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    The Poetry Of Francis Thompson - Volume 2: "For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own."
    The Poetry Of Francis Thompson - Volume 2: "For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own."
    The Poetry Of Francis Thompson - Volume 2: "For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own."
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    The Poetry Of Francis Thompson - Volume 2: "For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own."

    By Francis Thompson

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    Francis Thompson was born in Preston on Lancashire in December 18th, 1859. Educated at Ushaw College, near Durham he studied medicine at Owens College in Manchester. However the medical profession held little interest to him but writing did. He moved to London in 1885 but found no success and was quickly reduced to selling matches and newspapers for a living. Ill health offered up opium as a solution and to this he quickly became addicted. Life became increasingly difficult and soon Francis was no more than a vagrant living on the streets, chiefly around Charing Cross and along the Thames. In 1888 he sent some poems to the publishers of the Merrie England magazine who were Wilfrid Meynell and his noted poet wife Alice. They quickly sought him out, arranged for his housing and other necessities as well as medical treatment and encouraged him to write more. This culminated in the publication of his book ‘Poems’ in 1893. The book, including the seminal ‘Hound Of Heaven’ was recognised as a great work by many critics at the time and encouraged further volumes; Sister Songs in 1895 and New Poems in 1897. Years of ill health, addiction and vagrancy had taken their toll upon Francis and he moved to Storrington in Wales where we continued to write though by now he was invalided. An attempt at suicide was aborted by a vision he had of Thomas Chatterton, the teenage poet, who had committed suicide a century earlier. However his remaining years were few in number and he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 48 on November 13th, 1907. He is buried in the Catholic section of Kensal Green Cemetery in London. G.K. Chersterton said "with Francis Thompson we lost the greatest poetic energy since Browning."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateJan 3, 2014
    ISBN9781783949342
    The Poetry Of Francis Thompson - Volume 2: "For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own."

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      Book preview

      The Poetry Of Francis Thompson - Volume 2 - Francis Thompson

      The Poetry Of Francis Thompson

      Volume 2

      Francis Thompson was born in Preston on Lancashire in December 18th, 1859.

      Educated at Ushaw College, near Durham he studied medicine at Owens College in Manchester.  However the medical profession held little interest to him but writing did.  He moved to London in 1885 but found no success and was quickly reduced to selling matches and newspapers for a living.

      Ill health offered up opium as a solution and to this he quickly became addicted.  Life became increasingly difficult and soon Francis was no more than a vagrant living on the streets, chiefly around Charing Cross and along the Thames.  In 1888 he sent some poems to the publishers of the Merrie England magazine who were Wilfrid Meynell and his noted poet wife Alice.   They quickly sought him out, arranged for his housing and other necessities as well as medical treatment and encouraged him to write more. This culminated in the publication of his book ‘Poems’ in 1893.   

      The book, including the seminal ‘Hound Of Heaven’ was recognised as a great work by many critics at the time and encouraged further volumes; Sister Songs in 1895 and New Poems in 1897.   Years of ill health, addiction and vagrancy had taken their toll upon Francis and he moved to Storrington in Wales where we continued to write though by now he was invalided.  An attempt at suicide was aborted by a vision he had of Thomas Chatterton, the teenage poet, who had committed suicide a century earlier. 

      However his remaining years were few in number and he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 48 on November 13th, 1907.  He is buried in the Catholic section of Kensal Green Cemetery in London. 

      G.K. Chersterton said with Francis Thompson we lost the greatest poetic energy since Browning.

      INDEX OF POEMS

      The Dedication Of Poems

      Dedication to Coventry Patmore

      Poems On Children

      Daisy  

      The Poppy  

      To Monica Thought Dying  

      The Making Of Viola  

      To My Godchild

      Ex Ore Infantium

      From Sister Songs

      A Child's Kiss

      Poet And Anchorite

      The Omen

      The Mirage

      The Child-Woman

      To A Child heard Repeating Her Mother's Verses

      A Foretelling Of The Child's Husband

      Love In Dian's Lap

      Before Her Portrait In Youth

      To A Poet Breaking Silence

      A Carrier Song

      Her Portrait

      Epilogue To The Poet's Sitter

      After Her Going

      Miscellaneous Poems

      A Fallen Yew

      The Hound Of Heaven

      To The Dead Cardinal Of Westminster

      A Dead Astronomer

      A Corymbus For Autumn,

      From The Mistress Of Vision

      The After Woman

      Lines: To W.M.

