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FRANCIS  THOMPSON 
THE  PRESTON-BORN  POET 

(IFith  Notes  on  some  of  his  IVorks) 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON   IN  1893 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON 
THE   PRESTON-BORN 

POET  By  JOHN  THOMSON 


LONDON:  SIMPKIN  MARSHALL 
HAMILTON  KENT  AND  CO  LTD 


4o/c 


Copyright 

First  Edition  1912 
Second  Edition  1913 


<P%6F<^CS  TO  Fii(sr  8T>iriO^ 

4  M  *^HE  idea  of  this  brief  outline  of  the  life  and 
m  zuorks  of  Francis  'Thompson  was  suggested  by 
the  erection  of  the  commemorative  tablet  on 
his  birthplace^  and  by  inquiries  then  made  con- 
cerning his  life  and  career.  I  am  indebted  to 
Mr.  Meynell  for  permission  to  quote  from 
T hompson* s  poems^  to  Sir  Alfred  Hopkinson  for 
information  as  to  the  poefs  stay  at  Owens  College^ 
and  to  the  Rev.  H.  K.  Mann  (Newcastle-on-'Tyne), 
for  leave  to  reproduce  the  two  photographs  of 
Thompson  which  appeared  in  the  "  Ushaw 
Magazine''''  for  March  1908.  /  am  also  in- 
debted to  the  Magazine  articles  referred  to 
{particularly  the  "  Ushaw  Magazine  "),  and  to 
the  prefatory  note  by  Mr.  Meynell  and  the 
"  appreciations  "  in  the  volume  of  Selected  Poems 
issued  by  Messrs.  Burns  iff  Oates,  Orchard 
Street,  London,  the  Poefs  publishers. 

JOHN  THOMSON 

Great  Avenham  Street, 
Preston,  September  191 2 


^%SF<^cs  ro  s6co^T>  sDrrio^ 

71  "TOW  that  the  circle  of  Francis  Thompson'' s 
I  1/  readers  is  daily  widening  and  the  love  of 
his  poems  has  a  place,  second  o?ily  to  their 
religion,  in  the  hearts  of  thousands,  there  is  no 
need  to  offer  an  apology  for  an  enlarged  edition  of 
my  little  work  on  the  great  Poet.  My  special 
object  is  to  help  in  making  Thompson  better 
known  still,  and  so  further  his  protest  against  the 
Materialism  of  the  age,  a  protest  which,  in 
splendour  and  effectiveness,  is  absolutely  unique 
in  English  literature. 

Give  the  world,  the  world.     Let  me  see 
The  light  of  Heav''n  on  land  and  sea 
Pregnant  of  Pow^r  that  was,  and  is, 
And  is  to  be  ! 

I  am  indebted  to  a  sister  of  the  Poet,  a  lady 
of  "  great  heart  and  willing  mind,''"'  for  some 
particulars  of  the  Poefs  family  not  included  in 
the  earlier  edition. 


JOHN  THOMSON 


Great  Avenham  Street, 

Preston,  June  1913 


PART  I 

BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 


PAGB 

IS 


PART  II 

SOME  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  FRANCIS 

THOMPSON'S  VERSE  71 

PART  III 

NOTES  ON  SOME  OF  FRANCIS  THOMPSON'S 

POEMS  : 

(I)  THE  HOUND  OF  HEAVEN  95 

2)  ODE  TO  THE  SETTING  SUN  103 

(3)  DAISY  III 

(4)  IN  NO  STRANGE  LAND  117 

(Thompson's  last  poem) 


LIST  OF  ILLUST-H^^riO^ 


FACING 
PACE 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  IN  1893  Frontispiece 

BIRTHPLACE  OF  FRANCIS  THOMPSON  18 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON  AT  THE  AGE  OF  FIFTEEN  26 


II 


Francis,  thy  music  like  a  deep  stream  f,<Kos 
From  mystic  heights,  and  mirrors  as  it  goes 
The  shades  and  splendours  of  that  prismy  peak 
Where  poet-dreamers  dwell,  and  tireless  seek 
Strains  most  adequate  ;  and  thy  song  is  Jed 
By  cyclic  hauntings  from  the  cliffs  of  dread 
Thou  perforce  clomb,  a  wider  world  to  scan. 
And  catch  lost  echoes  of  the  Pipes  of  Pan. 

From  other  sounds  aloof  thy  message  rolls. 

And  men  must  hearken  for  it  draws  their  souls  : 

Now  thrills  with  awe,  and  now  with  such  sweet  stress 

As  linketh  heart  to  heart  in  tenderness 

By  dire  compellings,  none  save  those  may  wield. 

Whose  birth-fused  breath  is  fashioned  for  the  yield — 

Who  reach  the  crovmed  gates,  and  entrance  gain 

To  highest  Heaven,  through  the  Arch  of  Paiii  ! 

J.  T. 


M 


posr  ^:ht>  mystic 


Pass  the  gates  of  Luthany^ 
Tread  the  region  Eknore. 


Go,  songs,  Jor  ended  is  our  brief,  sweet  flay  ; 

Go,  children  of  swift  joy  and  tardy  sorrow  : 
And  some  are  sung,  and  that  was  yesterday. 

And  some  unsung,  and  that  may  he  to-morrow. 

Go  forth  ;  and  if  it  be  o'er  stony  way. 

Old  joy  can  lend  what  viewer  grief  must  borrow  : 

And  it  was  szueet,  and  that  was  yesterday. 

And  sweet  is  sweet,  though  purchased  zvith  sorrow. 

F.  Thompson 


i6 


POST  ^3^  MYSTIC 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON,  poet  and 
mystic,  "  master  of  the  lordly  line,  the 
daring  image,  and  the  lyric's  lilt,"  was 
born  at  Preston,  on  the  i8th  December  1859, 
in  the  house  numbered  7  Winckley  Street, 
now  used  as  a  solicitor's  office.  He  was 
baptized  at  St.  Ignatius'  Church,  in  that 
town,  on  the  20th  of  the  same  month.  His 
full  name,  as  it  appears  on  the  register  of 
births,  is  Francis  Joseph  Thompson  ;  but  his 
first  published  poem  having  been  signed 
"  Francis  Thompson,"  it  was  thought  advis- 
able that  he  should  (as  he  ever  afterwards 
did)  adhere  to  the  shorter  form.  The  com- 
memorative tablet  placed,  on  the  loth  August 
1910,  over  the  doorway  of  the  house  where 
the  poet  first  saw  the  light,  gives  his  name 
in  full.  The  tablet  is  the  gift  of  Mrs. 
Catherine  Holiday,  of  Hawkshead  (formerly 
of  Preston),  and  it  is  a  sadly  curious  fact 
that,  only  after  many  inquiries,  could  the 
exact  birthplace  of  one  destined  "  down  the 
annals  of  fame  to  carry  a  name  immortal  " 
— the  greatest  of  his  proud  town's  sons — be 
found. 

17 


The  poet's  father  was  Charles  Thompson,  a 
homoeopathic  doctor  of  some  note — a  man 
(according  to  a  writer  in  the  Church  Times  *) 
firm  and  kind,  but  somewhat  austere,  and  with 
no  poetic  instinct ;  his  mother,  Mary  Turner 
Thompson,  formerly  Morton.  Both  parents 
were  Catholics,  and  converts  from  Anglicanism 
some  years  before  their  marriage.  Francis  was 
the  second  of  the  five  children,  all  of  whom 
were  born  in  Preston.  Two  babies,  Charles 
Joseph,  the  first-born  (who  only  lived  a  day), 
and  Helen  Mary,  the  fourth,  are  buried  there. 
Such  literary  traditions  as  descended  to  our 
poet  would  seem  to  have  come  through  a 
paternal  uncle,  Edward  Healy  Thompson,  who 
rose  to  some  distinction,  and  is  still  remembered, 
by  his  religious  writings. 

Dr.  Thompson  appears  to  have  lived  in 
several  houses  in  Preston — the  one  in  Winckley 
Street,  already  mentioned  ;  before  that  (prob- 
ably from  1856  to  1858)  at  12  St.  Ignatius' 
Square  ;  and  after  the  birth  of  Francis,  first  in 
Winckley  Square,  and  later  in  Latham  Street. 
Two  of  the  doctor's  children  were  born  at  the 
house  in  Winckley  Square  (No.  3 3 a) — one  in 
1 861,  the  other  in  1862.     It  was  whilst  residing 

*   April  21,  1911. 
18 


BIRTHPLACE  OF^  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 
7WINCKLEY  STREET,  PRESTON 


in  Latham  Street,  in  1864,  that  his  daughter 
Helen  Mary  died,  and  his  fifth  child  was 
born.  The  doctor's  removal  to  Ashton- 
under-Lyne  towards  the  end  of  1864,  while 
his  three  surviving  children  were  so  young, 
will  no  doubt  account  for  that  town  being 
sometimes  given  as  the  poet's  birthplace.* 
Dr.  Thompson  (who  had  married  again, 
after  the  death  of  his  first  wife  in  1880,  and 
left  one  child  of  the  second  marriage),  died 
in  1896. 

Young   Francis   was   sent,  on  the   22nd   of    ^^^ 
September     1870,    to    Ushaw    College,    nearfy*"^ 
Durham,    well   known    at    that    time   for    its^ — 
literary  associations  with  Lingard  and  Wise- 
man,  and  later,   with   Lafcadio   Hearn.     His 
education  up  to  this  had  been  at  home,  at  the 
hands  of  his  mother  and  the  family  governess. 

It  was   his    parents'  wish  that   his    college/' 
studies  should  be  such  as  to  fit  him  for  thel 
priesthood,  or,  failing  a  vocation,  such  as  would) 
be  of  assistance  in  the  father's  profession  of  I 
medicine  :  and  instructions  were  given  accord-  I 
ingly  to  the  college  authorities.     Our  youthful 

*  Even  the  Ushaw  Magazine  (March  1908)  refers  to 
Francis  Thompson,  "  born  at  Ashton-under-Lyne"  etc. 
Another  town  which  has  been  accorded  the  honour  of  the 
poet's  birth  is  Boston  ! 

B  19 


student  soon  evinced  a  remarkable  love  of  books, 
and  being  specially  indulged  by  his  masters' in 
his  taste  for  the  reading  of  the  classics,  he  early- 
distinguished  himself  in  such  subjects  as  their 
ample  reading  would  naturally  improve.  Most 
of  his  leisure  hours  were  spent  in  the  well- 
stocked  libraries,  sometimes,  in  his  seminary 
days,  behind  a  barrier  of  books  erected  as  a 
protection  from  the  "  attentions  "  (catapults, 
bullets  of  paper,  and  the  like)  of  his  class-mates. 
He  was  not  strong  enough  to  take  much  part  in 
the  college  games,  and  only  in  the  racquet 
courts,  at  handball,  did  he  attain  a  proficiency 
above  the  average.  His  companions  relate 
that  he  was  extremely  fond  of  watching,  and 
was  accounted  a  good  judge  of.  Cricket.  In- 
deed, the  "  sunlit  pitch  "  had  a  fascination  for 
him  which  he  never  lost.  Towards  the  end  of 
his  life  he  knew  all  the  famous  scores  of  the 
preceding  quarter  of  a  century  :  after  his  death, 
the  averages  of  his  cricket  heroes,  for  over 
thirty  years,  most  carefully  compiled,  were 
found  among  his  papers,  and  with  them  some 
verses  on  the  absorbing  game,  in  which  the 
names  of  Hornby  and  Barlow  appear.  The 
verses,  trivial  and  probably  never  intended  for 
print,  end  : 

20 


"POST  (t^^N^'Z)    ^SMTSriC 

It  is  little  I  repair  to  the  matches  of  the  Southron 
folk, 
Though     my    own     red    roses    there     may 
blow  ; 
It  is  little  I  re-pair  to  the  matches  of  the  Southron 
folk. 
Though    the    red    roses    crest    the    caps    I 
know. 
For  the  field  is  full  of  shades  as  I  near  the  shadowy 

coast, 
And  a  ghostly  batsman  plays  to  the  bowling  of  a 

ghost : 
And  I  look   through   my   tears  on  a  soundless, 
clapping  host. 
As  the  run- stealers  flicker  to  and  fro. 

To  and  fro, 
O  my  Hornby  and  my  Barlow,  long  ago. 

The  lines  are  not  dated,  but  seem  to  have 
been  called  forth  by  an  incident  which 
occurred  not  long  before  the  poet's  death. 
It  would  appear  that  he  had  been  invited 
to  Lord's  to  see  Middlesex  and  Lancashire, 
and  had  agreed  to  go ;  but  as  the  time 
for  the  match  drew  near,  the  sad  memories 
of  bygone  days  became  too  much  for  him. 
The    pathetic    interest    of    a   composition   so 

21 


reminiscent  of  the  "  long  ago  "  will   be  un- 
derstood  by   those  who  know   what   it  is  to 
miss  their  favourite   faces  from   the  field   of 
sport.     It  may  be  mentioned  in  passing,  that 
Thompson  wrote  a  lengthy  criticism  of  "  The 
Jubilee    Book    of   Cricket "    in    the   Academy 
— a  criticism  full  of  Cricket  acumen. 
"\     Whilst  at  Ushaw,  Thompson  wrote  a  number 
of  verses,  some  of  which  are  still  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  college  authorities,  or  of  college 
companions.     In  more  than  one,  the  quaint, 
spelling  and  love  of  the  older  words  which 
marked    his   later    works    are    noticeable.     It 
must    be   for    others    to    say    how    far    these 
early    efforts    exhibit    the    buddings    of    that 
exuberant    genius,   which   was    afterwards    to 
display     itself    so    wonderfully.       Five    such 
poems,  "  Lamente  forre   Stephanon,"   "  Song 
of  the  Neglected  Poet,"  "  Finchale,"  "Dirge 
of  Douglas,"   "  A   Song   of    Homildon,"    are 
given    in   full    in   the    Ushaw   Magazine   for 
March    1908.     "The  Song  of  the  Neglected 
Poet,"   by  its   very  title,   cannot  fail   to   ex- 
cite   interest    among  Thompson    lovers.      Its 
theme  is  the  praise  of  poesy  :   the  first  three 
verses  run  : 


22 


"POST  <^^T>  .^rsric 

Still,  be  still  zuithin  my  breast,  thou  ever,  ever 
wailing  heart  ; 
Hush,    O    hush    within    my    bosom,    beating, 
beating  heart  of  mine  I 
Lay  aside  thy  useless  grief,  and  brood  fiot  o^er  thy 
aching  smart. 
Wherefore  but  for  sick  hearts'*  healing,  came 
down  poesy  divine  ? 

Mourn  not,  soul,  o^er  hopes  departed,  efforts  spent, 
and  spent  in  vain  ; 
On  a  glorious  strife  we  entered,  and  ^twasfor  a 
priceless  stake  ; 
Well  "'twas  foughten,  well  we'^ve  struggled,  and, 
thd'  all  our  hopes  are  slain, 
Tet,  my  soul,  we  have  a  treasure  not  the  banded 
world  can  take. 

Poesy,  that  glorious  treasure  I  Poesy  my  own  for 
(?Vr  / 
Mine  and  thine,  my  soul,  for  ever,  ours  though 
all  else  may  be  gone  ; 
Like  the  sun  it  shone  upon  us  when  our  life  began 
so  fair. 
Like  the  moon  it  stays  to  cheer  us  nozv  our  night 
is  almost  done. 


23 


The  "  Dirge  of  Douglas  "  has  a  martial  ring  : 
Let  no  ruthful  burying  song 

Lament  the  Earl  of  Douglas, 
But  let  his  'praises  loud  and  long 
Echo  the  rocks  and  hills  among. 
Poured  from  the  lips  of  warriors  strong, 

The  doughty  Earl  of  Douglas  ! 

***** 

Bear  him  to  his  grave  with  a  warlike  pace. 
Sing  no  sad  requiem  o^er  him  ; 

The  mightiest  he  of  all  his  race. 

He  is  gone,  and  none  can  fill  his  place  ! 

Let  the  champion  lie  in  his  warrior^ s  grace 
Where  his  forefathers  lay  before  him. 

The  "  Song  of  Homildon  "  is  a  mere  frag- 
ment : 
"Now  every  man  from  hill  and  plain 

Follow  the  banner  of  Percy  ; 
Far  into  Northumberland,  trampling  o^er  slain, 
The  doughty  Earl  Douglas  hath  forayed  amain, 
And  scorneth  all  ruth  or  mercy. 

Hotspur  hath  girded  his  harness  on. 

And  plucked  his  sword  from  the  scabbard  ; 
He  led  his  army  to  Homildoii, 
There,  e^er  the  ruddy  moon  be  done, 
The  lion  must  yield  to  the  libbard. 
H 


"POST  ^^T>   rMTSTIC 

Neither  in  arithmetic,  nor  later  in  mathe- 
matics, was  the  young  poet  a  success.  Indeed, 
at  the  end  of  his  college  career,  he  had  fallen 
to  the  last  place  in  mathematical  subjects. 
But  in  English  and  essay-writing  he  was  often 
the  first,  both  at  seminary  and  college.  On 
five  only  out  of  the  twenty-one  occasions  in  his 
seminary  days  when  examinations  in  essay- 
writing  were  held,  did  he  fail  to  secure  the  top  ■ 
place.  From  these  early  compositions,  many 
of  which  are  still  in  existence,  it  would  appear 
that  battles  and  sieges  were  the  favourite 
subjects  in  prose  of  the  shy  and  gentle  youth 
whose  own  battle  of  life  was  destined  to 
be  singularly  severe  and  prolonged.  One  of 
his  essays,  "  The  Storming  of  the  Bridge  of 
Lodi,"  written  for  a  speaker  at  the  debat- 
ing club  in  1874  (^^^  7^^^  Francis  passed 
from  seminary  into  college  proper),  evoked 
considerable  enthusiasm  among  his  com- 
panions. 

