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

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 estrang��d 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 troubling of the land,?And red shall be the breaking of the waters.
Sit fast upon thy stalk, when the blast shall with thee talk, With the mercies of the king for thine awning;?And the just understand that thine hour is at hand,?Thine hour at hand with power in the dawning.?When the nations lie in blood, and their kings a broken brood, Look up, O most sorrowful of daughters!?Lift up thy head and hark what sounds are