little thought, We stand and eye thee in a grave dismay, With sad and doubtful questioning, when first Thou speak'st to us as men: like sons who hear Newly their ...
THIS morning saw I, fled the shower, The earth reclining in a lull of power: The heavens, pursuing not their path, Lay stretched out naked after bath, Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, ...
ON OTHING, in this corporal earth of man, That to the imminent heaven of his high soul Responds with colour and with shadow, can Lade correlated greatness. If the scroll Where thoughts lie...
CAN you tell me where has hid her Pretty Maid July? I would swear one day ago She passed by, I wbuld swear that I do know The blue bliss of her eye: Tarry, maid, maid, I bid her; ...
HIS Shoulder did I hold Too high that I, o'erbold Weak one, Should lean thereon. . But He a little hath Dedined His stately path And my Feet set more high; That the slack arm m...
Written for the Queen's Golden Jubilee Day, 1897 LO, in this day we keep the yesterdays, And those great dead of the Victorian line.* They passed, they passed, but cannot pass away, For En...
AT the Cross thy station keeping With the mournful mother weeping Thou, unto the sinless Son Weepest for thy sinful one. Blood and water from His side Gush; in thee the streams divide: ...
HOW graciously thou wear'st the yoke Of use that does not fail ! The grasses, like an anchored smoke, Ride in the bending gale; This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, And fire-dropt as...
THE breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, An...
The Kingdom of God is within you O WORLD invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! Does the fish ...
GO, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: And some are sung, and that was yesterday, And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow. Go forth; ...
Such pronouncements proved at least that a poet, who bad no friend save such as bis published poems gained for him, could count on an immediate recognition for high merits. For these tributes, and ma...
He has actually accomplished the high thing in metaphysical poetry that Ponne and Crashaw only dreamed of. His mysticism is infinitely more profound and significant than theirs, as his imagination is ...
a Fellows' Garden that the revelation first came. I thought then in my enthusiasm that no such poem had been written or attempted since Coleridge attempted, and left off writing, KuUa Khan. In a coole...
A Biographical Note On Francis Thompson