The  seven  years  spent  by  Thompson  at 
Ushaw  stamped  his  after-life  deeply  with  its 
religious  atmosphere.  He  was  orthodox  through 
and  through,  "  from  within,  from  beneath, 
outward  to  his  acts,  upward  to  his  poetry." 
Though  it  was  not  his  lot  to  receive  a  call  to 

25 


the  priesthood,  his  verses  are,  oftener  than  any 
other  poet's,  vestment-clad  and  odorous  of  the 
incense  of  the  sanctuary.  If,  as  has  been  said 
by  one,  his  poetry  is  spiritual  even  to  a  fault,  it 
must  be  a  "  fault  "  the  glory,  doubtless,  of  his 
Alma  Mater  ! 

It  was  after  our  poet  left  Ushaw  (whose 
peaceful  groves  he  never  revisited),  that  the 
clouds  of  his  life  began  to  gather.  He  returned 
to  his  home  (Stamford  Street,  Ashton-under- 
Lyne)  in  July  1877,  and  was  sent,  in  October  of 
the  same  year,  to  Owens  College,  Manchester, 
to  study  medicine.  Thus  much  is  known  that 
the  subject  was  entirely  distasteful  to  him,  and 
that,  though  he  distinguished  himself  in  Greek 
in  a  preliminary  examination,  he  did  not 
devote  himself  to  the  reading  necessary  for  the 
profession  which  it  was  now  intended  he  should 
follow  :  like  Keats  in  his  hospital- walking  days, 
he  was  more  engrossed  by  volumes  of  poetry 
than  by  treatises  on  anatomy.  The  "  Halls  of 
Medicine  "  saw  him  but  seldom  :  it  was  in 
the  public  libraries  of  Manchester,  with  his 
favourite  authors,  the  poets,  that  he  spent 
most  of  his  days.  His  passion  for  cricket  led 
him  often,  at  this  time,  to  Old  Trafford, 
among  the  great  matches  which  he  witnessed 
26 


FRANCIS  THOMPSON  AF  THE  AGIC  OP^  FU-THKN 


there  being  the  historic  meeting  of  Lancashire 
and  Gloucestershire  on  July  25,  26,  and  zy, 
1878. 

Thompson  spent  nearly  eight  years  at  Owens 
College.  Among  those  contemporary  with 
him  are  many  names  of  eminence  :  Professor 
W.  Thorburn,  Dr.  E.  S.  Reynolds,  Dr.  Robert 
Maguire,  Dr.  Leopold  Larmuth,  and  the  late 
Dr.  Thomas  Harris,  among  the  rest.  But 
Thompson  as  a  medical  student  was  a  misfit, 
for  his  hopes  of  healing  lay  elsewhere  than 
in  the  consulting-room,  as  his  "  Song  of  the 
Neglected  Poet,"  already  quoted,  shows. 

The  graceful  memorial  recently  (July  191 2) 
affixed  in  Manchester  University  to  Thomp- 
son's memory  as  a  student  at  Owens  College 
bears  some  sad  lines  (taken  from  his  "  Ode 
to  the  Setting  Sun  "),  which  may  serve  to  in- 
dicate the  sense  of  disappointment  haunting 
his  life  at  the  period  of  closing  his  medical 
studies  : 

Whatso  looks  lovelily 
Is  but  the  rainbozv  on  lifers  weeping  rain. 
Why  have  we  longings  of  immortal  pain, 
And  all  we  long  for  mortal  P     Woe  is  me. 
And  all  our  chants  hut  chaplet  some  decay 
As  mine  this  vanishing — nay  vanished  day. 

27 
/ 


He  does  not  seem  ever  to  have  concealed  his 
mode  of  living  at  Manchester,  or  his  repugnance 
to  the  profession  selected  for  him,  and  in  the 
end,  the  student  whose  heart  v^^as  set  on  the 
construction  of  sentences  rather  than  that  of 
the  human  body,  had  to  listen  to  the  reproaches 
of  an  angry  parent.  There  was  a  terrible  scene 
between  father  and  son.  Still  unwilling  to 
pursue  his  medical  studies,  and  fearful  of 
another  such  meeting,  the  young  man  tried  to 
enlist  for  a  soldier,  but  being  refused  for  want 
of  the  requisite  chest-measurement,  abruptly 
fled  from  home.  In  the  ordinary  course  he 
would  have  spent  the  summer  vacation  of  that 
year  (1885)  away  from  home  with  his  father  ; 
but  it  was  shortly  before  the  vacation — in  the 
July  of  1885 — that  the  break,  which  was  to 
bring  such  sad  consequences  in  its  train,  came. 
Francis  seems  to  have  left  with  little  in  his 
pocket,  and  walked  by  many  a  devious  way,  until 
he  arrived,  in  search  of  a  living,  in  London.  In 
the  words  of  Mr.  Mcynell :  ''  Like  De  Quincey 
he  went  to  London,  and  knew  Oxford  Street 
for  a  stony-hearted  stepmother."  Arrived  in 
the  great  city,  without  means  and  without  any 
prospects  before  him,  his  life's  tragedy  began. 
Like  Shakespeare  in  his  early  London  days,  it 
28 


was  only  by  accepting  "mean  employment" 
that  Thompson  kept  his  soul  in  his  body. 

He  worked  for  a  while  as  an  assistant  in  a 
boot-shop  near  Leicester  Square.  "  Are  you 
saved  ?  "  he  had  been  asked  one  day  in  the 
street  by  a  man  pitying  his  plight.  "  What 
right  have  you  to  ask  ?  "  returned  the  poor 
youth.  The  questioner,  persisting  in  his  good 
intentions,  answered  quietly,  "  Well,  never 
mind  about  your  soul.  Your  body  is  in  a  bad 
way.  If  you  want  work,  come  to  me."  And 
so  the  young  poet  became  a  handy  boy  in  a 
boot-shop  !  Later,  he  got  work  as  a  "  col- 
lector "  for  a  bookseller,  for  whom  he  had  to 
haul  heavy  sacks  through  the  streets.  But 
days  there  were  when  no  employment  of  any 
kind  could  be  had,  and  the  homeless  night 
followed  perforce  the  hungry  day.  Those  who 
see  in  Thompson's  poem,  "  The  Hound  of 
Heaven,"  a  narration  of  his  own  experiences, 
will  find  many  a  passage  which  may  have  been 
suggested  by  this  period  : 

In  the  rash  lustihead  of  my  young  fozvers, 

I  shook  the  -pillaring  hours 
And  fulled  my  life  upon  me  ;  grimed  with  smears, 
I  stand  amid  the  dust  o'  the  mounded  years — 

29 


My  mangled  youth  lies  dead  beneath  the  heap. 
My  days  have  crackled  and  gone  up  in  smoke^ 

Have  puffed  and  hurst  as  sun- starts  on  a  stream. 

*  %         #         #         « 

Ah  I  must — 
Designer  Infinite  ! — 
Ah  !  must  Thou  char  the  wood  ere  'Thou  canst 

limn  with  it  ? 

*  *         *         *         * 

In  vain  my  tears  were  wet  on  Heaven's  grey  cheek. 

*  *         *         *         * 

Lines  such  as  these  tell  their  own  story  of  the 
years  "  with  heavy  griefs  so  overplussed." 

Thompson  was  never  physically  strong.  He 
had  been  afflicted  with  a  nervous  breakdown 
before  leaving  Manchester,  from  the  effects  of 
which  he  never  recovered.  His  life  in  London, 
before  his  "  discovery  "  in  1888,  cut  off  from 
home,  and  without  a  friend,  must  have  been 
terrible.  At  times  utterly  destitute,  at  others 
glad  to  earn  a  trifling  sum  by  any  odd  job 
(selling  matches  and  the  like)  that  chance 
threw  in  his  way,  his  home  perchance  a  railway 
arch  or  bench  in  the  Park — oppressed,  too,  by 
the  thoughts  of  filial  duty  unfulfilled,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  he  should  have  sought  the  attrac- 
tions  of   laudanum    (whose   wiles   he   learned 

30 


'POST  ftA^KT)  ^MYSTIC 

whilst  a  student  of  medicine)  to  bring  some 
measure  of  relief.  It  is  related  that  on  one  occa- 
sion in  his  darkest-days  he  was  so  strongly  tempted 
to  self-destruction  that  he  only  escaped  the 
tempter  by  some  mysterious,  unseen  interven- 
tion, and  that  the  heaven  of  which  he  writes  : 

^hort  arm  needs  man  to  reach  to  heaven. 
So  ready  is  heaven  to  stoop  to  him  ; 

did  indeed  stoop  down  to  save  him,  by  dashing         \^ 
away  the  poison  he  had  intended,  in  a  fit  of 
despair,  to  take. 

There  is  a  touching  incident  (again  recalling 
De  Quincey)  recorded  in  his  own  matchless 
way  in  his  volume  of  "  Sister  Songs  "  (A  Child's 
Kiss)  which  must  have  occurred  in  this  "  night- 
mare "  time  : 

Once,  bright  Sylviola  /  in  days  not  far, 
Once — in  that  nightmare-time  which  still 

doth  haunt 
My  dreams,  a  grim,  unbidden  visitant — 

Forlorn,  and  faint,  and  stark, 
I  had  endured  through  watches  of  the  dark 

The  abashless  inquisition  of  each  star. 
Tea,  was  the  outcast  mark 

Of  all  those  heavenly  passers''  scrutiny  ; 
Stood  bound  and  helplessly 

3J 


For  'Time  to  shoot  his  barbed  minutes  at  me  ; 
Suffered  the  trampling  hoof  of  every  hour 

In  nighfs  slow-wheeled  car  : 
Until  the  tardy  dawn  dragged  me  at  length 
From  under  those  dread  wheels;  and,  bled  of  strength, 

I  waited  the  inevitable  last. 

Then  there  came  fast 
A  child  ;  like  thee,  a  Spring  flower  ;  hut  a  flower 
Fallen  from  the  budded  coronal  of  Spring, 
And  through  the  city  streets  blown  withering. 
She   passed, — O    brave,    sad,    lovingest,    tender 

thing  ! — 
And  of  her  own  scant  pittance  did  she  give. 

That  I  might  eat  and  live  : 
Thenjied,  a  swift  and  trackless  fugitive. 

To  what  extent  our  poet's  wedding  with 
poverty  fashioned  an  offspring  in  his  poems 
will  be  for  his  biographer  to^note.  The  maga- 
zine to  which  Thompson  sent  his  first  accepted 
piece  was  Merry  England.  It  has  been  stated 
that  Thompson  heard  of  the  existence  of  this 
magazine  through  the  late  Bishop  (then  Canon) 
Carroll,  who,  meeting  him  in  London,  had 
determined  to  do  what  he  could  to  help  him  in 
his  work,  and  wrote  to  tell  him  of  the  possi- 
bilities which  the  magazine  offered.  For  a 
32 


"POST  (L^^D  .^rsric 

couple  of  years  the  poor  poet  had  been  sending 
verses,  written  on  scraps  of  paper  picked  up  in 
the  streets,  to  impatient  editors — but  without 
result.  To  the  magazine  mentioned  he  sent, 
some  time  late  in  1888,  in  hopelessly  unpre- 
sentable manuscript,  a  poem  (said  to  be 
"  Dream  Tryst  ")  which  has  been  described  as 
"  one  of  the  brightest  lights  of  his  genius."  The 
brilliancy  of  the  verse-set  gems  was  recognized 
by  the  editor,  Mr.  Wilfrid  Meynell,  and  the 
poem  and  its  acceptance  became  the  turning- 
point  in  the  poet's  career,  at  a  time  when  all 
hope  seemed  gone.  The  tender-hearted  editor, 
not  content  with  publishing  the  verses,  deter- 
mined to  find  and  assist  their  author.  The 
address — "  Post  Office,  Charing  Cross  " — given 
on  the  manuscript  afforded  but  little  clue 
however,  and  the  search  for  the  vagrant  poet, 
then  in  the  most  pitiable  state  after  his  three 
years  and  more  of  London  vagrancy  and  months 
of  appalling  suffering,  was  a  long  one.  The 
chemist  in  Drury  Lane  from  whom  Thompson 
procured  the  drug  which  he  used  to  ease  his 
"  human  smart  "  was  consulted — and  in  the 
end  the  poet  was  traced  to  his  lodging,  to  be 
rescued  when  everything  seemed  utterly  lost. 
Won  over  by  the  sympathy  of  both  Mr.  and 

33 


Mrs.  Meynell,  he  agreed  to  place  himself  under 
their  care.  He  was  received  temporarily  into 
their  home,  and  made  the  friend  of  their 
children.  Canon  Carroll,  who  had,  years  be- 
fore, made  efforts  on  behalf  of  the  poet's 
family  to  trace  the  missing  youth  in  the  crowd 
of  London's  submerged  tenth,  now  became 
the  intermediary  between  Thompson  and  his 
father,  and  had  the  happiness  of  finding  his 
efforts  to  bring  about  a  reconciliation  success- 
ful. By  his  manly  tenderness  in  doing  all  that 
was  possible  to  heal  the  scars  of  the  wanderer, 
the  Canon  so  won  the  poet's  heart  that  (as 
told  by  one  who  knew  both  poet  and  prelate 
intimately)  the  attitude  of  the  one  to  the  other 
was  thenceforth  that  of  "  a  little  child  at  his 
father's  knee."  After  being  medically  treated 
and  carefully  nursed,  Thompson  lived  for  nearly 
two  years  in  the  Premonstratensian  monastery 
at  Storrington,  in  Sussex. 

It  is  to  Mr.  Meynell's  son  (Mr.  Everard 
Meynell)  that  the  literary  world  will  have  to 
look,  in  his  forthcoming  biography  of  the  poet, 
for  many  particulars  of  the  poet's  inner  life  : 
and  it  is  not  strange  that  the  children  of  the 
Meynell  family  became  the  subject  of  some  of 
Thompson's  finest  verses.     To  their  mother, 

34 


POST  e^^D   .EMTSTIC 

Mrs.  Meynell  *  (the  gifted  poetess  eulogized 
by  Ruskin),  he  dedicated  the  group  of  poems, 
"  Love  In  Dian's  Lap,"  besides  many  other 
charming  pieces.  To  Mr.  Meynell  himself, 
under  the  Initials  "  VV.  M.,"  he  addressed  the 
touching  lines  : 

O  tree  of  many  branches  !     One  thou  hast 

Thou  barest  not,  hut  grafted'' st  on  thee.     Now,  • 

Should  all  men's  thunders  break  on  thee,  and  leave  j 

Thee  reft  of  bough  and  blossom,  that  one  branch 

Shall  cling  to  thee,  my  Father,  Brother,  Friend^ 

Shall  cling  to  thee,  until  the  end  of  end  I 

Of  Storrington,  Mr.  Meynell,  In  his  bio- 
graphical note  prefaced  to  the  volume  of 
"  Selected  Poems,"  states  :  "  That  beautiful 
Sussex  village  has  now  its  fixed  place  on  the 
map  of  English  literature.  For  there  It  was 
that  Francis  Thompson  discovered  his  possi- 
bilities as  a  poet."  From  thenceforth  (Novem- 
ber 1888)  until  about  1897,  when  he  took 
mainly  to  the  writing  of  prose,  Thompson 
soared  higher  and  higher  in  his  poetic  flights, 
while  his  fame  steadily  grew.     If  his  works  are 

*  An  interesting  estimate  and  review  of  the  poetry  of 
Mrs.  Meynell  "  to-day  sole  queen  of  poetry  in  this  land  " — 
with  special  reference  to  the  poetry  of  Francis  Thompson- 
appeared  in  the  British  Review  of  March  191 3. 

c  35 


not  yet  as  widely  known  as  certain  lesser 
writers',  it  is  partly  because  Thompson  is  the 
poets'  poet,  and  partly  because,  as  an  article  in 
the  Ushaw  Magazine  puts  it,  verses  such  as 
his,  by  their  deep  symbolism  and  old-time 
words,  "  are  by  their  very  character  slow- 
footed  travellers.  They  will  journey  far,  but 
they  must  have  time." 

The  first  volume  of  Thompson's  Poems, 
which  appeared  in  November  1893,  under  the 
simple  title,  "  Poems,"*  attracted  attention 
immediately.  Referring  to  the  section  '*  Love 
in  Dian's  Lap,"  Canon  Yates  writes  :  "  Was 
woman  ever  more  exquisitely  sung  ?  I  do  not 
know  in  the  whole  realm  of  English  poetry  a 
more  noble  tribute  to  noble  womanhood."  Of 
one  of  the  longer  pieces,  "  The  Hound  of 
Heaven,"  in  another  section,  the  critics  did  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  it  seemed  to  be,  on  the 
whole,  the  most  wonderful  lyric  in  the  language, 
the  author  a  Crashaw  cast  in  a  diviner  mould — 
a  worthy  disciple  of  Dante — a  companion  of 
Cowley — the  equal  of  Shelley.  A  foremost 
criticf  summed  it  up  as  "  the  return  of  the 
nineteenth  century  to  Thomas  a  Kempis."  It 
delighted  men  of  such  diverse  minds  as  Sir 

*  Dedicated  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  MeyneU. 
t  J.  L.  Garvin. 

36 


"POST  e^^Z)   ^MTSTIC 

Edward  Burne-Jones  and  Mr.  Coventry  Pat- 
more  ;  the  Bishop  of  London  (who  pronounced 
it  "  one  of  the  most  tremendous  poems  ever 
written  ")  ;  and  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell,  the 
Nonconformist  divine.  Grave  and  learned 
priests  quoted  it  in  their  sermons ;  scholars  and 
literary  men  in  every  walk  of  life  learnt  it  by 
heart ;  the  T^imes  emphatically  declared  that 
men  will  still  be  learning  it  200  years  hence  ! 
Considered  by  most  authorities  to  be 
Thompson's  masterpiece,  "  The  Hound  of 
Heaven  "  abounds  in  gems  of  artistic  trope 
and  poetic  imagery.  It  is  doubtful  if  any 
more  impressively  beautiful  gallery  of  pictures, 
contained  in  the  space  of  less  than  two  hundred 
lines,  has  been  seen  in  modern  days.  The 
subject-matter — God's  pursuit  and  conquest  of 
the  resisting  soul  that  would  find  its  satisfaction 
elsewhere  than  in  Him  (God  being  symbolized 
as  the  Hound) — is  described,  to  borrow  the 
words  of  Patmore,  "  in  a  torrent  of  as  humanly- 
expressive  verse  as  was  ever  inspired  by  a 
natural  affection." 

