A POETIC LIFE

Francis Thompson

In the winter of 1837, Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, the editor of a minor literary magazine called ‘Merry England’received a grubby parcel containing an essay and some poems,with an accompanying letter.The enclosed letter was from Francis Thompson apologising for the sorry state of the manuscript “due to the strange circumstances and places under which it was written”. He signed off “Yours with little hope”. Mr Meynell put the papers in a pigeon hole where they were to remain for the next three months.
Thompson was born in 1859 to a well off Catholic family and was sent to Ushaw College to train for the priesthood.The headmaster wrote to his parents and advised them to place Francis on another career path,pointing out he could succeed at anything if he could “shake off a natural indolence “.He then half-heartedly studied medicine and failed the final exam three times. Along the way he became addicted to opium.
Meynell eventually read the manuscript and decided to publish one of the poems. On reading his published work Thompson presented himself at the offices of the Merry England journal,arriving in a sad and dishevelled state after a long period of drug addiction. Meynell and his wife virtually adopted the hapless poet,sending him to a clinic to dry out and later to a monastery to convalesce.
During his four years of withdrawal Thompson wrote his most widely read poem The Hound of Heaven. Sadly in 1898 he became addicted to laudanum and he battled with deep depression until the end of his life in 1907.

IN NO STRANGE LAND

The kingdom of God is within you

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 rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,

And our benumbed conceiving soars!--

The drift of pinions, would we hearken,

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-splendored 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 to Heaven by the hems;

And lo, Christ walking on the water,

Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson