Poems

With a Chapter from Francis Thompson, Essays, 1917 by Benjamin Franklin Fisher

Francis Thompson, Benjamin Franklin Fisher

• Publisher: Read & Co. Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781528715607
• eBook ISBN: 9781528789820
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) was an English mystic and poet. Thompson went to medical school when he was 18, but left home at the age of 26 to pursue a life of writing. He was homeless for three years, becoming an opium addict and supporting himself through whatever means available. A married couple read his poetry and took him into their home 1888, and in 1893 he published his first book, "Poems". This fantastic collection of poetry will appeal to all lovers of the form and is not to be missed by those who have read and enjoyed other work by Thompson. The poems include: "Before Her Portrait in Youth", "To a Poet Breaking Silence", "Manus Animam Pinxit", "A Carrier-Song", "Scala Jacobi Portaque Eburnea", "Gilded Gold", "Her Portrait", "Miscellaneous Poems", "To the Dead Cardinal of Westminster", "A Fallen Yew", "Dream-Tryst", "A Corymbus for Autumn", etc. This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with a chapter from Benjamin Franklin Fisher's "Francis Thompson, Essays" (1917).

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

TO THE DEAD
CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER

I will not perturbate

Thy Paradisal state

With praise

Of thy dead days;

To the new-heavened say,—

“Spirit, thou wert fine clay:”

This do,

Thy praise who knew.

Therefore my spirit clings

Heaven’s porter by the wings,

And holds

Its gated golds

Apart, with thee to press

A private business;—

Whence,

Deign me audience.

Anchorite, who didst dwell

With all the world for cell

My soul

Round me doth roll

A sequestration bare.

Too far alike we were,

Too far

Dissimilar.

For its burning fruitage I

Do climb the tree o’ the sky;

Do prize

Some human eyes.

You smelt the Heaven-blossoms,

And all the sweet embosoms

The dear

Uranian year.

Those Eyes my weak gaze shuns,

Which to the suns are Suns.

Did

Not affray your lid.

The carpet was let down

(With golden mouldings strown)

For you

Of the angels’ blue.

But I, ex-Paradised,

The shoulder of your Christ

Find high

To lean thereby.

So flaps my helpless sail,

Bellying with neither gale,

Of Heaven

Nor Orcus even.

Life is a coquetry

Of Death, which wearies me,

Too sure

Of the amour;

A tiring-room where I

Death’s divers garments try,

Till fit

Some fashion sit.

It seemeth me too much

I do rehearse for such

A mean

And single scene.

The sandy glass hence bear—

Antique remembrancer;

My veins

Do spare its pains.

With secret sympathy

My thoughts repeat in me

Infirm

The turn o’ the worm

Beneath my appointed sod:

The grave is in my blood;

I shake

To winds that take

Its gras...

Table of contents

• Biographical Sketch of Francis Thompson
• LOVE IN DIAN’S LAP
• MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
• POEMS ON CHILDREN