      The Way Of A Maid

      Ode To The Setting Sun,

      Epilogue To A Judgement In Heaven

      Grace Of The Way

      To A Snowflake

      Orient Ode

      From From The Night Of Forebeing

      A Counsel Of Moderation

      From Assumpta Maria

      From An Anthem Of Earth

      Contemplation

      Correlated Greatness

      July Fugitive

      From Any Saint

      From The Victorian Ode

      St Monica

      To the Sinking Sun

      Dream-Tryst

      Buona Notte

      Arab Love Song

      The Kingdom of God

      Envoy

      A Biographical Note On Francis Thompson

      Appreciations Of Francis Thompson

      DEDICATION OF POEMS

      To WILFRID AND ALICE MEYNELL

      If the rose in meek duty

      May dedicate humbly

      To her grower the beauty

      Wherewith she is comely;

      If the mine to the miner

      The jewels that pined in it;

      Earth to diviner

      The springs he divined in it;

      To the grapes the wine-pitcher

      Their juice that was crushed in it;

      Viol to its witcher

      The music lay hushed in it;

      If the lips may pay Gladness

      In laughters she wakened,

      And the heart to its sadness

      Weeping unslakened;

      If the hid and sealed coffer

      Whose having not his is,

      To the loosers may proffer

      Their finding, here this is;

      Their lives if all livers

      To the Life of all living,

      To you, O dear givers,

      I give your own giving!

      DEDICATION OF NEW POEMS

      To COVENTRY PATMORE

      Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down

      Under the banner of your spread renown!

      Or, if these levies of impuissant rhyme

      Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time,

      Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame,

      Armed with your crested and prevailing Name.

      POEMS ON CHILDREN

      DAISY

      Where the thistle lifts a purple crown

      Six foot out of the turf,

      And the harebell shakes on the windy hill

      O the breath of the distant surf!

      The hills look over on the South,

      And southward dreams the sea;

      And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand,

      Came innocence and she.

      Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry

      Red for the gatherer springs,

      Two children did we stray and talk

      Wise, idle, childish things.

      She listened with big-lipped surprise,

      Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine:

      Her skin was like a grape, whose veins

      Run snow instead of wine.

      She knew not those sweet words she spake,

      Nor knew her own sweet way;

      But there's never a bird so sweet a song

      Thronged in whose throat that day!

      Oh, there were flowers in Storrington

      On the turf and on the spray;

      But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills

      Was the Daisy-flower that day!

      Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face!

      She gave me tokens three:

      A look, a word of her winsome mouth,

      And a wild raspberry.

      A berry red, a guileless look,

      A still word, strings of sand!

      And yet they made my wild, wild heart

      Fly down to her little hand.

      For, standing artless as the air,

      And candid as the skies,

      She took the berries with her hand,

      And the love with her sweet eyes.

      The fairest things have fleetest end:

      Their scent survives their close,

      But the rose's scent is bitterness

      To him that loved the rose!

      She looked a little wistfully,

      Then went her sunshine way:

      The sea's eye had a mist on it,

      And the leaves fell from the day.

      She went her unremembering way,

      She went, and left in me

      The pang of all the partings gone,

      And partings yet to be.

      She left me marvelling why my soul

      Was sad that she was glad;

      At all the sadness in the sweet,

      The sweetness in the sad.

      Still, still I seemed to see her, still

      Look up with soft replies,

      And take the berries with her hand,

      And the love with her lovely eyes.

      Nothing begins, and nothing ends,

      That is not paid with moan;

      For we are born in others' pain,

      And perish in our own.

      THE POPPY

      To Monica

      Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,

      And left the flushed print in a poppy there:

      Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,

      And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.

      With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank

      The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,

      And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine

      When the eastern conduits ran with wine;

      Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,

      And hot as a swinkèd gipsy is,

      And drowsed in sleepy savageries,

      With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.

      A child and man paced side by side,

      Treading the skirts of eventide;

      But between the clasp of his hand and hers

      Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.

      She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair,

      And saw the sleeping gipsy there;

      And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim,

      With Keep it, long as you live! to him.

      And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres,

      Trembled up from a bath of tears;

      And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart,

      Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart.

      For he saw what she did not see,

      That as kindled by its own fervency

      The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly:

      And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers

      He knew the twenty withered years

      No flower, but twenty shrivelled years.

      Was never such thing until this hour,

      Low to his heart he said; "the flower

      Of sleep brings wakening to me,

      And of oblivion memory.

      Was never this thing to me, he said,

      Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!

      And again to his own heart very low:

      "O child! I love, for I love and know;

      "But you, who love nor know at all

      The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall,

      Where some rise early, few sit long:

      In how differing accents hear the throng

      His great Pentecostal tongue;

      "Who know not love from amity,

      Nor my reported self from me;

      A fair fit gift is this, meseems,

      You give this withering flower of dreams.

      "O frankly fickle, and fickly true,

      Do you know what the days will do to you?

      To your Love and you what the days will do,

      O frankly fickle, and fickly true?

      "You have loved me, Fair, three lives or days:

      'Twill pass with the passing of my face.

      But where I go, your face goes too,

      To watch lest I play false to you.

      "I am but, my

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