Selected Poems of Francis Thompson

The floods lift up, lift up their voice, With a many-watered noise! Down the centuries fall those sweet Sobbing waters to our feet, And our laden air still keeps Murmur of a Sai...

In nescientness, in nescientness, Mother, we put these fleshly lendings on Thou yield'st to thy poor children; took thy gift Of life, which must, in all the after days Be craved...

From SISTER SONGS A Child's Kiss 16 Poet and Anchorite 20 The Omen 22 The Mirage 24 The Child-Woman 26 To a Child heard repeating her Mother's Verses 28 A Foretelling of the Chi...

Or higher, holier, saintlier when, as now, All Nature sacerdotal seems, and thou. The calm hour strikes on yon golden gong, In tones of floating and mellow light, A spreading su...

Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth, Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, Than thy shadow sooth...

There regent Melancholy wide controls; There Earth-and Heaven-Love play for aureoles; There Sweetness out of Sadness breaks at fits, Like bubbles on dark water, or as flits A su...

I 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 glea...

Virtue may unlock hell, or even A sin turn in the wards of Heaven, (As ethics of the text-book go), So little men their own deeds know, Or through the intricate _mêlèe_ Guess wh...

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 poi...