Of  the  poems  in  the  first  volume  it  will 
suffice  to  quote  J.  L.  Garvin  in  The  Bookman  : 

"  A  volume  of  poetry  has  not  appeared  in 
Queen  Victoria's  reign  more  authentic  in 
greatness  of   utterance  than  this.  ...     It  is 

37 


perfectly  safe  to  affirm  that  if  Mr.  Thompson 
wrote  no  other  line,  by  this  volume  alone  he  is 
as  secure  of  remembrance  as  any  poet  of  the 
century.  .  .  .  Mr.  Thompson's  first  volume 
is  no  mere  promise — it  is  itself  among  the  great 
achievements  of  English  poetry  ;  it  has  reached 
the  peak  of  Parnassus  at  a  bound." 

The  volume  entitled  "  Sister  Songs,"  dedi- 
cated to  Monica  and  Madeline  Meynell  (whose 
names  are  thus  immortalized),  appeared  in  1895. 
It  is  the  most  autobiographical  of  Thompson's 
volumes.  Included  in  it  is  a  poem  (the  "  Poet 
and  Anchorite  "  of  "  Selected  Poems ")  which 
contains  some  lines  memorable  by  their  special 
insight  into  the  poet's  inner  self  : 

Love  anci  love's  beauty  only  hold,  their  revels 
In  life''s  familiar,  penetrable  levels  : 

What  of  its  ocean-floor  P 

I  dwell  there  evermore. 

From  almost  earliest  youth 

I  raised  the  lids  0'  the  truth. 
And  forced  her  bend  on  me  her  shrinking  sight — 

It  was  from  stern  truth,  then,  that  the  Prodigal 
of  Song  learned  his  Art  ! 

"  Sister  Songs  "  is  described  by  Mr.  Archer 
as  "  a  book  which  Shelley  would  have  adored." 
The   Times  says    it    contains    passages   which 

38 


TOST  <^^T>   ^MTSTIC 

Spenser  would  not  have  disowned.  To  quote 
the  latter  more  fully  :  "  Thompson  used  his 
large  vocabulary  with  a  boldness — and  especially 
a  recklessness,  almost  a  frivolity  in  rhyme — 
that  were  worthy  of  Browning.  On  the  other 
hand,  these  rugged  points  were,  at  a  further 
view,  absorbed  into  the  total  effect  of  beauty 
in  a  manner  which  Browning  never  achieved. 
.  .  .  These  '  Sister  Songs,'  written  in  praise  of 
two  little  sisters,  contain  a  number  of  lovely 
and  most  musical  lines,  and  some  passages — 
such  as  the  seventh  section  of  the  first  poem — 
which  Spenser  would  not  have  disowned." 
The  New  Age  summed  up  its  estimate : 
"  We  have  not  in  the  English  tongue  a 
volume  more  entirely  packed  with  unalloyed 
poetry." 

The  last  volume  of  verse  (1897)  entitled 
"  New  Poems  "  *  bears  the  same  high  mark 
of  genius,  winning  the  highest  praise  from  the 
critics  and  reviewers.  Sir  A.  T.  Quiller-Couch 
("  Q  ")  sums  up  his  estimate  of  "  The  Mistress 
of  Vision  "  :  "  It  is  verily  a  wonderful  poem  ; 
hung,  like  a  fairy-tale,  in  middle  air — a  sleeping 
palace  of  beauty  set  in  a  glade  in  the  heart  of 
the  woods  of  Westermain,  surprised  there  and 
recognized  with  a  gasp  as  satisfying,  and 
*  Dedicated  to  Coventry  Patmore. 

39 


summarizing    a    thousand    youthful    longings 
after  beauty." 

Maud  Diver  in  her  novel  "  Candles  in  the 
Wind  "  has  many  fine  things  to  say  of  Thomp- 
son's third  volume.  One  passage  only  (given 
purposely  without  reference  to  the  particular 
character  to  which  it  refers)  must  suffice  to 
show  something  of  the  novelist's  appreciation  : 

During  the  process  [of  reading  "  New  Poems  "] 
murmurs  of  admiration  broke  from  him.  He  was 
poet  enough  to  recognize  in  this  new  singer  a  star 
of  the  first  magnitude ;  and  there,  while  the 
pageant  in  the  west  flamed  and  died,  he  read  that 
regal  "  Ode  to  the  letting  Sun,'''*  which  is,  in 
itself,  a  pageant  of  colour  and  sound  ;  a  deathless 
vindication  of  DeatWs  fruition.  Then,  eager  for 
more,  he  passed  on  to  "  The  Anthem  of  Earth^"* 
surrendering  his  soul  to  the  onrush  of  its  majestical 
cadences ;  reading  and  re-reading,  with  an 
exalted  thrill,  certain  lines,  doubly  pencilled,  that 

echoed  in  his  brain  for  days. 

***** 

At  the  end  of  an  hour  he  sat  there  still — in  a 
changed  world  ;  a  world  no  less  stern  and  silent, 
yet  mysteriously  softened  and  spiritualized  as  if 
by  the  brush  of  a  consummate  artist. 

To  the  poems  in  the  third  volume,  more  than 
40 


TOST  ^sx!^  .^rsric 

the  rest,  Thompson  owes  his  title  of  a  mystic. 
Included  in  the  group  "  Sight  and  Insight  " 
are  to  be  found  what  are  perhaps  his  most 
mystical  pieces  :  "  The  Mistress  of  Vision," 
"The  Dread  of  Height,"  "Orient  Ode," 
"From  the  Night  of  Forebeing,"  "Any 
Saint,"  "  Assumpta  Maria,"  and  "  Grace  of 
the  Way  " — all  full  of  lofty  grandeur  combined 
■with  rapturous  fervour  and  a  liturgical  splen- 
dour and  spiritual  insight  not  to  be  found  in 
any  other  of  the  long  line  of  English  singers. 

"  The  Selected  Poems  of  Francis  Thomp- 
son," with  the  biographical  note  by  Mr. 
Meynell  before  referred  to,  and  a  portrait  of 
the  poet  in  his  nineteenth  year,  was  issued  in 
1908.  The  selection,  about  fifty  pieces  in  all, 
gives  us  of  Thompson's  best,  and  should  serve 
to  bring  the  larger  works,  from  which  they 
have  been  admirably  chosen,  before  a  wide 
circle  of  readers.  The  poems  on  children 
rightly  take  the  first  place  ;  of  the  one  entitled 
"  Ex  Ore  Infantium  "  (a  Christmastide  hymn 
which  appeared  originally  in  Franciscan 
Annals)  y  it  is  but  sober  truth  to  say  that 
nothing  so  tenderly  devotional,  and  yet  so 
daringly  unconventional,  has  ever  before  been 
put  into  language  of  such  simple  power.     The 

41 


volume  contains  several  of  the  greater  poems  in 
full,  including  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven,"  the 
"  Ode  to  the  Setting  Sun,"  the  "  Orient  Ode," 
and  "  Any  Saint "  (a  partly  direct,  partly 
mystical  poem,  of  special  significance)  ;  extracts 
from  the  "  Mistress  of  Vision,"  the  "  Victorian 
Ode  "  (written  for  Queen  Victoria's  Diamond 
Jubilee),  "  The  Anthem  of  Earth,"  "  Assumpta 
Maria,"  and  others  of  the  longer  works ;  the 
whole  of  "  Daisy,"  "  July  Fugitive,"  "  Dream 
Tryst,"  "  Contemplation,"  and  other  poems, 
besides  a  number  of  simpler  pieces — the  Violets 
of  Thompson's  Garden  of  Poesy.  The  selection 
includes  also  the  lines  "  In  no  Strange  Land," 
found  among  the  poet's  papers  after  his  death, 
and  which  are  remarkable  for  their  striking 
epitome  of  his  teaching  and  final  message.  The 
patriotic  "  Victorian  Ode,"  to  be  found  in  full 
in  "  New  Poems  "  and  written  for  one  of  the 
great  dailies  (the  Daily  Chronicle,  if  one 
mistakes  not),  was  considered  by  many  to  be 
the  best  of  the  Diamond  Jubilee  Odes. 
Another  and  perhaps  more  famous  ode  is  the 
one  on  Cecil  Rhodes  which  Thompson  wrote 
for  the  Academy,  at  the  special  request  of  the 
editor,  Mr.  Lewis  Hind,  and  produced  in  less 
than  three  days — an  example  of  rapidity  in 
42 


"  unpremeditated  art  "  that  must  surely  be 
imique.  Mr.  Hind  said  of  it  :  "I  am  prouder 
of  having  published  that  ode  than  anything 
else  that  the  Academy  ever  contained."  Before 
the  poem  was  a  few  weeks  old,  it  was  quoted 
on  every  side  :  one  passage  in  particular  struck 
the  public  fancy  : 

From  the  Zambesi  to  the  Limpopo 

He  the  many-languaged  land 

Took  with  his  large  compacting  hand 

And  pressed  into  a  nation 

*  *  *  *  *■ 

An  ode  for  the  centenary  of  Ushaw  College,  in 
1908,  had  been  promised  by  the  poet,  but  he  did 
not  live  to  do  more  th  an  sketch  a  few  rough  notes 
of  the  form  he  had  intended  it  should  take. 

Francis  Thompson  is  not  a  poet  with  whom 
the  multitudes  of  the  reading  public  are  as  yet 
familiar,  and  even  in  his  native  town  there  are 
many  to  whom  his  name  is  still  unknown.  He 
ranks,  nevertheless,  as  one  of  the  few  really 
great  poetic  geniuses  and  writers  of  his  century, 
though  his  position  cannot  be  definitely  assigned 
until  the  world  has  had  time  to  take  more 
careful  stock  of  his  treasures,  and  had  leisure  to 
consider  the  full  store  of  his  literary  output. 

43 


For  Thompson  was  not  only  a  poet,  but  in  his 
later  years  a  writer  of  prose  as  sonorous  and 
wellnigh  as  remarkable  as  his  poems.  Genius, 
like  nature,  would  appear  to  abhor  a  vacuum ; 
in  our  poet's  case  the  years  following  1897  may 
be  described  as  his  post-poetic  period,  a  period 
which  produced  his  great  prose  works  and  the 
many  valuable  reviews  on  Theology,  History, 
Biography,  and  Travel  which  he  contributed 
to  the  leading  periodicals,  and  which  are  now 
being  recovered,  as  was  inevitable,  from  their 
files.  The  prose  works  which  have  been 
published  separately  up  to  the  present  are  his 
*'  Health  and  Holiness  ;  or,  A  Study  of  the 
Relations  between  Brother  Ass,  the  Body,  and 
his  Rider,  the  Soul  "  (described  as  an  admirable 
scholastic  essay,  in  heroic  prose),  and  his  works 
on  Shelley,  on  St.  Ignatius  of  Loyola,  and 
St.  John  Baptist  de  la  Salle.*     The  essay  on 

*  The  collected  works  of  Francis  Thompson  have  just 
(June  1 91 3)  been  issued  in  three  volumes.  Vols,  i  and  ii 
comprise  "  Poems,"  "  Sister  Songs,"  "  New  Poems,"  and 
a  large  number  of  poems  for  the  first  time  gathered 
together.  Vol.  iii  consists  of  the  "  Shelley  "  and  "  Health 
and  Holiness "  essays,  besides  a  number  of  new  creative 
papers,  and  a  selection  from  Thompson's  literary  and  critical 
articles.  Aboutone-fourthof  the  poetry  is  stated  to  be  new  to 
book-form.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  "  Life  of  Francis 
Thompson,"  by  Mr.  Everard  Meynell,  so  eagerly  looked  forward 
to,  is  now  definitely  announced  for  September  191 3. 

44 


"POST  e^5\CT)  ^MTsric 

Shelley  was  pronounced  by  Mr.  George  Wynd- 
ham  to  be  "  the  most  important  contribution 
to  pure  letters  written  in  English  during  the 
last  twenty  years."  This  now  world-famous 
essay  is  not  the  longest,  but  it  is  undoubtedly 
the  most  brilliant  of  Thompson's  prose  works 
and  the  most  exhausting  of  his  efforts.  Its 
history  is  remarkable.  Written,  as  it  was,  at 
the  request  of  Bishop  (afterwards  Cardinal) 
Vaughan  for  the  Dublin  Review,  which  the 
Bishop  owned  but  did  not  edit,  it  was 
refused  acceptance  by  the  editor,  to  be  there- 
upon thrown  aside  by  the  discouraged  author. 
Mr.  Meynell,  Thompson's  literary  executor, 
found  it  among  the  poet's  papers  at  his  death 
nineteen  years  later,  and  thinking  it  right  that 
the  Review  for  which  it  was  originally  intended 
should  still  have  the  offer  of  it,  since  a  new 
generation  of  readers  and  another  editor  had 
arisen,  again  sent  it  up  to  the  Dublin  Review — 
this  time  to  be  accepted.  "  Thus  "  (to  quote 
Mr.  Meynell  himself)  "  it  happened  that  this 
orphan  among  essays  entered  at  last  on  a  full 
inheritance  of  fame.  Appreciative  readers 
rapidly  spread  its  renown  beyond  their  own 
orthodox  ranks  ;  and,  for  the  first  time  in  a 
long   life    of   seventy-two   years,    the   Dublin 

45 


Review  passed  into  a  second  edition.  That 
also  was  soon  exhausted,  but  not  the  further 
demand,  which  the  separate  issue  is  designed 
to  meet."  For  "  The  Life  of  St.  Ignatius  of 
Loyola,"  which  with  the  essay  on  Shelley  must 
ever  remain  the  chief  memorials  to  his  power  as 
a  prose-writer,  original  research  was,  of  course, 
impossible,  but,  as  stated  in  Fr.  Pollen's 
editorial  note,  the  author  brought  to  his  work 
the  sympathy  of  genius  with  genius,  and  had 
almost  a  contemporary's  afhnity  with  the  age 
in  which  the  Saint  lived.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Barry, 
himself  a  distinguished  writer,  says  of  it  :  "  It 
is  a  portrait  from  life,  not  a  copy.  .  .  .  While 
we  read  these  lines  the  founder  of  the  great 
Company  stands  before  us  in  his  habit  as  he 
lived."  And  again  :  "  I  hold  that  our  dead 
poet  has  written  a  Life  exact  in  statement, 
beautiful  in  point  of  style.  ...  It  is  a  notable 
addition,  if  we  ought  not  rather  to  call  it  the 
beginning  of  a  true  English  literature,  in  its 
own  department."  In  an  interesting  passage 
in  the  Life,  the  Saint  is  compared  with  John 
Wesley,  whose  lives,  though  so  unlike  out- 
wardly, had  much  of  similarity  below  the 
surface. 

"  The  Life  of  St.  John  Baptist  de  la  Salle,"  a 
46 


<P0S7'  <^,9CD   ^MTSriC 

shorter  work,  presents  the  Hfe  of  the  Founder 
of  the  Christian  Brothers  with  singular  fehcity, 
and  contains  in  the  closing  chapter  a  brilliant 
epigrammatic  defence  of  the  Church's  cham- 
pionship of  free  education,  in  which  Thompson, 
as  a  prose  writer,  is  seen  at  his  best. 
#  *  *  *  * 

A  seventeenth-century  poet,  born  in  the 
nineteenth,  bringing  with  him  the  solace  of 
old-time  melody — melody  like  unto  the  richest 
strains  of  Crashaw  and  Cowley  —  Francis 
Thompson  depends  mainly  on  his  poetical 
works  for  his  place  among  the  literary  giants  of 
his  age.  His  poems  are  among  the  glories  of 
our  literature.  They  have  fashioned  for  them- 
selves thrones  in  the  hearts  of  many  to  whom 
the  charms  of  verse  had  never  appealed  before  : 
their  deep  faith  in  the  intimate  presence  of 
God  has  been  an  inspiration  and  spiritual  tonic 
to  innumerable  souls. 

Writing  of  her  husband,  in  the  year  1893, 
Lady  Burne- Jones  mentions  that  the  winter  of 
that  year  was  cheered  by  the  appearance  of  a 
small  volume  of  poems  by  Francis  Thompson, 
whose  name  was,  till  then,  unknown  to  them. 
The  book  moved  Sir  Edward  to  admiration  and 
hope,   and  she  tells  that,   speaking  of  "  The 

47 


Hound  of  Heaven,"  he  said  :  "  Since  Gabriel's 
'  Blessed  Damozel '  no  mystical  words  have  so 
touched  me  as  '  The  Hound  of  Heaven.' 
Shall  I  ever  forget  how  I  undressed  and  dressed 
again,  and  had  to  undress  again — a  thing  I 
most  hate — because  I  could  think  of  nothing 
else  ?  " 

And  thousands  more  have  drawn  encourage- 
ment and  hope,  not  only  from  "  The  Hound  of 
Heaven,"  but  from  many  another  of  Francis 
Thompson's  poems.  Never,  surely,  was  woman 
worshipped  with  such  utter  chastity. 
"  Where,"  asks  Mr.  Traill  in  ^he  Ningteenth 
Century,  "  unless  perhaps  here  and  there  in  a 
sonnet  of  Rossetti's,  has  this  sort  of  sublimated 
enthusiasm  for  the  bodily  and  spiritual  beauty 
of  womanhood  found  such  expression  between 
the  age  of  the  Stuarts  and  our  own  ?  " 

Thompson  is  above  all  the  poet  of  celestial 
vision.  His  poetry  answers  to  the  full  Shelley's 
description  of  the  function  of  poetry  in  general ; 
it  "  redeems  from  decay  the  visitations  of  the 
divinity  in  man."  In  no  other  great  poet  of 
the  nineteenth  century  are  these  visitations 
more  frequent  or  more  splendid.  The  inten- 
sity of  his  mysticism — the  glow  and  fervour  of 
his  verse — his  rapturous  communings,  seem  to 

48 


^OST  <^^NZD  ^MYSTIC 

have  "  fired  "  the  very  critics.  The  extracts 
appended,  taken  at  random  from  a  number  of 
their  appreciations,  will  serve  to  exhibit  the 
unprecedented  enthusiasm  which  the  poet's 
lines  exercised  : 

One  has  seldom  seen  -poet  more  wildly  abandoned 
to  his  rapture,  more  absorbed  in  the  trance  of  his 
ecstasy.  When  the  irresistible  moment  comes,  he 
throws  himself  upon  his  mood  as  a  glad  swimmer 
gives  himself  to  the  waves,  careless  whither  the 
strong  tide  carries  him,  knowing  only  the  wild  joy 
of  the  laughing  waters  and  the  rainbow  spray. 
He  shouts,  as  it  were,  for  mere  gladness,  in  the 
welter  of  wonderful  words,  and  he  dives  swift  and 
fearless  to  fetch  his  deep-sea  fancies. — R.  Le 
Gallienne,  in  'The  Daily  Chronicle. 

