The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century | Page 5

is rather a
matter of joy that Thompson's religious poetry can make the hearts of
young men burn within them. Young men are right in hating
conventional, empty phrases, words that have lost all hitting power,
hollow forms and bloodless ceremonies. Thompson's lips were touched
with a live coal from the altar.
Francis Thompson walked with God. Instead of seeking God, as so
many high-minded folk have done in vain, Thompson had the real and
overpowering sensation that God was seeking him. The Hound of
Heaven was everlastingly after him, pursuing him with the certainty of
capture. In trying to escape, he found torment; in surrender, the peace
that passes all understanding. That extraordinary poem, which
thrillingly describes the eager, searching love of God, like a father
looking for a lost child and determined to find him, might be taken as a
modern version of the one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm, perhaps the
most marvellous of all religious masterpieces.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with
all my ways.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine
hand upon me. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee

from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I
make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
The highest spiritual poetry is not that which portrays soul-hunger, the
bitterness of the weary search for God; it is that which reveals an
intense consciousness of the all-enveloping Divine Presence. Children
do not seek the love of their parents; they can not escape its searching,
eager, protecting power. We know how Dr. Johnson was affected by
the lines
Quaerens me sedisti lassus
Redemisti crucem passus
Tantus labor
non sit passus.
Francis Thompson's long walks by day and by night had magnificent
company. In the country, in the streets of London, he was attended by
seraphim and cherubim. The heavenly visions were more real to him
than London Bridge. Just as when we travel far from those we love, we
are brightly aware of their presence, and know that their affection is a
greater reality than the scenery from the train window, so Thompson
would have it that the angels were all about us. They do not live in
some distant Paradise, the only gate to which is death--they are here
now, and their element is the familiar atmosphere of earth.
Shortly after he died, there was found among
His papers a bit of manuscript verse, called "In No Strange Land."
Whether it was a first draft which he meant to revise, or whether he
intended it for publication, we cannot tell; but despite the roughnesses
of rhythm--which take us back to some of Donne's shaggy and splendid
verse--the thought is complete. It is one of the great poems of the
twentieth century, and expresses the essence of Thompson's religion.
"IN NO STRANGE LAND"
O world invisible, we view thee:
O world intangible, we touch thee:


O world unknowable, we know thee:
Inapprehensible, we clutch
thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air,

That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee
there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed
conceiving soars:
The drift of pinions, would we harken,
Beats at
our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone, and start a
wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces
That miss the
many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry; and upon thy so sore
loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven
and Charing Cross.
Yea, 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!
Thompson planned a series of Ecclesiastical Ballads, of which he
completed only two--Lilium Regis_ and The Veteran of
Heaven_.
These were found among his papers, and were published in the
January-April 1910 number of the Dublin Review. Both are great
poems; but Lilium Regis is made doubly impressive by the present war.
With the clairvoyance of approaching death, Thompson foresaw the
world-struggle, the temporary eclipse of the Christian Church, and its
ultimate triumph. The Lily of the King is Christ's Holy Church. I do not
see how any one can read this poem without a thrill.
LILIUM REGIS
O Lily of the King! low lies thy silver wing,
And long has been the

hour of thine unqueening;
And thy scent of Paradise on the
night-wind spills its sighs, Nor any take the secrets of its meaning.
O
Lily of the King! I speak a heavy thing,
O patience, most sorrowful of
daughters!
Lo, the hour is at hand for the