Francis Thompson

Biographical details

Francis Joseph Thompson (1859–1907), a British poet and Catholic mystic, is renowned for his profound exploration of spirituality, divine pursuit, and the human condition. His body of work, distinguished by vivid imagery and theological depth, includes the celebrated poem The Hound of Heaven, which captures the unyielding search for God’s love.

Thompson’s writings, spanning poetry to essays on figures like Shelley and St. Ignatius, reflect his battles with poverty, opium addiction, and poor health, yet also highlight his resilience and faith. His legacy persists through the lasting impact of his verse, which inspired figures such as J.R.R. Tolkien and continues to illuminate themes of transcendence and existential longing.

Quotes by Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson, Selected Poems of Francis Thompson

“ In all I work, my hand includeth thine; Thou rushest down in every stream Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge; Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream; Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge; As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, Moves all the labouring surges of the world. Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree. This poor song that sings of thee, This fragile song, is but a curled Shell outgathered from thy sea, And murmurous still of its nativity. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, New Poems

“ For who can work, unwitting his work’s worth?
Better, meseems, to know the work for naught,
Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth,
And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought.
And visitations, that do often use,
Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense
Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse,
And what dark ’gan, dark ended, in me did commence.
I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills,
And my flesh rotting on my fate’s dull stake;
And how self-scornèd they the bounty fills
Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, Shelley: An Essay

“ This child-like quality assimilated him to the child-like peoples among whom mythologies have their rise. Those Nature myths which, according to many, are the basis of all mythology, are likewise the very basis of Shelley’s poetry. The lark that is the gossip of heaven, the winds that pluck the grey from the beards of the billows, the clouds that are snorted from the sea’s broad nostril, all the elemental spirits of Nature, take from his verse perpetual incarnation and reincarnation, pass in a thousand glorious transmigrations through the radiant forms of his imagery. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, Sister Songs: An Offering to Two Sisters

“ If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright?
God’s Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin;
Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well,
Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell.
The heavens decree
All power fulfil itself as soul in thee.
For supreme Spirit subject was to clay,
And Law from its own servants learned a law,
And Light besought a lamp unto its way,
And Awe was reined in awe,
At one small house of Nazareth;
p. 41And Golgotha
Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath,
And Life do homage for its crown to death.
So is all power, as soul in thee increased! ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven

“ And the timid and self-seeking soul strives to hide itself under the stars, under the clouds of heaven, under human love, under the distractions of work and pleasure and study, offers itself as a wistful servitor to child and man and nature, if they will but afford it a refuge from the persistent and gentle accents of pursuivant Love. But all things are in league with God, Who made and rules them. They cannot conspire against Him. They betray the refugee. He turns in abject surrender, and is astonished to find the rest and happiness that he quested for so wildly. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, Poems

“ I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must—
Designer infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
p. 53My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be? ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, Selected Poems of Francis Thompson

“ I think thy girlhood's watchers must Have took thy folded songs on trust, And felt them, as one feels the stir Of still lightnings in the hair, When conscious hush expects the cloud To speak the golden secret loud Which tacit air is privy to; Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, Ere thy poet-mouth was able For its first young starry babble. Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace? Yea, in this silent interspace, God sets His poems in thy face!
The loom which mortal verse affords, Out of weak and mortal words, Wovest thou thy singing-weed in, To a rune of thy far Eden. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, New Poems

“ Exult, for that thou dar’st not grieve;
Plough thou the rock until it bear;
Know, for thou else couldst not believe;
Lose, that the lost thou may’st receive;
Die, for none other way canst live.
When earth and heaven lay down their veil,
And that apocalypse turns thee pale;
When thy seeing blindeth thee
To what thy fellow-mortals see;
When their sight to thee is sightless;
Their living, death; their light, most lightless;
Search no more—
Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’
XXI
Where is the land of Luthany,
And where the region Elenore? ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, Selected Poems of Francis Thompson

“ Our mournful moods lay me away, And prank our thoughts in holiday, For syllabling to Sylvia; When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear with us this burthen For singing to Sylvia!
POET AND ANCHORITE
Love and love's beauty only hold their revels In life's familiar, penetrable levels: What of its ocean-floor? I dwell there evermore. From almost earliest youth I raised the lids o' the truth, And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight; Ever I knew me Beauty's eremite, In antre of this lowly body set, Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, Shelley: An Essay

“ Here Shelley forgets for a while all that ever makes his verse turbid; forgets that he is anything but a poet, forgets sometimes that he is anything but a child; lies back in his skiff, and looks at the clouds. He plays truant from earth, slips through the wicket of fancy into heaven’s meadow, and goes gathering stars. Here we have that absolute virgin-gold of song which is the scarcest among human products, and for which we can go to but three poets—Coleridge, Shelley, Chopin, {8} and perhaps we should add Keats. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Francis Thompson, Sister Songs: An Offering to Two Sisters

“ He knows not if a leaf shall grow,
Where he sows he doth not reap,
He reapeth where he did not sow;
He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep
To meet him on his waking way.
Vision will mate him not by law and vow:
p. 43Disguised in life’s most hodden-grey,
By the most beaten road of everyday
She waits him, unsuspected and unknown.
The hardest pang whereon
He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob’s stone.
In the most iron crag his foot can tread
A Dream may strew her bed,
And suddenly his limbs entwine,
And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might through brine. ”

Francis Thompson

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