Francis Thompson
Francis Thompson
Francis Thompsonwas an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but could only find menial work and became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book Poems in 1893. Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 December 1859
believe child elves fairy godmother man mice pumpkins reach spirit streaming turn waters whisper
Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul.
fools happiness shadow
Happiness is the shadow of things past, Wich fools still take for that which is to be!
begins born ends paid perish
Nothing begins and nothing ends That is not paid with moan; For we are born in other's pain, And perish in our own
chambers divine dreams english-poet fed grow house walk wings
The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air, That Time's hoary wings grow young therein, And they who walk there are most fair.
stars flower power
All things by immortal power. Near of far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.
summer wine flames
Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there: Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame. With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank, And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine When the eastern conduits ran with wine.
jesus heaven littles
Little Jesus, was Thou shy Once, and just so small as I? And what did it feel like to be Out of Heaven, and just like me?
pain ends born
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish in our own.
everlasting agnosticism
Agnosticism is the everlasting perhaps.
heart bird wounded
Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.
dog men judging
A dog, I will maintain, is a very tolerable judge of beauty, as appears from the fact that any liberally educated dog does, in a general way, prefer a woman to a man.
english-poet
For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own.