Here  are  dominion — dominion  over  language, 
and  a  sincerity  as  of  Robert  Burns.  .  .  .  In  our 
opinion,  Mr.  T hompson* s  poetry  at  its  highest 
attains  a  sublimity  unsurpassed  by  any  Victorian 
poet. — The  speaker. 

To  read  Mr.  Francis  T hompson^ s  poems  is  like 
setting  sail  with  Drake  or  Hawkins  in  search  cf 
new  worlds  and  golde?i  spoils.  He  has  the 
magnificent  Elizabethan  manner,  the  splendour  of 
conception,  the  largeness  of  imagery. — Katharine 
Tynan-Hinkson,  in  The  Bookman. 

49 


He  swung  a  rare  incense  in  a  censer  of  gold, 
under  the  vault  of  a  chapel  where  he  had  hung 
votive  offerings.  When  he  chanted  in  his  chapel 
of  dreams,  the  airs  were  often  airs  which  he  had 
learnt  from  Crashaw  and  from  Paimore.  'They 
came  to  life  again  when  he  used  them,  and  he 
made  for  himself  a  music  which  was  part  strangely 
familiar  and  part  his  own,  almost  b e wilder ingly. 
Such  reed-notes  and  such  orchestration  of  sound 
were  heard  nowhere  else  ;  and  people  listened  to 
the  music,  entranced  as  by  a  new  magic.  The 
genius  of  Francis  Thompson  was  Oriental, 
exuberant  in  colour,  woven  into  elaborate  patterns, 
and  went  draped  in  old  silk  robes,  that  had 
survived  many  dynasties.  The  spectacle  of  him 
was  an  enchantment ;  he  passed  like  a  wild 
vagabond  of  the  mind,  dazzling  our  sight. — 
Arthur  Symons,  in  The  Saturday  Review. 

In  Francis  T hompson* s  poetry,  as  in  the  poetry 
of  the  universe,  you  can  work  infinitely  out  and 
out,  but  yet  infinitely  in  and  in.  These  two 
infinities  are  the  mark  of  greatness  ;  and  he  was 
a  great  poet. — G.  K.  Chesterton,  in  The 
Illustrated  London  News. 

We  find  that  in  these  poems  profound  thought, 

far-fetched  splendour  of  imagery,   and   nimble- 

witted  discernment  of  those  analogies  which  are 

50 


^06T  zAD^cj)  ^mrsric 

the  roots  of  the  -poet's  language^  abound  .  .  . 
qualities  which  ought  to  place  him  in  the 
permanent  ranks  of  fame,  with  Cowley  and  with 
Crashaw. — Coventry  Patmore,  in  The  Fort- 
fiightly  Review. 

The  regal  airs,  the  prophetic  ardours,  the 
apocalyptic  vision,  the  supreme  utterance — he  has 
them  all. — The  Bookman. 

***** 

The  later  years  of  Thompson's  Hfe  seem  to 
have  been  uneventful  save  for  his  writings,  and 
for  an  incident  in  1888,  and  another  in  1897, 
either  of  which  might  have  ended  disastrously. 
Whilst  at  Storrington  it  was  his  custom  to 
spend  long  hours  in  walks  out  of  doors.  On 
one  of  these  walks,  shortly  after  his  arrival  at 
the  Monastery  in  November  1888,  he  got  lost 
in  a  fog  on  the  Downs,  and  was  in  a  state  of 
exhaustion  when  found.  On  the  second  occa- 
sion (some  time  in  1897),  whilst  in  apartments 
in  London,  he  had  been  smoking  in  bed,  and 
having  fallen  asleep,  awoke  to  find  himself 
surrounded  with  flames.  He  jumped  up, 
fortunately  in  time  to  enable  him  to  escape 
without  more  damage  to  himself  than  the 
wrath  which  his  irate  landlady  poured,  justly 
enough,  upon  his  head. 

D  51 


He  stayed  for  some  months  In  1892  near  to 
the    Franciscan    Monastery    at    Pantasapli    in 
North  Wales — and,  returning  to  Pantasaph  in 
1893,   lived  there  continuously  until  late  in 
1896 — a  period  marking  with  its  close  practi- 
cally the  end  of  his  greater  poetical  work.     He 
did  not  live  at  the  monastery  (as  has    been 
stated  elsewhere),   but  spent  a  good  deal  of 
time  within  its  walls.     His  relations  with  the 
Friars  were  always  cordial.     Fr.  Anselm,  then 
the    editor    of   Franciscan   Annals^    and    now 
Archbishop  of  Simla,  became  the  poet's  close 
friend.     Except  for  a  few  days  which  he  may 
have  spent  at  the  monastery  pending  suitable 
lodgings  being  found  outside,  Thompson  lived 
in  hired  apartments  in  the  little  Welsh  village, 
iirst  with  a  family  of  working  people,  and  later 
at  the  post  office.     Here,  and  in  the  monastic 
grounds — away  from  "  the  madding  crowd  " — 
he  wrote  some  of  his  best  work,  including,  from 
materials  partly  gathered  in  London  and  partly 
in  the  monastery  library,  a  considerable   por- 
tion of  the  prose  life  of  St.  Ignatius  of  Loyola, 
published  after  his  death.     Much  of  his  verse 
is  richly  stained  with  the  local  colouring  of  the 
neighbourhood,  and  without  doubt  much  of 
the   exalted   mystical  thought  which   charac- 

52 


'POST  ^^NiT>  ^MTSriC 

terizes  "  New  Poems  "  must  have  sprung  from 
the  religious  atmosphere  of  Pantasaph,  coupled 
with  the  poet's  familiar  intercourse  with  the 
Friars,  and  his  visits  to  the  neighbouring  shrine 
at  Holywell.  The  Welsh  peasants  of  the 
district  became,  in  time,  quite  accustomed  to 
the  poet's  strange  figure  as  he  flitted  ghost- 
like (as  was  his  habit)  among  their  mountain 
homesteads  in  the  shades  of  the  gathering 
night.  With  the  Sons  of  the  Little  Poor  Man 
of  Assisi,  whether  at  Crawley,  another  favourite 
home  of  the  poet,  or  at  Pantasaph,  he  seems  to 
have  been  thoroughly  happy.  He  enriched 
the  Franciscan  Annals  with  the  altogether 
exquisite  lines  "  Ex  Ore  Infantium,"  already 
mentioned,  and  a  noble  poem,  "  Franciscus 
Christificatus  " — besides  many  prose  articles, 
in  one  of  which  he  anticipated  much  of  the 
powerful  plea  for  greater  leniency  to  Brother 
Ass,  the  body,  that  he  afterwards  made  in 
*'  Health  and  Holiness."  An  article  on  Thomp- 
son which  appeared  in  Franciscan  Annals 
shortly  after  his  death  mentions  his  charmingly 
simple  character  :  "  He  was  of  a  surety  one  of 
the  most  interesting,  and  one  of  the  most 
charmingly  simple,  and — we  must  add  in  these 
days  of  doubt — one  of  the  most  intensely  and 

53 


instinctively  orthodox,  members  of  our  little 
flock." 

About  1898  Thompson  became  attached  to 
the  staff  of  the  Academy  in  London,  and  to  that 
journal,  and  to  the  Athencsum,  contributed 
many  noteworthy  articles  and  reviews.  One  of 
his  colleagues  on  the  Academy  states  that  it  was 
quite  a  usual  thing  when  reading  over  the  proof 
of  an  article  by  Thompson  "  to  exclaim  aloud 
on  his  splendid  handling  of  a  subject  demanding 
the  best  literary  knowledge  and  insight." 
Another  has  shown  how  Thompson  exercised 
the  privilege,  peculiar  to  the  poet,  of  disregard- 
ing the  ordinary  rules  of  method  and  order 
pertaining  to  a  business  office.  He  was  (we  are 
told)  the  most  unbusinesslike  creature,  and 
often  drove  the  editor  to  despair.  His  "  copy  " 
(always  written  on  pages  torn  from  penny 
exercise  books)  came  pretty  regularly,  but  it 
was  almost  impossible  to  get  him  to  return 
proofs.  Neither  imploring  letters  nor  peremp- 
tory telegrams  availed.  Then  he  would  walk 
in,  calmly  produce  from  his  basket  or  wonderful 
pockets  a  mass  of  galleys,  and  amongst  them,  as 
likely  as  not,  two  or  three  telegrams  unopened. 
But  (to  quote  Mr.  Meynell  once  more)  "  editors 
forbore  to  be  angry  at  his  delays,  for  after  a 

54 


POST  lAV^jy   ^ITSTIC 

while  of  waiting,  they  got  from  him,  at  last, 
what  none  else  could  give  at  all."  It  would  be 
an  utterly  false  conception  of  the  poet  to 
imagine  that  his  life  was  spent  in  idleness.  He 
lived  every  line  of  his  poems — and  the  wonder 
is  that  with  a  body  so  weak,  his  brain  should 
have  been  so  incessantly  active.  Day  and  night, 
indoors  or  out,  he  was  always  at  work  on  that 
cathedral  of  lovely  thought  which  his  name 
now  represents.  In  "  Health  and  Holiness  " 
there  is  a  memorable  passage  beginning  : 
*'  This  truth  is  written  large  over  the  records 
of  saintliness,  the  energy  of  the  saints  has  left 
everywhere  its  dents  upon  the  world."  And 
in  one  of  his  poems  the  lines  : 

From  stones  and  foets  you  may  know 

Nothing  so  active  is,  as  that  which  least  seems  so — 

are  examples,  among  many,  which  go  to  give 
a  sidelight  view  of  his  own  ideas  on  the  value 
of  "  pauseless  energy." 

Strangely  enough  his  boyhood  interest  in 
matters  military  remained  with  him  to  the 
end.  Mr.  Hind  soon  saw  the  poet's  fondness 
for  campaigns,  and  tells  how  he  made  the  most 
of  it  :  "I  discovered  that  his  interest  in  battles, 
and  the  strategy  of  great  commanders,  was  as 

55 


keen  as  his  concern  with  cricket.  So  his 
satchel  was  filled  with  military  memoirs,  and 
retired  generals,  ensconced  in  the  arm-chairs  of 
service  clubs,  wondered.  Here  was  a  man  who 
manipulated  words  as  they  manipulated  men." 

A  pen  picture  of  Thompson  at  the  time  that 
he  was  on  the  Academy  staff,  furnished  by  an 
intimate  associate,  thus  depicts  him  : 

A  stranger  figure  than  Thom-pson's  was  not  to- 
he  seen  in  London.  Gentle  in  looks,  half-wild  in 
externals,  his  face  worn  by  -pain  and  the  fierce 
reactions  of  laudafium,  his  hair  and  straggling 
beard  neglected,  he  had  yet  a  distinction  and  an 
aloofness  of  bearing  that  marked  him  in  the 
crowd  ;  and  when  he  opened  his  lips,  he  spoke  as 
a  gentleman  and  a  scholar.  A  cleaner  mind,  a 
more  naively  courteous  manner,  were  not  to  he 
found.  It  was  impossible  and  unnecessary  to 
think  always  of  the  tragic  side  of  his  life.  He  still 
had  to  live  and  work  in  his  fashion,  and  his  entries 
and  exits  became  our  most  cheerful  institutions. 

I  No  money  (and  in  his  later  years  'Thompson 
suffered  more  from  the  possession  of  money  than 
from  the  lack  of  it)  could  keep  him  in  a  decent  suit 
of  clothes  for  long.  Tet  he  was  never  "  seedy.'''* 
From  a  newness  too  dazzling  to  last,  and  seldom 

56 


"POST  ^,9{T>   SMTSTIC 

achieved  at  that,  he  passed  at  once  into  a  'pictu- 
resque nondescript  garb  that  was  all  his  own  and 
made  him  resemble  some  weird  pedlar  or  packman 
in  an  etching  by  Ostade.  This  impression  of  him 
was  helped  by  the  strange  object — his  fish  basket,  ' 
we  called  it — which  he  wore  slufig  round  his 
shoulders  by  a  strap. 

Thompson  cared  nothing  for  the  worWs  com- 
ment, and  though  he  would  talk  with  radiant 
interest  on  many  things,  it  was  always  with  a 
certain  sunny  separateness,  as  though  he  issued 
out  of  unseen  chambers  of  thought,  requiring 
nothing,  but  able  and  willing  to  interest  himself 
in  the  thing  to  which  his  attention  was  drawn. 
He  had  ceased  to  make  demands  on  life.  He 
ear-marked  nothing  for  his  own.  As  a  reviewer, 
enjoying  the  run  of  the  office,  he  never  pounced  on 
a  book  ;  he  waited,  and  he  accepted.  Interested 
still  in  life,  he  was  no  longer  intrigued  by  it.  He 
was  free  from  both  apathy  and  desire.  Un- 
embittered  by  the  destitution  and  despair  he  had 
known,  unestranged  from  men  by  his  passionate 
communings  with  the  mysteries  of  faith  and 
beatific  vision,  Thompson  kept  his  sweetness  and 
sanity,  his  dewy  laughter,  and  his  -fluttering 
gratitude.     In  such  a  man,  outward  ruin  could 

57 


never  be  pitiable  or  ridiculous,  and,  indeed,  he 

never  bowed  his  noble  head  but  in  adoration.     I 

think  the  secret  of  his  strength  was  this  :   that  he 

had  cast  up  his  accounts  with  God  and  man,  and 

thereafter  stood  in  the  mud  of  earth  with  a  heart 

wrapped  in  suchjire  as  touched  IsaiaWs  lips.     He 

was  humbly,  daringly,  irrevocably  satisfied  of  his 

soul. 

***** 

1  cannot  follow,  far  less  expound,  the  faith 
which  'Thompson  held  so  humbly,  and  embellished 
so  royally.  But  I  am  very  certain  that  if  these 
things  are  so,  and  if  God  loves  that  man  who  for  a 
wage  of  tears  refines  fine  gold  for  His  Ark,  and 
with  bleeding  hands  digs  the  rock  for  its  adorning, 
then  indeed  the  morass  is  become  firm  ground,  and 
my  old  friend  sees,  through  some  thinner  veil, 
"  the  immutable  crocean  dawn  effusing  from  the 
Father's  Throne:'  * 

Another  picture  of  the  poet,  this  time  as  he 
appears  to  an  Eastern  mind,  is  to  be  found  in 
S.  K.  Ghosh's  Indian  romance,  "  The  Prince  of 
Destiny."  In  this  dramatic  semi-poHtical  story 
"  the  presentment  of  India  by  an  Indian," 
Francis  Thompson  is  introduced  as  one  of  the 

*  Wilfred  Whitten  ("  John  o'  London,")  in  7".  P.'j  Weekly, 
November  29,  1907. 

58 


"POST  <tA^D  mrsric 

characters,  with  many  an  interesting  gHmpse  of 
his  personahty.  "  He  was  of  medium  height, 
but  very  sHght  of  frame,  which  made  him  look 
taller  than  he  really  was.  His  cheeks  were  so 
sunken  as  to  give  undue  prominence  to  a  little 
grey  beard  that  was  pointed  at  the  end,  but 
otherwise  untrimmed."  Barath  (the  Prince- 
hero  of  the  tale)  meets  Thompson  at  Waterloo 
Station,  both,  as  it  happens,  though  unknown 
to  each  other,  bound  for  Boscombe.  Barath 
notices  his  eyes,  "  in  fact,  struck  by  them 
from  the  first,  he  had  noticed  nothing  else. 
Whether  they  were  light  grey  or  blue  he  could 
not  tell ;  it  was  their  lustre,  not  their  colour, 
that  arrested  his  attention.  As  for  his  garb, 
Barath  cared  little.  .  .  .  But  the  lustre  of 
those  eyes,  intensified  by  the  contrast  of  the 
sunken  cheeks  and  emaciated  face  he  had  never 
seen  in  England  before."  Barath  is  going  to 
visit  a  friend,  Colonel  Wingate.  Arrived  at 
the  house,  he  noticed  that  the  Colonel  was 
wrapt  in  thought,  ever  and  anon  casting  an 
anxious  glance  down  the  gravel  path  which  ran 
past  the  house  in  a  line  with  the  main  road 
beyond. 

"  Yes,  we  are  expecting  a  friend,"  Wingate 
explains.     "  Rather,  one,  the  privilege  of  whose 

59 


friendship  we  hope  to  deserve  some  day.  .  .  . 
I  am  here  to-day  and  gone  to-morrow,  but  this 
man's  work  will  last  as  long  as  the  English 
language  lasts — which  itself  will  survive  the 
wreck  of  the  British  Empire." 

Needless  to  say  the  expected  guest  is  Francis 
Thompson,  described  later  in  the  book  as 
"  this  man  whose  intellect  was  perhaps  the 
greatest  among  Englishmen  of  his  day."  A 
delightful  glimpse  is  given  of  Thompson  as  a 
smoker.  He  takes  out  his  pipe,  strikes  a  match, 
gives  a  puff,  holds  the  match  over  the  bowl  till 
his  fingers  are  nearly  burnt,  then  throws  away 
the  match,  and  strikes  another — and  so  on. 
Wingate  afterwards  picks  up  the  matches  and 
counts  them.  "  Just  fourteen  !  "  he  says  glee- 
fully. But  then  he  wraps  them  up  in  a  piece 
of  tissue  paper  and  puts  them  carefully  away 
in  his  vest  pocket  ! 

