Francis Thompson Quotations
Francis Thompson (December 18, 1859 – November 13, 1907) was an English poet.
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- The hills look over on the South,
And Southward dreams the sea;
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand,
Came innocence and she.
- Daisy (1893), st. 2.
- The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose.
- Daisy (1893), st. 10.
- Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan,
For we are born in other's pain,
And perish in our own.
- Daisy (1893), st. 15.
- Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.
- To My Godchild (this line is inscribed on Thompson's gravestone)
- Thou canst not stir a flower / Without troubling of a star.
- The Mistress of Vision (1913).
- The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.
- Sister Songs, Pt. II (1908)
- Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven,
So ready is Heaven to stoop to him.
- Grace of the Way, st. 6
- Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul.
- Shelley. In the Dublin Review (July 1908)
The Hound of Heaven (1893)
- 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 under running laughter.
- St. 1
- But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
- St. 1
- Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars:
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
- St. 2
- I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon.
- St. 2
- In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
- St. 4
- All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
- St. 5
The Kingdom of God (1913)
- O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
- St. 1
- The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
- St. 3
- The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
- St. 4
- Upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
- St. 5
Unsourced
- I fear to love you, Sweet, because
Love’s the ambassador of loss.
- To Olivia.
- Little Jesus, wast Thou shy
Once, and just so small as I?
And what did it feel to be
Out of Heaven and just like me?
- Ex Ore Infantum.
External links
Wikipedia has an article about: Francis Thompson Wikisource has original works written by or about: Francis Thompson
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Francis Thompson (16 December 1859 – 13 November 1907) was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book, Poems in 1893. Francis Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907.
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