***** 

For  some  years  before  his  death,  Thompson 
was  a  familiar  object  in  London  streets,  com- 
muning with  the  seraphim  and  cherubim  as  he 
passed  along.  Like  Tennyson's  Sir  Galahad  he 
mused  on  joy  that  will  not  cease — 

Pure  spaces  clothed  in  living  beams — 
60 


"POST  <tAv^(T>  .mrsTic 

and  neither  the  noise  nor  the  fog  of  London 
streets  could  dispel  his  visions.  He  would 
wander  about  alone,  apparently  in  an  aimless 
fashion,  but  in  reality  absorbed  in  his  own 
lavendered  dreams — that  state  of  alienation 
from  passing  things  so  necessary  for  thoughts 
"  both  high  and  deep."  Often  enough  he 
might  have  been  seen  clad — winter  and  summer 
alike — in  a  brown  cloak,  or  ulster,  and  with  a 
basket,  like  a  fish  basket,  slung  around  his 
shoulders.  This  he  used  to  carry  the  books  he 
had  to  review.  Though  of  a  painfully  shy  and 
retiring  disposition,  he  was  a  cheerful  com- 
panion, with  the  saving  grace  of  humour.  One 
who  knew  him  well  as  boy  and  man  states  that 
"  in  him  there  sat  enthroned  not  only  the  stern 
and  haughty  muse  of  Tragedy,  but  her  gentler 
sister,  Comedy."  He  was,  too,  as  numerous 
passages  in  his  works  denote,  a  keen  student  of 
science.  One  failing — if  failing  it  be — he  cer- 
tainly had  :  he  detested  letter-writing.  Even 
when  he  did  write  letters,  he  forgot,  at  times, 
to  post  them.  A  letter  of  many  pages,  written 
and  directed  to  one  of  his  sisters  in  1899,  was 
discovered  among  his  papers  at  his  death,  eight 
years  later !  The  picture  would  hardly  be 
complete  without  adding  that,   according  to 

6i 


some  (the  late  Mr.  Patmore  among  them), 
Thompson  was  one  of  the  best  talkers  in  the 
city.  He  spoke  from  his  own  convictions  with 
extreme  fluency,  yet  weighing  his  words  in 
matters  of  a  controversial  nature,  and  careful 
always  to  avoid  offence.  The  hierarchic  order 
of  the  universe,  the  culture  and  ethics  of  the 
Greeks,  the  philosophy  of  the  schoolmen,  the 
tactics  of  military  commanders  in  bygone 
centuries,  the  latest  advance  in  science — alike 
gave  opportunity  for  the  silver  and  gold 
surprises  of  his  speech  to  the  few  (the  very  few) 
with  whom  he  was  familiar.  On  his  favourite 
lines  in  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  or  the  merits 
and  virtues  and  the  hundred  niceties  of  style 
of  his  cricket  heroes  of  the  past,  he  would 
enlarge  for  hours. 

For  reasons  of  health  he  did  not  give  up  the 
opium  habit  entirely,  but  reduced  the  doses 
to  small  ones,  taken  at  infrequent  intervals — 
and  almost  always  with  the  object  of  relieving 
the  terrible  nerve  pains  from  which  he  suffered. 

Emaciated  and  worn  by  disease,  he  could  still 
exhibit  an  extraordinary  glow  and  vivacity  of 
manner.  He  dealt  largely  in  the  names  and 
rites  of  old  :  the  pomp  of  old-time  facts  formed 
the  pomp  of  his  present  dreams. 
62 


The  same  mental  abstraction  which  caused 
him  to  be  nearly  run  over  at  Manchester  in  his 
student  days — which  caused  him  to  be  lost  on 
the  South  Downs — which  resulted  in  the 
burning  of  the  bed  on  which  he  had  fallen 
asleep  while  smoking  in  his  apartments — and 
which  is  evidently  hinted  at  in  the  incident  of 
his  alighting  at  the  wrong  station  on  the  visit 
to  Boscombe  in  the  "  Prince  of  Destiny  " — 
followed  him  in  all  his  moves. 

He   seldom   spoke   of  his   nightmare   days  ; 
when  he  did,  it  was  not  complainingly.     He 
could  not  have  written  with  Tennyson — 
/  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope. 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff  ;  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all, 
And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope. 

Aloof  from  men  he  dwelt  with  God,  recog- 
nizing to  the  full — 

All  which  I  took  from  thee  I  did  but  take 
Not  from  thy  harms 
But  just  that  thou  mightst  seek  it  in  My  arms. 

To  his  eyes  the  material  universe  was 
literally  full  of  the  "  many-coloured  wisdom  of 
God,"  and  Christ  he  saw 

Lo  here  !  lo  there  ! — ah  me,  lo  everywhere  ! 

6} 


Who  can  doubt  the  evident  sincerity  of  the 
lines  in  "  Any  Saint  "  ? 

But  He  a  little  bath 
Declined  His  stately  fath 

And  my 
Feet  set  more  high. 
#         *         *         * 

And  bolder  now  and  holder 
I  lean  upon  that  shoulder, 

So  near 
He  is,  and  dear. 

Though  Thompson's  lot  in  Hfe  was  so 
opposite  to  that  of  the  happy  soul  in  Crashaw's 
"  Temperance  " — 

^he  happy  soul,  that  all  the  way 
To  Heaven,  hath  a  summer'' s  day — 

he  was  not  soured  by  his  dreadful  experiences, 
but  with  heart  warmed  by  the  Divine  presence, 
accepted  them  in  a  patient,  matter-of-fact  way, 
conscious  that  he  had  kept  "  the  white  bird  in 
his  breast  "  protected.  To  other  writers  he 
was  invariably  generous.  One  who  had  been 
associated  with  him  in  literary  work  testifies  : 
"  A  more  careful  or  more  generous  reviewer 
never  lived  ;  to  contemporary  poets,  indeed,  he 

64 


"POST  <^^T>   ^MTSriC 

was  over  tender,  and  /  never  heard  him  speak  an 
ungenerous  word  oj any  liviJig  soul.'''' 

Devoted  to  his  faith,  enthusiastic  when 
writing  of  her 

About  whose  mooned  brows 
Seven  stars  make  seven  glows 
Seven  stars  for  seven  woes — 
in  word  and  work  ahke  severely  chaste — ^he  has 
aheady  been  called  "  Our  Lady's  Poet."     A 
more  loyal  courtier  of  the  Queen  of  Heaven  it 
would  certainly  be  difficult  to  find  1 

A  contributor  to  the  Church  T^imes  (March 
191 1)  writes  that  in  later  life  Thompson  always 
exculpated  his  father  from  any  share  in  the 
break  with  the  family  which  marked  the  poet's 
early  years  in  London ;  and  clung  to  the 
recollection  that  they  met  again,  when  the 
father  had  been  "  entirely  kind."  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  they  met  on  several  occasions,  and  the 
reconciliation  was  most  thorough  and  complete. 

The  poet's  fondness  for  children  was  of  the 
most  natural  kind.  He  did  not  condescend  to 
them  ;  he  was  one  of  themselves.  Elaborate 
dissection  of  the  child-mind  did  not  commend 
itself  to  him  at  all.  "  He  was  content  [as  a 
Visiter  in  the  Christian  World  Pulpit  puts  it]  to 
play  with  children  without  analysing  them,  and 

65 


/ 


to  pass  with  them  through  their  own  secret 
doorways  into  the  wonder-world  to  which  they 
belong."  In  answer  to  the  question  which  he 
himself  asks,  "  Know  you  what  it  is  to  be  a 
child  ?  "  he  gives  the  answer  : ,  "  It  is  to  have  a 
spirit  still  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  reach  to  whisper  in  your  ears ;  it 
is  to  turn  pumpkins  into  coaches,  and  mice  into 
horses,  lowness  into  loftiness,  and  nothing  into 
everything.^ 

The  poet's  unaffected  child-love  is  revealed 
in  many  a  passage  in  his  works.  In  "  The 
Hound  of  Heaven  "  it  is  not  in  the  wind- walled 
Palace  of  Nature,  nor  yet  in  the  wilful  face  of 
skies,  but  it  is  with  the  little  children  that  he 
makes  the  easing  of  the  human  smart  come 
nearest  to  realization  !  And  in  another  poem, 
"  To  my  Godchild,"  in  Faith-drenched  lines 
he  makes  it  clear  it  is  in  the  "  Nurseries  of 
Heaven  "  that  he  would  be  placed  : 

^hen,  as  you  search  with  unaccustomed  glance 
'The  ranks  of  Paradise  for  my  countenance, 
Turn  not  your  tread  along  the  Uranian  sod 
Among  the  bearded  counsellors  of  God  ; 
For,  if  in  Eden  as  on  earth  are  we, 
66 


'POS'T  <^fN^  ^MYSTIC 

I  sure  shall  keep  a  younger  company  : 
Pass  where  hefieath  their  ranged  gonfalons 
The  starry  cohorts  shake  their  shielded  su?is, 
The  dreadful  mass  of  their  enridged  spears  ; 
Pass  where  majestical  the  eter?ial  peers. 
The  stately  choice  of  the  great  saintdom,  meet — 
A  silvern  segregation,  globed  complete 
In  sandalled  shadow  of  the  Triune  feet  ; 
***** 

Pass  the  crystalline  sea,  the  lampads  seven  : — 

Look  for  me  in  the  nurseries  of  Heaven. 
***** 

Thompson  died  of  consumption.  At  the 
beginning  of  November  1907,  he  entered,  on  -.  j 

the  advice  of  his  friends,  the  Hospital  of  St.  ^^  I 
Ehzabeth  and  St.  John,  in  St.  John's  Wood, 
London.  There  he  died  on  the  13th  of  the 
same  month,  in  his  forty-eighth  year.  He  had 
prepared  himself  devoutly  for  the  end  ;  re- 
ceived the  Sacraments  ;  and  was  ready  when 
the  summons,  long  expected,  came. 

At  the  time  of  entering  the  hospital  he  was 
so  terribly  emaciated  that  he  weighed  but  five 
stone.  The  devoted  Sister  (Mother  Michael) 
who  tended  him  states  that  he  was  very  quiet 
and  wonderfully  unselfish  in  the  ward,  where  he 
was  visited  from  time  to  time  by  members  of 

E  6-] 


the  Meynell  family.  It  is  a  curious  circum- 
stance, worthy  of  passing  mention,  that  among 
the  books  which  he  kept  within  reach  as  he  lay 
dying,  was  Mr.  Jacobs'  "  Many  Cargoes."  He 
was  interred  on  the  i6th  of  November,  in 
St.  Mary's  Cemetery,  Kensal  Green.  His  grave 
now  bears  a  stone  on  which,  in  beautiful  letter- 
ing (the  work  of  the  sculptor  Eric  Gill)  are  the 
words  : 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON, 

1859— 1907 

"  Look  for  me  in  the  nurseries  of  Heaven." 

Surely  no  more  suitable  epitaph  from  his 
own  works  could  have  been  chosen  for  one 
who,  with  all  his  gifts,  was  still  a  child  at 
heart ! 

The  sorrows  of  his  earlier  days  had  endeared 
him  to  his  friends,  and  if  the  "  uses  of  his 
adversity  "  had  any  sweets  at  all,  among  them 
must  surely  be  reckoned  the  added  endearment 
of  those  he  cherished.  In  his  cofhn  were  roses 
from  the  garden  of  Mr.  George  Meredith, 
inscribed  with  Mr.  Meredith's  testimony,  "  A 
true  poet,  one  of  a  small  band  "  ;  and  violets 
from  kindred  turf  were  sent  by  Mrs.  Meynell, 
whose  praises  he  had  with  such  soul-worship 
sung.  Mr.  Meynell's  biographical  note  pre- 
68 


"POST  <^^T>   ^MTSriC 

faced  to  the  volume  of  "  Selected  Poems  " 
ends  :  "  Devoted  friends  lament  him,  no  less 
for  himself  than  for  his  singing.  He  had  made 
all  men  his  debtors,  leaving  to  those  \\\\o  loved 
him  the  memory  of  a  unique  pcrL-onality,  and 
to  English  poetry  an  imperishable  name." 

His  rich  and  varied  colourings  with  their  old- 
time  touches  of  recaptured  glory,  his  rapt 
mysticism  and  high  thinking,  the  wide  range  of 
his  mental  vision,  and  the  answering  splendours 
of  his  lofty  imaginings,  have  placed  him  high 
in  the  permanent  ranks  of  fame.  Indeed,  it  is 
true  to  say  of  Thompson — as  of  Shelley,  Keats, 
and  Tennyson — that  so  long  as  poems  are  read, 
so  long  will  some  of  them,  at  least,  be  his — the 
great,  though  hitherto  but  little  known 
Victorian,  who  shall  yet  be  counted  memorable 
by  all  jealous  of  the  high  traditions  of  our 
English  Song. 


69 


OF  F'F^A:JiCIS  THOMTSO^S 


O  ye  dead.  Poets,  who  are  living  still, 
Immortal  in  your  verse,  though  life  be  fled — 
And  ye,  O  living  Poets,  who  are  dead. 
Though  ye  are  living,  if  neglect  can  kill — 
Tell  me  if  in  your  darkest  hours  of  ill 
With  drops  of  anguish  falling  fast  and  red 
From  the  sharp  crown  of  thorns  upon  your  head, 
Ve  were  not  glad  your  errand  to  fulfil? 

Longfellow 


rUOMTSO^^^HT)  THS 

veiipicr  OF  TIMS 

IN  literature,  as  in  science  and  art,  the 
great  works  of  the  high  thinkers  have 
not  always  obtained  immediate  appre- 
ciation. Indeed,  many  of  the  writers  whom 
the  verdict  of  time  has  placed  among  the 
immortals  have,  according  to  their  bio- 
graphers, been  slow  of  recognition.  Coleridge, 
Keats,  and,  to  a  greater  extent,  Wordsworth, 
may  be  cited  off-hand  as  examples  of  poets 
whose  works  remained  enshrined  for  many 
years  in  the  breasts  of  comparatively  few 
readers. 

It  need  occasion  no  surprise,  therefore,  that 
Francis  Thompson's  poetry,  although  hailed 
with  delight  by  the  critics,  is  not  yet  as  widely 
known  as  its  merits  deserve  ;  nor  need  it  be 
thought  that  his  verse  will  pass  into  semi- 
oblivion  because,  in  the  short  space  since  the 
poet's  death,  it  has  not  become  the  subject  of 
universal  notice  from  lovers  of  the  muse. 
Great  poetry  advances  but  slowly  in  general 
estimation.  Its  appeal  is  always  in  the  first 
instance  to  the  more  discerning  thinkers,  and 

73 


then  to  the  larger  body  who  are  content  to,  or 
must  of  necessity,  follow  their  lead.  Of  poetry 
meant  —  like  Thompson's  —  to  enlarge  and 
elevate  the  mind,  rather  than  tickle  the 
vanity  or  follow  the  fashions  of  the  age,  it  is 
especially  true  that  its  complete  recognition 
must  be  the  result  of  that  maturer  judgment 
which  time  alone  can  give.  Doubtless,  also, 
the  deep  symbolism  pervading  many  of  Thomp- 
son's poems  must  be  taken  into  account  in 
any  consideration  of  the  ultimate  estimate  of 
his  work  ;  but  it  should  be  remembered  that 
symbolism,  when  combined  with  clarity  of 
vision  and  depth  of  poetical  insight,  may  be 
the  stronghold  for  a  precious  message  which 
might,  without  such  protection,  be  lost. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  in  all  real  poetry 
— poetry  that  is  to  endure — there  must  be 
certain  essentials  :  melody  of  rhythm  ;  fertility 
of  ideas ;  beauty  of  sentiment ;  skilful  dignifi- 
cation  and  blending  of  words ;  the  faculty  of 
seeing  what  is  dark  to  others.  To  say  that 
Thompson  had  a  wonderful  and  fascinating 
melody  of  rhythm  ;  a  profusion  of  the  loveliest 
ideas ;  a  deep,  reverent,  and  ever-present 
sentiment  and  sense  of  the  beauty  on  every 
side,  and  a  profound  mastery  over  many  kinds 

74 


vs^ipicr  OF  ri^is 

of  versification  which  he  wedded  to  an  extra- 
ordinary range  of  subjects — is  not  to  exceed, 
but  to  fall  below,  the  pronouncements  of  many 
of  the  greatest  authorities.  But  over  and 
above  the  richness  of  essentials,  he  had  a  vision 
so  celestial,  combined  with  an  imagery  so  bold, 
yet  withal  so  rich  and  beautiful,  that  he  stands 
unsurpassed  in  these  qualities  by  any  con- 
temporary poet.  Transcendent  thought,  glow- 
ing pictures,  striking  flashes  of  imagination, 
spell-binding  touches  of  loveliness,  passages 
of  "  intertwined  intellectualism,"  abound  in 
Thompson's  verse.  His  is  no  more  the  poetry 
for  an  idle  man  as  a  substitute  for  a  cigar  than 
is  Browning's.  He  takes  an  idea  and  develops 
it,  adding  layer  after  layer  of  thought  with 
the  insight  of  the  seer,  and  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  mystic  saturated  in  consciousness  of  the 
supernatural.  He  roams  heaven  and  earth 
alike  in  his  quest  for  comparisons  to  illustrate 
the  fancies  of  his  mind.  The  marvel  is  that, 
being  so  heavily  weighted  with  thought  and 
symbol,  he  should  proceed  smoothly ;  yet 
proceed  smoothly  he  does — a  very  Paganini  of 
flowing  sound.  The  great  things  and  the 
small  alike  serve  his  purpose.  He  is  as  "  gold- 
dusty   with    tumbling    amidst    the   stars  "    as 

75 


'THO^M'^SO^  ^A5^CT>    THE 

Shelley  (to  whom  he  applies  the  description), 
yet  a  piece  of  burnt  wood  supplies  the  clue 
which  he  fashions  into  the  subtle  thought — 

Designer  Infinite  / — 
Ah  !  must  Thou  char  the  wood  ere 
Thou  canst  limn  with  it  P — 

and  a  simple  flower  the  lines — 

God  took  a  fit  of  Paradise-wind, 

A  slip  of  ccerule  weather, 
A  thought  as  simple  as  Himself, 

And  ravelled  them  together. 

True  it  is  that  such  passages  as — 

Thou  hast  devoured  mammoth  and  mastodon. 

And  many  a  floating  bank  of  fangs, 

The  scaly  scourges  of  thy  primal  brine. 

And  the  tower- crested  plesiosaure. 

Thou  fillest  thy  mouth  with  nations,  gorgest  slow 

On  purple  ceons  of  kings  ; — 

(taken  from  his  poem  addressed  to  Earth)  are 
to  be  found,  yet  nevertheless  the  same  hand 
wrote  the  exquisitely  simple  lines  : 

Little  Jesus,  wast  Thou  shy 
Once,  arid  just  so  small  as  I  ? 
And  what  did  it  feel  like  to  be 
Out  of  Heaven,  and  just  like  me  ? 

76 


vs%T>icr  OF  ri^^s 

I  should  think  that  I  would  cry 
For  my  house  all  made  of  sky  ; 
I  would  look  about  the  air. 
And  wonder  where  my  angels  were. 

Like  Blake,  it  was  his — 

To  see  a  world  in  a  grain  oj  sand, 
A  heaven  in  a  wild  flower — 

Unlike  Blake,  his  mysticism  is  never  "  merely 
mist,"  nor  are  his  visions  of  awful  holiness  ever 
curtained  in  "  concealing  vapours  purposely 
impenetrable." 

If  no  songster  has  beaten  so  painfully  against 
the  bars  of  the  flesh,  surely  none  has  sung,  as 
Thompson,  at  times,  with  such  an  ecstasy  of 
delight.  If  many  of  his  poems  are  charged 
with  self-conscious  sadness  and  bitter  self- 
analysis,  there  is  still  enough  of  joyous  offering 
left  to  catch  his  readers  "  fast  for  ever  in  a 
tangle  of  sweet  rhymes."  To  read  his  verse  is 
to  walk  for  ever  after  in  a  more  beautiful, 
though,  perchance,  more  mystical  world  of 
life  and  thought,,  and  of  correlated  greatness, 
with  a  tread  which — 

Stirring  the  blossoms  in  the  meadow  grass 
Flickers  the  unwithering  stars. 

77 


The  world  and  human  life  were,  to  Thomp- 
son, "  crammed  with  Heaven  and  aflame  with 
God."  Thus,  while  Wordsworth,  Tennyson, 
and  Browning  speak  of  their  spiritual  expe- 
riences in  a  more  or  less  uncertain  way,  the 
spiritual  experiences  of  Thompson  are  as  real 
as  the  physical — the  practice  of  asceticism 
deliberately  propounded  and  accepted.  In 
"  The  Mistress  of  Vision  "  he  puts  forth  his 
"  stark  gospel  of  renunciation,"  and  asks  : 

Where  is  the  land  of  Luthany, 

Where  is  the  tract  of  Elenore  F 

I  am  bound  therefor. 

The  answer  is  the  heroic  one  of  abnegation 
and  self-denial  contained  in  the  lines  which 
follow  the  passage  quoted,  abnegation  and  self- 
denial  which  he  himself  ardently  practised  in 
his  maturer  years — practised,  we  are  assured, 
as  well  as  preached.  Doubtless  this  poem, 
"  The  Mistress  of  Vision,"  will  rank  eventually 
next  to  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven  "  for  spiritual 
potentiality  allied  with  genius  of  inspiration. 

Thompson's  poetry  is,  as  one  writer  puts  it, 
"  all  compact  of  thought  " — thought  elabo- 
rated with  exquisite  subtlety,  and  an  endless 
profusion  and  variety  of  metaphor  and  simile, 

78 


v8%Tncr  OF  rims 

drawn  from  a  thousand  sources,  but  most 
happily  from  his  profound  knowledge  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments,  and  the  philosophy, 
dogma,  and  liturgy  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
Indeed,  to  go  back  to  the  poet  of  "  white  fire," 
to  whom  Thompson  has  been  most  frequently 
compared  :  is  not  Crashaw  himself  often  out- 
stripped, even  in  his  own  special  glory  of 
"  mixing  heaven  and  earth,"  by  our  own  poet  ? 

Mr.  J.  L.  Garvin,  on  reading  Thompson's 
first  volume,  wrote  that  in  the  rich  and  virile 
harmonies  of  his  line — in  strange  and  lovely 
vision — in  fundamental  meaning — ^Thompson 
is  possibly  the  first  of  Victorian  poets,  and  at 
least  of  none  the  inferior — a  view  which  time 
has  strengthened  and  the  poet's  later  works 
confirmed.  Whether  the  recent  assertions  of 
Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  and  others,  that  the 
critics  now  class  Thompson  with  Shelley  and 
Keats,  be  true  or  not,  there  can  be  no  question 
but  that  all  serious  critics  are  agreed  in  placing 
him  among  the  imperishable  names  of  English 
Song.  Certainly  no  list  of  the  four  or  five 
greatest  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century  would 
be  conclusive  without  the  name  of  Francis 
Thompson  ! 

From  the  simple  and  lovely  lines   "  To  a 

79 


THO^M'PSO^  z.^^h(J)    THE 

Snowflake,"  "Daisy,"  "The  Poppy,"  "The 
Making  of  Viola  "  (in  which  he  describes  the 
making  of  a  child  in  Heaven),  and  the  rest  of 
his  childhood  verses,  to  the  regal  "  Ode  to  the 
Setting  Sun  "  and  the  airy  elegance  of  "  Dream 
Tryst,"  and  on  again  to  "  The  Orient  Ode  " 
and  "  The  Anthem  of  Earth,"  Thompson 
passes  from  the  simplest  to  the  grandest 
elements  of  being,  and  shows  himself  a 

Great  freafpoitited  Prodigal  of  Song 

This  mad  world  soothing  as  he  sweeps  along. 

Even  Tennyson,  with  his  great  quality  of 
making  words  musical,  is  surpassed  by  the 
younger  poet.  If  anyone  should  doubt  this, 
let  him  study  the  poems  mentioned,  and  end 
with  "  To  my  Godchild  "  and  "  A  Corymbus 
for  Autumn."  Verses  such  as  these,  and  the 
inspired  "  Mistress  of  Vision  "  (of  which  Sir 
A.  T.  Quiller-Couch  declared  that  no  such 
poem  had  been  written  since  Coleridge 
attempted,  and  left  off  writing,  "  Kubla 
Khan  "),  will  continue  to  soar  among  the  peaks 
of  literature  and  adorn 

The  gold  gateway  of  the  stars^ 

as  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven  "  will  continue  to 
be  cherished — though  its  full  grandeur  may  be 
80 


v8%T>icr  OF  Tims 

grasped  only  by  the  deeper-soulcd  few — to  the 
end  of  time. 

A  glance  through  any  of  the  volumes  of 
Thompson's  poems  will  at  once  show  that 
many  of  his  lines  need  careful  study,  besides 
the  assistance  of  a  dictionary  and  books  of 
reference  on  many  subjects  —  ancient  and 
modern.  But  this  may  be  said  with  certainty  : 
if  the  precise  hues  of  the  poet's  meaning  cannot 
always  be  seen  at  once,  the  central  idea  is  clear 
enough,  and  glory  of  colour  is  -present,  though 
its  splendours  may  be  too  great  for  immediate 
comprehension.  Writing  on  this  aspect  of  the 
poet's  works,  a  writer  in  the  Irish  Rosary  for 
September  1912  says  :  "There  is  no  mist  or 
haze  attached  to  his  imagery.  They  will  catch 
away  the  mind's  breath  at  the  first  flash,  but 
when  they  have  been  read  carefully,  they  will 
soon  become  clear-seen  and  clear-cut,  even 
brilliant  in  their  obscurity,  obvious  perhaps  by 
their  very  unexpectedness.  His  most  intricate 
harmonies  are  loaded  with  a  rush  of  music  that 
may  perplex,  but  which  works  itself  out  in  the 
end,  perhaps  upon  the  quaver  of  the  last 
syllable  :  the  feeling  remains  with  the  reader 
all  the  time  that  nobody  else  could  quite  have 
written  it,  and  that  Thompson  himself  could 

81 


not  have  written  anything  else,  that  his  words 
and  expressions  have  waited  a  thousand  years 
for  his  coming  to  claim  and  set  them  to  the 
highest  use.  He  did  not  open  his  images  like 
sky-lights  to  make  clear  a  chance  meaning  here 
and  there  in  his  work,  but  he  opened,  as  it 
were,  a  whole  apse  of  windows  to  illuminate 
one  central  idea  throned  altarwise.  Each  of 
his  poems  is  builded  delicately,  like  a  great 
window  of  stained  glass,  and  every  fragment  of 
it  is  filled  with  the  rich  colour  inherent  to  his 
words.  At  the  first  rush  of  thought  the  eyes 
are  dazzled  as  by  a  sudden  blaze  from  above, 
yet  at  a  little  distance  every  word  falls  har- 
monized and  ordered  into  a  network  of  metre, 
which  grapples  colour  to  colour  and  syllable  to 
syllable  as  simply  and  convincingly  as  the 
beaded  lead  that  controls  the  splendoured 
glories  of  some  rose-window." 

In  the  qualities  peculiarly  his  own — the 
combination  of  insensuous  passion  and  spiritual 
fervour,  courtly  love  and  saintly  reverence, 
ecclesiastical  pageantry  and  liturgical  splen- 
dour— in  his  mountain-top  ecstasies  and  the 
remoter  flights  of  his  wonderful  imagination — 
he  stands  absolutely  apart  from  any  other 
English  singer  !  It  was  Professor  Dowden 
82 


vs%T>icr  OF  risMS 

who  wrote  of  "  Sister  Songs  "  :  "  Every  page  is 
wealthy  in  beauties  of  detail,  beauties  of  a  kind 
which  are  at  the  command  oj  no  living  foet,  other 
than  Mr.  'Thompson.'^'' 

That  our  poet  knew  something  at  least  of 
the  greatness  of  his  work  may  be  gathered  from 
the  lines  : 

/  hang  ^mid  men  my  needless  head, 
And  my  fruit  is  dreams,  as  theirs  is  bread  ; 
The  goodly  men  and  the  sun-hazed  sleeper 
'Time  shall  reap,  but  after  the  reaper 
The  world  shall  glean  of  me — me  the 
sleeper  !  Poems. 

With 

The  loud 

Shouts  of  the  crowd 

he  was  not  concerned.  Rather  would  it  have 
pleased  him  to  know  that  his  voice  would 
become  audible  when  the  "  high  noises  "  of  the 
throng  had  passed.  In  his  review  of  the  poetry 
of  Mrs.  Meynell,  there  occurs  a  passage  which 
illustrates  this,  and  might,  in  very  truth,  be 
applied  to  much  of  his  own  muse  : 

"  The  footfalls  of  her  muse  waken  not  sounds,  but 
silences.      We  lift  a  feather  from  the  marsh  aiid 

F  83 


say :  '  This  way  went  a  heron.''  ...  It 
is  foetry,  the  spiritual  voice  of  which  will 
become  audible  when  the  '  high  noises '  of  to- 
day have  followed  the  feet  that  made  them." 

What  other,  of  all  the  poetry  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  has  awakened  such  silences  of 
thought  and  such  soulful  meditation  as  "  The 
Hound  of  Heaven,"  "  The  Mistress  of  Vision," 
and  "  The  Anthem  of  Earth  "  ? 

To  come  at  length  to  another  characteristic 
of  Thompson's  verse — reference  must  certainly 
be  made  to  his  frequent  neologisms  and  his 
love  of  big  words.  To  those  who  complain  of 
the  poet's  own  coinage,  it  need  only  be  said 
that  the  use  he  makes  of  words  non-existent  in 
pre-Thompsonian  English  is,  after  all,  the 
poet's  justification.  To  quote  again  from  the 
Irish  Rosary  :  "  Delight,  not  indignation,  is 
the  proper  attitude  of  people  who  are  made 
suddenly  aware  that  fine  gold  has  just  been 
brought  to  light  in  their  rock-garden."  To 
those  who  complain  of  the  length  of  his  words, 
it  may  be  said  that  though,  when  they  are 
viewed  separately,  one  wonders  how  many  of 
the  huge  boulder-like  word-masses  ever  got 
hoisted  safely  into  their  places,  once  in  position, 

84 


vs%Dicr  OF  ri^Ms 

they  so  fit  the  great  structures  of  which  they 
form  part  that  their  ruggedncss  is  absorbed  in 
the  total  effect.  The  exceptions  are  about  as 
rare  as  angels'  visits  ! 

That  the  poet  who,  in  his  own  words, 

Drew  the  bolt  of  Nature'' s  secrecies, 

should  abound  in  "  Nature  touches  "  is  what 
might  be  expected.  "  Mist  of  tears,"  "  vistaed 
hopes,"  "  chasmed  fears,"  "  skyey  blossoms," 
"  vapourous  shroudage,"  "  dazv?iing  answers," 
"  sighful  branches,^''  "  tones  of  floating  light,''"' 
"  poet's  calyxed  heart,"  "  windy  trammel," 
and  a  hundred  other  examples  might  be  given 
of  the  descriptions  drawn  from  natural  pheno- 
mena in  Thompson's  poetry. 

Another  feature  still  of  Thompson's  verse  is 
its  astonishing  variety  : 

^  he  freshness  of  May,  and  the  sweetness  of  June, 
And  the  fire  of  July  in  its  passionate  noon — 

each  finds  a  place  in  the  gorgeous  "  pomp  and 
prodigality  "  of  his  muse.  Lines  on  Children, 
on  Cricket,  on  the  English  Martyrs,  on  the 
Dead  Cardinal  of  Westminster  (Cardinal  ]\ tan- 
ning)— verses  of  "  utter  chastity "  on  the 
benefactress  v/hom  he  calls  his  "  dear  adminis- 

85 


mom'pso^  ^Av^  t:ks 

tress  "  (the  inspirer  of  the  group  of  poems 
"  Love  in  Dian's  Lap  ") — chants  of  the  Autumn 
and  Nature — odes  to  the  rising  and  sinking 
Sun — poetic  representation  of  scientific  truth — 
poems  of  sadness  and  poems  of  ecstasy — 
detached  fragments  of  thought  and  philosophy 
— Alights  into  the  realms  of  theology  and 
mythology — images  drawn  from  the  Scriptures 
and  the  liturgy  of  the  Church, — all  are  there, 
with  many  a  word  of  "  learned  length  and 
thundering  sound  "  adorning,  without  loading, 
the  sense  he  wishes  to  convey.  Admirers  of 
Shelley  will  come  across  many  a  passage  of 
Shelleyan  flavour  :  lovers  of  Shakespeare  many 
a  passage  of  Shakesperean  touch.  Take  as  an 
example  of  the  latter  (one  only  out  of  many  in 
"  Sister  Songs  ") : 

From  cloud-zoned  -pinnacles  of  the  secret  spirit 

Song  Jails  precipitant  in  dizzying  streams  ; 
And,  like  a  mountian-hold  when  war-shouts  stir  it, 
The  mind^s  recessed  fastness  casts  to  light 
Its  gleaming  multitudes,  that  from  every  height 
Unfurl  the  flaming  of  a  thousand  dreams. 

In  such  a  treasury  it  is  difficult  to  pick  and 
choose  for  samples  of  the  poet's  art,  but  the 
following  passages  from  the  pieces  indicated 
86 


vs%T>icr  OF  ri^Ms 

may  serve   to    give  some  idea   of    the  poet's 
style  : 

I.  Tet^  even  as  the  air  is  Tumorous  of  fray 

Before  the  first  shafts  of  the  suit's  onslaught 
From  gloom's  black  harness  splinter, 
And  Summer  move  on  Winter 
With  the  trumpet  of  the  March,  and  the  pennon 
of  the  May  ; 
As  gesture  outstrips  thought ; 
So,  haply,  toyer  with  ethereal  strings  ! 
Are  thy  hlifid  repetitions  of  high  things 
The  murmurous  gnats  whose  aimless  hoverings 

Reveal  song^s  summer  in  the  air  ; 
The  outstretched  hand,  which  cannot  thought 
declare, 
Yet  is  thought'' s  harbinger. 
These  strains  the  way  for  thine  own  strains 

prepare  ; 
We  feel  the  music  moist  upon  the  breeze. 
And  hope  the  congregating  poesies. 

Sister  Songs. 

II.  Lo,  in  the  sanctuaried  East, 
Day,  a  dedicated  priest 

In  all  his  robes  pontifical  exprest, 

Lifteth  slowly,  lifteth  sweetly. 

From  out  its  Oriefit  tabernacle  drawn, 

87 


Ton  orbed  sacrament  confest 
Which  sprinkles  benediction  through  the  dawn; 
And  when  the  grave  processio?i''s  ceased, 
The  earth  with  due  illustrious  rite 
Blessed, — ere  the  frail  fingers  featly 
Of  twilight,  violet-cassocked  acolyte, 
His  sacerdotal  stoles  unvest — 
Sets,  for  high  close  of  the  mysterious  feast, 
The  sun  in  august  exposition  meetly 
Within  the  fiaming  monstrance  of  the  West. 

Orient  Ode. 

^  ^■.  ^  JJ.  4t; 

Of  Shelley  and  Keats — if  reference  must  be 
made — it  will  suffice  to  say  that,  singularly 
tuneful  and  marvels  of  pure  melody  as  their 
own  verses  are,  it  is  a  relief  at  times  to  pass  from 
their  earthly  sweetness  to  the  loftier  heights 
and  sublimer  beauties  of  Francis  Thompson — 
the  "  toyer  with  ethereal  strings  " — the  poet 
"  God-smitten."  Contrast  the  lines  from 
Shelley's  "  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty  "  (the 
poem  which  most  of  all  contains  his  own 
special  "  Gospel  ")  : 

Thy  light  alone — like  mist  o^er  mountains  driven, 
Or  music  by  the  night  wind  sent, 
Thro''  strings  of  some  still  instrument. 
Or  moonlight  07i  a  midnight  stream. 


vs%Dicr  OF  rims 

Gives  grace  and  truth  to  lifers  unquiet  dream. 
Love,  Hofe,  and  Self-esteem,  like  clouds  defart 
And  come,  for  some  u?icertai?i  moments  lent. 
Alan  were  immortal,  and  omnipotent. 
Didst  thou,  unknown  and  awful  as  thou  art. 
Keep  with  thy  glorious  train  firm  state  within  his 

heart. 

*  *  *  *  * 

I  vowed  that  I  would  dedicate  my  powers 

To  thee  and  thine — have  I  not  kept  the  vow  P 
***** 

The  day  becomes  more  solemn  and  serene 
When  noon  is  past — there  is  a  harmoiiy 
In  autumn,  and  a  lustre  in  its  sky. 

Which  thro''  the  summer  is  not  heard  or  seen. 

As  if  it  could  not  he,  as  if  it  had  not  been  I 
Thus  let  thy  power,  which  like  the  truth 
Of  nature  on  my  passive  youth 

Descended,  to  my  onward  life  supply 

Its  calm — to  one  who  worships  thee, 
And  every  form  containing  thee, 
Whom,  Spirit  fair,  thy  spells  did  bind 

To  fear  himself,  and  love  all  human  kind. 

Or  the  lines  from  Keats — 

So  let  me  be  thy  choir,  and  make  a  moan 

Upon  the  midnight  hours  ; 
Thy  voice,  thy  lute,  thy  pipe,  thy  incense  sweet 

89 


From  swinged,  censer  teeming  : 

Thy  shrine,  thy  grove,  thy  oracle,  thy  heat 

Of  f  ale-mouthed  frophet  dreaming. 

Tes,  I  will  be  thy  priest,  and  build  a  fane 

In  some  untrodden  region  of  my  mind. 

Where    branched    thoughts,    new    grown    with 

pleasant  pain, 
Instead  of  pines  shall  murmur  in  the  wind — 

and  the  rest  of  Keats's  "  Ode  to  Psyche  "  (an 
ode  in  which  he  took  special  pains  to  express 
his  distinctive  thought),  with  the  soul-feeding 
beauties  of  Thompson's  "  Hound  of  Heaven," 
or  the  latter's  poem  "  To  Any  Saint,"  the 
most  marvellous  compendium  of  Christian 
mysticism  that  has  ever  been  penned  in  poetic 
lines. 

If  the  message  of  Shelley  was — as  it  seems  to 
have  been — that  love  and  beauty  shall  endure 
to  unite  all  things ;  and  the  message  of  Keats 
to  restore  the  spirit  of  the  Greeks  and  "  Art  for 
Art's  sake,"  that  of  Francis  Thompson  is,  at 
any  rate,  the  more  exalted.  For  in  what  does 
it  differ,  save  in  the  manner  of  delivery,  from 
that  cry  of  the  great  Augustine,  which  has 
rung  down  the  ages  in  ever-increasing 
volume  ? 
90 


V6%T>ICr  OF   ri^MS 

'Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself^  and  our  hearts 
are  restless  u?!til  they  find  their  rest  in  Thee. 

This  sentence  of  the  Aristotle  of  Christianity 
echoes  through  the  poetry  of  Francis  Thompson 
— and  if  literary  fame,  to  be  immortal,  must  be 
linked  with  an  undying  message,  then,  surely, 
to  the  poet  of  "  terrible  depths  and  triumphant 
heights  "  is  Immortality  assured. 


91 


^MJDTSS  03i^S0M6  OF 
F%A3iCIS  THOMTSOJ^S 
TO  SMS 


THS  HO  U3^  OF 

H6^V6\_ 

Fear  wist  not  to  evade,  as  Love  zvist  to  pursue. 

Tjie  Hound  of  Heaven 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON  leapt  into  fame 
among  those  able  to  discern  true 
poetic  genius  by  the  chance  discovery 
of  the  verse-set  gems  contained  in  a  short  poem 
which  he  composed  when  on  the  verge  of 
destitution  and  despair.  Since  the  day  when 
this  singer  of  golden  song  wrote  on  a  soiled 
scrap  of  paper,  picked  up  by  him  in  a  London 
street,  the  lines  which  first  brought  about  his 
recognition,  his  works  have  been  read  and 
re-read  with  increasing  appreciation,  while  the 
greatest  critics  have  vied  with  one  another  in 
proclaiming  his  praise.  But  if  there  is  one 
work  more  than  the  rest  of  the  vagrant  Prodigal 
of  Song  (albeit  not  the  one  first  alluded  to) 
which  has  fired  the  heart  and  glistened  the  eye, 
it  is  his  religious  ode  entitled  "  The  Hound  of 
Heaven."  This  wonderful  lyric  came  as  an 
inspiration  amid  the  doubt,  and  darkness,  and 
the  imperfect  faith  of  other  Victorian  poets. 
Throughout  its  lines  God  is  no  vague  abstrac- 
tion,  but  a  Presence  most  intimate — loving, 

95 


7 HE   HOV^D     CF  E6(t/jV6^ 

and  eagerly  pursuing  the  soul  that  would  find 
satisfaction  elsewhere  than  in  Him.  It  is,  of  all 
foems  ferhaps,  the  poem  of  Divine  insistency. 

Whether  the  original  idea,  which  developed 
in  course  of  time  into  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven," 
was  first  planted  in  the  author's  mind  by  the 
thought  of  the  pursuing  love  in  Silvio  Pellico's 
"  Dio  Amore,"  or,  as  seems  more  likely,  was 
suggested  by  one  of  the  poems  of  the  Spanish 
mystic  known  as  St.  John  of  the  Cross  (of  whom 
Thompson  was  a  close  student  and  admirer), 
or  whether  it  arose  solely  out  of  the  circum- 
stances of  the  poet's  own  life  and  the  innate 
sense,  which  runs  through  so  many  of  his  verses, 
of  the  nearness  of  Heaven  and  the  proximity 
of  God — is  a  matter  of  surmise.  Certain  it 
is  that  no  mystical  words  of  such  profound 
power  and  such  soul-stirring  sweetness  have 
been  written  in  modern  times.  The  title,  as 
apart  from  the  subject-matter,  may  have  been 
borrowed  from  Celtic  mythology,  in  which 
the  title  "  Hound  "  (as  where  Cuchulain,  the 
hero  of  Irish  romance,  is  called  "  the  Hound 
of  Ulster  ")  is  a  term  of  honour — or  been 
suggested,  as  seems  probable  enough,  by  the 
"  Heaven's  winged  hound  "  of  the  opening  act 
of  Shelley's  "  Prometheus  Unbound." 

96 


THE   HOU^rO    OF  HS^VS^ 

Though  it  may  be  said  that  in  a  certain  sense 
Thompson  viewed  the  world  as  but  the  footstool 
of  the  Highest,  he  was  yet  supremely  conscious 
of  the  beauty  displayed  on  every  side,  from  the 
shadows  of  Divine  beauty  cast  by  the  Designer 
Infinite  upon  the  curtains  of  sky  and  cloud, 
down  to  the  lowliest  flower  of  earth.  The  ex- 
quisite glimpses  of  the  things  of  Nature — those 
shapers  of  his  own  moods,  which  he  incidentally 
presents  in  the  course  of  the  poem  as  the  tremen- 
dous Lover  (God,  symbolized  as  the  Hound) 
pursues  His  tireless  quest — strike  at  once  the 
imagination,  as  surely  as  the  impressive  symbol- 
ism employed  penetrates  and  illumines  the  soul. 
The  deliberate  speed,  the  majestic  sweep  of  the 
lines,  produce  an  impression  of  unrushing  splen- 
dour but  seldom  equalled,  even  in  the  master- 
pieces of  literature,  outside  the  Hebrewprophets. 
Here  and  there  one  is  reminded,  by  the 
spirituality  of  thought  and  phrase,  of  a  similar 
vein  in  Crashaw — or  by  the  fine  frenzy  of  a  line 
to  something  akin  in  Blake  or  Rossetti.  To  the 
present  writer  the  lines — 
/  tempted  all  His  servitors,  hut  to  find 
My  own  betrayal  in  their  C07ista?icy^ 
In  faith  to  Him  their  fickleness  to  me, 
Their  traitorous  true?iess,  and  their  loyal  deceit — 

97 


THE   HOU^D    OF  HS^VS^ 

invariably  recall  the  well-known  oxymoron  in 
Tennyson's  "  Elaine  " — 

His  honour  rooted  in  dishonour  stood, 

And  faith,  unfaithful,  kept  him  falsely  true. 

The  idea  of  the  "  arches  of  the  years  "  in  the 
opening  section — 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  nights  and  down  the  days  ; 
I  fled  Him,  down  the  arches  of  the  years ; — 

would  undoubtedly  be  suggested  by  the  bridge 
of  life  in  the  lovely  "  Vision  of  Mirzah  " 
contributed  by  Addison  to  the  Spectator  under 
date  September  i,  171 1.  This  bridge  (seen  by 
Mirzah  after  he  had  listened  to  the  tunes  of 
the  shepherd-clad  genius  which  reminded  him 
of  those  heavenly  airs  played  to  the  departed 
souls  of  good  men,  upon  their  first  arrival  in 
Paradise,  to  wear  out  the  impressions  of  their 
last  agonies)  consisted  of  "  three  score  and  ten 
entire  arches,  with  several  broken  arches,  which, 
added  to  those  that  were  entire,  made  up  the 
number  about  an  hundred."  Such  a  piece  of 
superfine  prose  would  be  certain  to  make  a  deep 
impression  on  Thompson's  susceptible  mind. 

In  poetry  it  is  more  or  less  essential  that 
besides  the  outer  gems  that  flash  on  all  alike, 

98 


rUS  H0U.9CD    OF  H6^^^V8.9C 

there  should  be  some  that  lie  below  the  surface, 
and  need  some  mental  digging  to  unearth.  In 
"  The  Hound  of  Heaven  "  these  hidden  gems 
abound,  but  they  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  too 
deeply  buried  for  the  earnest  seeker,  when 
once  the  prevailing  idea  and  the  nobility  of 
the  poet's  thought  are  grasped.  The  sym- 
bolism employed,  though  often  most  daring,  is 
free  from  the  disfiguring  "  eccentricity "  of 
many  mystical  poets  :  the  thought  and  diction 
befit  the  exalted  subject  of  the  verse,  and 
transcend  all  conventions. 

The  poem  proceeds  by  way  of  striking 
similes,  which  hold  the  reader  spellbound  in 
an  atmosphere  of  spiritual  elevation  :  fresh 
and  more  towering  peaks  of  mental  conception 
come  into  view  as  the  grandeur  of  the  theme 
develops ;  the  end  is  in  the  Valley  of  Calm, 
where  the  surrender  of  the  tired  wanderer 
follows  as  a  natural  climax,  in  lines  of  the  most 
touching  and  exquisite  simplicity.  The  spell 
of  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven "  is  such  that 
hundreds  of  its  readers  date  their  drawing  to 
the  Feet  of  that  "  tremendous  Lover "  of 
Whom  the  poet  sings,  to  the  day  when  the 
poem's  appealing  music  first  broke  upon  their 
'"  encircling  gloom." 

G  99 


rne  hou^d  of  hs^vs^ 

The  chief  interest  lies,  perhaps,  in  the 
genuine  humanity  which  pervades  the  poem 
throughout,  and  in  the  wonderful  mental 
pictures  often  conjured  up,  sometimes  by  a 
single  line.     In  the  few  words — 

Adozvn  Titanic  blooins  of  chasmed  fears  ; 
as  again  in  the  lines — 

/  swung  the  earth  a  trinket  at  my  wrist  ; 
and — 

Tet  ever  and  anon  a  trumpet  sounds 
From  the  hid  battlements  of  eternity  ; — 

a  host  of  conceptions  may  arise  in  the  mind 
without  exhausting  the  full  meaning  of  the 
poet's  words.  Great  alike  in  theme  and 
execution,  and  in  the  completeness  of  its 
message,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  as  a  religious 
poem  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven  "  has  no 
superior.  It  stands  unique,  for  all  the  world 
and  for  all  time  ! 

Amid  all  the  artistic  trope  and  perfect  poetic 
imagery,  certain  passages  will  appear  more 
noteworthy  to  some  than  to  others,  but  it  will 
surely  be  of  special  interest  to  most  to  note 
that  it  is  in  the  little  children's  eyes  that  the 
soul  approaches  nearest  the  object  of  its  quest, 

100 


THS   H0U,9CD    OF  H8^1V8.?C 

ere  it  sinks  beneath  the  Hand  outstretched 
caressingly. 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  not  devoid  of  significance, 
that  the  poem  was  constructed  at  the  time 
that  Thompson  was  composing  melodies  of  a 
very  different  order — the  lines  varied,  sweet, 
and  gay,  which  make  up  his  volume  of  "  Sister 
Songs,"  published  in  1895.  As  "The  Hound 
of  Heaven  "  appeared  in  Thompson's  first 
volume  of  poems,  issued  in  1893,  it  would  seem 
that  the  actual  year  when  the  "  poem  for  all 
time  "  was  written  may  have  been  either  1892 
or  1893. 

Strange  and  startling  fancies  in  words  ; 
adjectives  that  illumine  like  "  furnaces  in  the 
night  "  ;  deep  sounds  and  echoes — the  sounds 
of  restless  humanity  in  search  of  the  world's 
witchery,  the  echoes  of  the  message  of  the 
Psalmist  of  old, — and  underlying  all,  the 
pleading  of  the  Father  for  His  prodigal  son  : — 
such,  in  short,  is  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven." 


lOI 


0T>6  ro   THS 

Thou  dost  thy  dying  so  triutnfhally  : 

I  see  the  crimson  blaring  of  thy  shawms  ! 

Ode  to  the  Setting  Sun 

WHATEVER    may   have    been   the 
general  method  of  Francis  Thomp- 
son in  settling  the  final  wording  of 
his  poems,  he  seems  to  have  been  at  special 
pains  in  giving  its  ultimate  form  to  his  "  Ode 
to  the  Setting  Sun."     Words,  lines,  and  whole 
passages   have   been   reshaped    since   the   first 
appearance   of  the  poem  in  Merry  Englarid* 
A  noticeable  change  lies  in  the  substitution  of 
simpler  language,  an  example  of  which  may  be 
seen  in  the  passage  altered  from — 
Thou  swa'f  St  thy  sce-ptred  beam 
0''er  all  earth'' s  broad,  loins  teem^ 
^he  sweats  thee  through  her  'pores  to  verdurous 

spilth  ; 
Thou  art  light  in  her  light, 
Thou  art  might  in  her  might, 
Fruitjulness  in  her  fruit,  a?td  foizon  in  her 
tilth— 
in  the  Ode  as  it  originally  appeared,  to 

*  Merry  England,  September  1889. 

103 


0D£  ro  me  ssrrL'Nig  sus^ 

Thou  sway' St  thy  sceptred  beam 

O^er  all  delight  and  dream., 

Beauty  is  beautiful  but  in  thy  glance  ; 

Arid  like  a  jocimd  maid 

In  garland-flowers  arrayed. 

Before  thy  ark  earth  keeps  her  sacred  dance — 

as  the  lines  occur  later  in  the  volume  of  "  New 

Poems." 

As  the  Ode  now  stands,  free  from  some  of 
the  more  startling  archaisms  and  coinage  of 
words,  it  must  ever  rank  as  a  great  spell-binding 
poem,  a  pageant  of  scintillating  colour  and 
sound.  The  marvels  and  undreamt-of  treasures 
of  the  wonder-working  Sun  are  drawn  out  at 
length,  and  heaped  up,  through  many  a  poetic 
line,  for  the  beholder's  gaze.  The  regal 
splendours  befitting  the  subject,  the  ornateness 
and  dignity  of  the  poet's  thought,  the  symbolic 
references  and  sacramental  vision — conduct  the 
reader  along  the  passage  between  matter  and 
soul,  and  show  him  some  of  the  many-splen- 
doured  things  conceivable  only  by  the  mind  of 
the  Seer.  Something  of  the  majestic  strains  of 
Handel's  "  Largo  "  ;  of  the  soul-filling  sweet- 
ness of  Gounod's  "  Messe  Solennelle  "  ;  of  the 
lights  and  raptures  of  a  De  Beriot's  "  Ninth 
Concerto  "  ;  something,  too,  of  the  indefinable 
104 


0T>6  ro  rns  s erring  su.9c 

witchery  of  certain  of  Chopin's  Nocturnes — 
surge  into  the  ears  as  the  recital  continues. 
Amid  such  dehghts  as  these  is  the  reader 
carried  from  the  "  world  too  much  with  us  "  to 
realms  of  more  spacious  beauty. 

The  Ode  is  divided  into  three  parts.  In  the 
Prelude,  the  setting  Sun — "  a  bubble  of  fire  " — 
drops  slowly,  as  the  poignant  music  of  the 
violin  and  harp  are  borne  into  the  soul.  In  the 
Ode  proper,  the  note  of  sadness — the  sunset 
mood — is  continued  ;  the  mystical  twins  of 
Time — Death  and  Birth — come  into  the  poet's 
mind,  "  and  of  these  two  the  fairer  thing  is 
Death."  As  in  some  great  musical  masterpiece, 
the  opening  bars — low,  sad,  and  weird — prepare 
the  way  for  the  cymbals'  clang  and  the  full 
orchestral  effects,  so  here  :  nor  is  it  long  before 
the  "  music  blasts  make  deaf  the  sky."  In 
bewilderingly  beautiful  language  the  poet  pro- 
ceeds to  depict  the  splendours  of  the  sun's 
triumphal  dying,  and  to  consider  the  sway  of 
its  sceptred  beam  from  the  time  of  its  birth — 
the  time  when  it  burst  from  the  great  void's 
husk  and  leaped  "  on  the  throat  o'  the  dusk." 
The  deluge,  "  when  the  ancient  heavens  did  in 
rains  depart  "  ;  the  lion  "  maned  in  tawny 
majesty,"  the  tiger  "  silver-barred,"  and  the 

105 


0T>s  ro  rns  ssTri.v^cg  su^ 

stealthy  stepping  pard  ;  the  entombed  trees 
(now  the  light-bearers  of  the  earth)  ;  the  rose 
"  cupped  to  the  marge  with  beauty,"  the 
"  draped  "  tulip,  the  "  snowed  "  lily,  the  earth 
itself  suckled  at  the  breast  of  the  sun,  and 
"  scarfed  "  with  the  morning  light, — these,  and 
many  a  gorgeous  miracle  of  the  sun's  working, 
are  examined  in  turn,  and  over  each  the  sway 
of  the  "  spectred  beam  "  is  shown.  The  wind 
and  the  wailing  voices  that  should  meet  from 
hill,  stream,  and  grove  to  chant  a  dirge  at  the 
red  glare  of  the  Sun's  fall — the  Naiad,  Dryad, 
and  Nereid  : 

The  Nymph  wan- glimmering  by  her  wan  founfs 
verge — 

all  are  conjured  up  as  in  their  wonted  haunts. 

And  then  the  scene  changes  : 

A  space,  and  they  fleet  from  me.     Must  ye  fade — 

O  old,  essential  candours,  ye  who  made 

The  earth  a  lim?ig  and  a  radiant  thifig — 
And  leave  her  corpse  in  our  strained,  cheated 
arms  P 

The  poet  sees  in  their  departure  a  resem- 
blance to  his  own  "  vanishing — nay,  vanished 
day,"  and  his  dark  mood  is  only  changed  by  the 
deferred  thought  of  Eternity,  whereat  "  a 
1 06 


ODS    TO    THS   SSTTl^q   SU^ 

rifting  light  burns  through  the  leaden  brood- 
ings  "  of  his  mind. 

O  blessed  Sun,  thy  state 

Uf  risen  or  derogate 

Dafts  me  no  more  with  doubt ;  I  seek  and  find. 

In  the  opening  lines  of  another  of  his  great 
majestical  poems,  the  "  Orient  Ode,"  the  poet 
sees  in  the  Sunrise  a  symbol  of  the  Church's 
Benediction  Service.  Now,  in  the  Setting  Sun, 
he  sees  a  radiant  image  of  the  King-maker  of 
Creation,  a  type  indeed  of  Calvary — 

Thou  art  of  Him  a  type  memorial, 
Like  Him  thou  hang'st  in  dreadful  pomp  of  blood 
Upon  thy  western  rood — 

and  his  sadness  lifts   at   the  thought,   which 
naturallv  follows,  of  the  Resurrection. 

The  vein  of  triumph  thenceforth  predomi- 
nates ;  for  it  is  the  falling  acorn  buds  the  tree, 
and  as — 

There  is  nothing  lives  but  something  dies — 
so,  too — 

There  is  nothing  dies  but  something  lives — 

and  though  birth  and  death  are  inseparable  on 
earth 
They  are  twain  yet  one,  and  Death  is  Birth. 

107 


OT>s  ro  rus  serrifNig  su.9c 

In  the  after-strain  (the  concluding  part  of 
the  Ode)  the  note  of  triumph  rings  again  :  a 
message  from  the  tender  Queen  of  Heaven 
leaves  the  poet  "  light  of  cheer,"  and  in  the  end 
he  gives  thanks  for  his  very  griefs  : 

The  restless  zvi?idzvard  stirrings  of  whose  feather 
Prove  them  the  brood  of  immortality. 

The  "  Ode  to  the  Setting  Sun  "  (written  at 
Storrington  in  1889)  possesses  a  unique  interest, 
inasmuch  as  it  was  the  first  poem  of  length  that 
Thompson  wrote  after  his  rescue  from  the  life 
of  poverty  in  London,  and  afforded  the  first 
all-convincing  revelation  of  the  poet's  genius. 
It  is  one  of  his  "  great  "  poems,  full  of  that 
princely  opulence  of  imagination  which  distin- 
guished "New  Poems,"  though  short,  perhaps, 
of  the  matured  mysticism  of  "  Orient  Ode  "  or 
the  master-craftsmanship  of  "  An  Anthem  of 
Earth  " — that  marvel  of  poetic  creation — in  the 
same  volume. 

One  of  the  many  functions  of  poetry  is  to 
penetrate  beyond  the  reach  of  science,  and 
reveal,  in  reverential  way,  certain  hidden  truths 
of  nature  which,  without  the  imagination  of 
the  poet  to  cross  the  abysses  of  dividing  space, 
might  remain  but  irritating  and  unpictured 
108 


OT>S   TO   THS  S6Tri.9(jg   SU,'9^ 

mysteries.  Canon  Sheehan  expresses  this  in 
The  Intellectuals  :  "  She  (Nature)  retreats,  as 
we  advance,  and  gathers  up  her  skirts,  lest  the 
very  swish  of  them  should  reveal  her  hiding- 
places.  There  is  one,  and  one  only,  to  whom 
she  reveals  herself,  and  lifts  up  her  veil  :  and 
that  is  her  poet." 

Such  a  poet,  letting  in  a  flood  of  many- 
coloured  light  upon  the  world — drawing  the 
veil  from  the  beauty  of  the  Creator's  handi- 
work— and  "  purging  from  our  inward  sight  the 
film  of  familiarity  which  obscures  from  us  the 
wonder  of  our  being  "  (as  in  his  "  Ode  to 
the  Setting  Sun  ")  is  Francis  Thompson  ! 


109 


THOMTSO^NZS  D^IST 

Her  beauty  smoothed  earth'' s  furrowed  jace  ! 

Daisy 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON'S  poem 
"  Daisy  "  has  something  more  suggestive 
of  Wordsworth  about  it  than  the  mere 
resemblance  of  sweet  simpHcity  to  "  Lucy  " 
and  "  We  are  Seven."  In  a  charming  httle 
poem  written  of  his  beloved  sister  Dorothy, 
under  the  pseudonym  of  Emmeline,  Words- 
worth refers  to  her  as  "  a  little  Prattler  among 
men,"  and  goes  on  to  say  that  she  gave  him 
love,  and  thought,  and  joy  : 

She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears, 
And  humble  cares,  and  delicate  Jears  ; 
A  heart,  a  fountain  oj  sweet  tears  ; 
And  love,  and  thought,  and  joy. 

Are  not  all  these,  in  the  case  of  the  little 
Prattler — his  sister  of  an  hour — whom  Thomp- 
son met  at  Storrington,  contained,  in  childish 
measure,  in  her  token-gift  ? 

A  look,  a  word  of  her  winsome  mouth, 
And  a  wild  ras-pberry. 

Was  it  quite  unconsciously  of  the  "  cares  "  and 
"  fears  "   and   "  fountain   of  sweet   tears  "   of 

III 


Wordsworth,  and  of  Wordsworth's  own 
"  Daisy  "  *— 

With  little  here  to  do  or  see 

Of  things  that  in  the  great  world  he, 

Sweet  Daisy  !  oft  I  talk  to  thee — 

(as  unconsciously  as  if  they  had  been  non- 
existent)— that  Thompson  tells  of  "  the  wise, 
idle,  childish  things  "  he  talked  to  his  Daisy, 
and  the  sweetness  (albeit  the  sweetness  in  the 
sad)  she  brought  to  him  ?  We  know  at  all 
events  that  Thompson  was  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth  (with 
what  great  poetry  was  he  not  ?) — and  often 
spoke  of  it.  We  know,  too,  that  the  younger 
poet,  out  of  the  vast  storehouse  of  his  memory, 
frequently  made  use  of  some  thought  or 
suggestion,  arising,  unconsciously  it  might  be, 
from  the  works — a  phrase  or  single  word  at 
times — of  others,  whether  prose  or  verse.  To 
take  an  instance  (the  first  that  comes  to  mind) 
of  each  :  must  not  the  lines  from  "  Sister 
Songs " — 

And  Summer  move  on  Winter 
With  the  trum-pet  of  the  March,  and  the  pennon 
of  the  May — 

*  In  the  first  of  the  four  Wordsworthian  "Daisy"  poems. 
112 


have  had  their  forerunner  in  the  passage  from 
De  Quincey  (whose  "  Confessions,"  by  the  way, 
Thompson  knew  almost  by  heart) — 

Midsummer  like  an  army  with  banners,  was 
movifig  through  the  heavens — 

as  surely  as  the  passage  (again  from  "  Sister 
Songs  ")— 

In  fairing  time,  we  know,  the  bird 
Kindles  to  its  deepest  splendour — 

have  had  its  conception  in  the  Tennysonian — 

///   the   Spring   a   livelier   iris   changes   on   the 
burnish'' d  dove  .  .  .  ? 

Much  will  be  written  in  years  to  come  of 
those  qualities  of  Thompson  which  bear 
affinity  to  the  genius  of  Wordsworth — or 
rather  of  those  dissimilarities  in  which  is  to  be 
found  each  poet's  peculiar  strength  :  the  calm 
austerity  of  the  one,  the  "  passionless  "  passion 
of  the  other  ;  Wordsworth's  pensive  Daffodil 
culled  so  immediately  as  to  have  the  dew  still 
fresh  upon  it — Thompson's  correlated  flower 
so  linked  to  things  unseen  as  to  trouble  by  its 
plucking  some  far-off  star.  But  all  that  need 
be  said  here  is  that  if  Thompson  had  written 
no  other  poem  than  his  gorgeously  coloured 

113 


"Poppy,"  "A  Fallen  Yew"  (destined,  like 
Wordsworth's  "  Yew  Trees,"  to  "  last  with 
stateliest  rhyme  "),  and  "  Daisy  "  (the  simplest 
perhaps  of  all  his  poems),  his  title  to  a  poet  of 
Nature  would  be  secure. 

'7^  "7?  W  ^  w 

The  name  of  the  child  of  the  poem — the 
sweetest  flower  on  Sussex  hills  that  day — is 
unknown.  Efforts  have  been  made  to  trace 
her,  but  without  success.  Beautiful  she  must 
have  been.  As  in  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven," 
it  was  within  the  little  children's  eyes  that  the 
poet  came  nearest  to  that  after  which  he  sought, 
so  doubtless  it  was  in  the  loveliness  of  her 
young  eyes  (he  refers  to  her  "  sweet  eyes,"  and 
again  to  her  "  lovely  eyes  ")  that  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  Daisy-Flower  of  Storrington 
lay.  A  trifle  it  may  be,  but  a  trifle  indicative 
of  the  poet's  mind,  is  the  fact  that  once,  at 
Pantasaph,  he  singled  out  from  Coventry 
Patmore  the  passage 

What  is  this  maiden  fair, 

The  laughing  0/ whose  eye 

Is  in  man's  heart  renewed  virgi^iity — 

for  special  comment  and  admiration. 

The  poem  is  one  of  mingled  joy  and  sorrow. 
114 


It  concludes  with  a  verse,   the  last  lines   of 

which — 

For  we  are  born  in  others  'pain 

And  perish  in  our  own — 

have  often  been  quoted.  Many  will  wish  that 
the  concluding  verse  had  not  been  written. 
The  poem  is  complete  without  it  :  the  poignant 
grief  seems  to  go  beyond  the  scope  of  the 
theme,  and  to  add  sadness  (if  one  may  so 
venture  to  put  it)  for  sadness'  sake. 

It  seems  to  the  present  writer  that  there  are 
two  pictures  of  Francis  Thompson  which 
might,  conceivably,  be  painted — and  which, 
executed  by  an  artist  worthy  of  the  task,  would 
serve  to  give  a  truer  idea  of  the  poet — man  and 
soul — than  any  description  in  words.  The 
first,  mystical  of  necessity  in  conception,  would 
need  to  show  him — with  thought-consumed 
body  and  saintly  face — the  marks  of  his  scars 
still  fresh  upon  him — leaning  with  reverent 
boldness  in  the  manner  of  which  he  himself 
furnishes  a  picture  in  "  Any  Saint  "  : 

And  holder  now  and  holder 
I  lean  upon  that  Shoulder, 

So  dear 

He  is,  and  near  : 

n  115 


THO.M'PSO^S  'D<iAISr 

And  with  His  aureole 
The  tresses  of  my  soul 

Are  blent 

In  wished  content. 

The  other  (the  simpler  the  better)  would 
depict  him  talking  to  the  unknown  child  at 
Storrington,  the  beautiful  child  of  whom,  as 
she  stood 

Breast  deep  mid  flower  and  spine, 

he  sings,  unforgettably,  in  "  Daisy." 


ii6 


O  World  Invisible,  we  view  thee. 

In  no  Strange  Land 

WHEN  Francis  Thompson  died,  early 
in    the   winter    of    1907,   he    left 
among  his  papers  a  short  unfinished 
poem  bearing  the  double  title  : 

In  no  Strange  Land 


The  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you 


which  is  noteworthy  as  the  last  and  at  the  same 
time  one  of  the  most  characteristic  of  his 
works.  For  in  these  triumphing  stanzas  there 
is  held  in  retrospect — as  Mr.  Meynell  puts  it — 
the  days  and  nights  of  human  dereliction 
which  the  poet  spent  besides  London's  river, 
and  in  the  shadow — but  all  radiance  to  him — 
of  Charing  Cross.  Obviously  differing  from 
his  polished  masterpiece,  "  The  Hound  of 
Heaven,"  the  shorter  poem  bears  yet  a  resem- 
blance in  that  it  treats  of  the  world  to  be 
discerned  by  the  eyesight  that  is  spiritual,  and 
exhibits  a  conception  of  equal  daring.  Thus 
the  splendid  audacity  which,  in  the  one, 
symbolizes  God  as  the  pursuing  Hound,  depicts, 
in  the  other,  Jacob's  ladder  pitched  betwixt 

117 


THO^M'PSO^S    LzASr  "POSm 

Heaven  and  Charing  Cross,*  and  Christ  walking 
on  the  water  7iot  of  Gennesareth  but  Thames  I 

Though  Thompson  has  been  styled  the 
"  mighty  mystic,"  he  has  many  pieces  of  sweet 
simplicity.  His  lines  on  a  "  Snowflake,"  and  his 
verses  entitled  "  July  Fugitive,"  "  A  Dead 
Astronomer,"  "  After  her  going  "  are,  among 
others,  such  as  a  child  can  understand ;  and  in 
the  last  gift  of  his  muse  he  has  left  an  epitome 
of  his  life's  verse,  expressed  in  a  clear  and 
striking  form,  the  beauty  and  significance  of 
which  few  can  miss. 

It  is  when  dealing  with  his  favourite  subject 
of  the  intimacy  of  God  that  the  poet,  whose 
heart  was  warmed  by  the  Divine  Presence  as 
he  sold  matches  in  the  street,  displays  his 
greatest  charm.  Here,  compressed  in  the  space 
of  twenty- four  lines,  is  to  be  found  the  very 
inmost  of  his  thought,  combined  with  a 
lustrous  simplicity  befitting  the  vehicle  of  his 
final  message.  Many  who  find  themselves 
breathless  in  the  elevation  of  "  The  Hound  of 
Heaven  "  will,  in  the  later  lines,  be  able  to 
follow  the  mind  of  the  poet  with  ease,  and 

*  An  interesting  similarity  of  thought  is  suggested  by  the 
"Jacob's  ladder"  line  of  Thompson's  poem  and  verse  ii 
of  Tennyson's  "  Early  Spring." 

ii8 


THo^i'Pso^s  L^jtsr  TO  em 

grasp    the    import    of    his    teaching    to    the 
full. 

It  has  been  said  of  another  of  our  English 
poets  (Chatterton)  that  he  was  "  Poetry's 
Martyr."  The  description  applies  to  Thomp- 
son also,  but  in  a  far  nobler  sense.  The  hopes 
of  his  youth  blighted — crushed,  as  it  seemed, 
on  every  side — it  was  the  equally  bitter  lot  of 
Francis  Thompson  to  learn  by  experience  that 
"  turning  love's  bread  is  bought  at  hunger's 
price,"  and  to  find  himself  (in  words  of  his  own 
telling) — 

Like  one  who  sweats  hejore  a  despofs  gate, 
Summoned  by  some  presaging  scroll  ojjate, 
And  knows  not  whether  kiss  or  dagger  wait  ; 
And  all  so  sickened  is  his  countenance, 
T^hat  courtiers  buzz,  '"''  Lo,  doomed  !  "  and  look  at 
him  askance.* 

Yet,  racked  as  he  was,  he  stood  true  to  his 
visions  with  enduring  patience,  and  with  a 
courage  that  has  no  counterpart  on  the  field 
of  battle.  His  was  the  martyrdom  of  living  : 
to  deliver  his  message,  he  prolonged  his  life,  so 
full  of  physical  pain,  to  the  utmost.  That  he 
lived  so  long  was  due  to  his  unconquerable 
mind,  his  indomitable  will  to  live — to  live  and 
*   "Sister  Songs." 

119 


sanctify    the    bodily    suffering    of    his    later 
years. 

Through  all  the  outer  darkness  of  his ' '  uncom- 
panioned  "  days,  the  poet  of  the  light  within 
remained  the  same  rapt  celebrant  of  the  soul, 
feasting  his  gaze  on  the  world  invisible,  and 
proclaiming  the  high  things  that  lie  beyond 
the  lowly.  The  very  bitterness  of  his  trials 
only  strengthened  his  assurance  in  the  reality 
of  the  hidden  things  of  which  he  testifies. 
What  wonder,  then,  that  his  last  testimony 
should  be  of  such  special  significance  and 
potentiality  ? 

The  angels  keef  their  ancient  places  ; — 
Turn  but  a  stone,  and  start  a  wing  ! 
''Tis  ye,  'tis  your  estranged  faces, 
That  miss  the  many-sple?tdoured  thing. 

***** 

Tea,  in  the  night,  my  Soul,  my  daughter, 
Cry, — clinging  Heaven  by  the  hems  ; 
And  lo,  Christ  walking  on  the  water. 
Not  of  Gennesareth,  but  Thames  ! 

Surely   the   angels   must   have   clapped    their 
hands  with  delight  as  the  poem  proceeded. 

What  "  The  Hound  of  Heaven  "  is  among 
the  poet's  longer  pieces,  his  poem  of  the  Vision 

120 


THOmTSO^S  L<tASr  TOSm 

of  Thames — unpolished  and  unfinished  though 
it  be — is  among  the  shorter.  Both  are  adorned 
by  tears  and  sunshine,  and  both  are  the 
channels  of  his  profoundest  message — 

Heaven  in  Earth,  and  God  in  Man  !  * 

*  This  lin>  occurs  in  Crashaw's  "  H/mn  of  th  •  Nativity    .' ' 


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