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Quotes by Francis Thompson
Conquers Love. Since you have waned from us, Fairest of women! I am a darkened cage Songs cannot hymn in. My songs have followed you, Like birds the summer; Ah! bring them back to me, Swiftly, dear comer! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!— filed under Absence
World. I have no angels left Now, Sweet, to pray to: Where you have made your shrine They are away to. They have struck Heaven's tent, And gone to cover you: Whereso you keep your state Heaven is pitched over you.— filed under Angels
So for thy spirit did devise Its Maker seemly garniture, Of its own essence parcel pure,- From grave simplicities a dress, And reticent demureness, And love encinctured with reserve; Which the woven vesture would subserve. For outward robes in their ostents Should show the soul's habiliments. Therefore I say, -Thou'rt fair even so, But better Fair I use to know.— filed under Apparitions
Baby smiled, mother wailed, Earthward while the sweetling sailed; Mother smiled, baby wailed, When to earth came Viola.— filed under Ballads
Smile, sweet baby, smile, For you will have weeping-while; Native in Heaven is your smile,- But your weeping, Viola?— filed under Ballads
How should I gauge what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the casement for the sky? And as 'tis check they prove its presence by, I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind.— filed under Beauty
Whose body other ladies well might bear As soul,-yea, which it profanation were For all but you to take as fleshly woof, Being spirit truest proof.— filed under Beauty
Whose form is as a grove Hushed with the cooing of an unseen dove.— filed under Beauty
The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air, That Time's hoar wings grow young therein, And they who walk there are most fair.— filed under Drinking
I was heavy with the even, When she lit her glimmering tapers Round the day's dead sanctities. I laughed in the morning's eyes.— filed under Evening
The Father of Heaven. Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes, Wood-browned pools of Paradise- Young Jesus, for the eyes, For the eyes of Viola. Angels. Tint, Prince Jesus, a Duskèd eye for Viola!— filed under Eyes
For my soul prays, Sweet, Still to your face in Heaven, Heaven in your face, Sweet.— filed under Face
But lilies, stolen from grassy mold, No more curlèd state unfold, Translated to a vase of gold; In burning throne though they keep still Serenities unthawed and chill.— filed under Flowers-Lily
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.— filed under Flowers-Poppy
The fairest things have fleetest end : Their scent survives their close, But the rose's scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose!— filed under Flowers-Rose
The violet would thy dusk hair deck With graces like thine own unsought. Ah! but such place would daze and wreck Its simple, lowly rustic thought. For so advanced, dear, to thee, It would unlearn humility!— filed under Flowers-Violet
The Father of Heaven. Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Twirl your wheel with silver din; Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Spin a tress for Viola.— filed under Hair
Like to a wind-blown sapling grow I from The cliff, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul,- Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome By all its clouds incumbent; O be true To your soul, dearest, as my life to you! For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through, Dry down and perish to the foodless root.— filed under Love
The Summer looks out from her brazen tower, Through the flashing bars of July.— filed under Months-July
The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait. God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothèd keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies.— filed under Motherhood
But from your mind's chilled sky It needs must drop, and lie with stiffened wings Among your soul's forlornest things; A speck upon your memory, alack! A dead fly in a dusty window-crack.— filed under Obscurity
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain, And perish in our own.— filed under Pain
There is no expeditious road To pack and label men for God, And save them by the barrel-load. Some may perchance, with strange surprise, Have blundered into Paradise.— filed under Paradise
She went her unremembering way, She went and left in me The pang of all the partings gone, And partings yet to be.— filed under Parting
Ingeborg's Lament. How are the veins of thee, Autumn, laden? Umbered juices, And pulpèd oozes Pappy out of the cherry-bruises, Froth the veins of thee, wild, wild maiden: With hair that musters In globèd clusters, In tumbling clusters, like swarthy grapes, Round thy brow and thine ears o'ershaden; With the burning darkness of eyes like pansies, Like velvet pansies Where through escapes The splendid might of thy conflagrate fancies; With robe gold-tawny not hiding the shapes Of the feet whereunto it falleth down, Thy naked feet unsandalled; With robe gold-tawny that does not veil Feet where the red Is meshed in the brown, Like a rubied sun in a Venice-sail.— filed under Sows
Swift, swift, and bring with you Song's Indian summer!— filed under Sorrow
The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this ME, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas. MADAME DE STAËL Germany. Pt. III. Ch. II. Her soul from earth to Heaven lies, Like the ladder of the vision, Whereon go To and fro, In ascension and demission, Star-flecked feet of Paradise.— filed under Sorrow
Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts. Attributed to TALLEYRAND by BARRÈRE in Memoirs. Doubtless there are men of great parts that are guilty of downright bashfulness, that by a strange hesitation and reluctance to speak murder the finest and most elegant thoughts and render the most lively conceptions flat and heavy. The Tatler. No. 252. Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold! So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognate tongue. Or if that language yet with us abode Which Adam in the garden talked with God! But our untempered speech descends-poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers: Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorise, a spirit! A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they Move with light ease in speech of working-day; And women we do use to praise even so. S.— filed under Spirits
The sopped sun--toper as ever drank hard- Stares foolish, hazed, Rubicund, dazed, Totty with thine October tankard.— filed under Sunrise
See how there The cowlèd night Kneels on the Eastern sanctuary-stair.— filed under Sunrise
She wears that body but as one indues A robe, half careless, for it is the use.— filed under Woman
Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.— filed under Words
Anchorite, who didst dwell With all the world for cell!— filed under Work
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist.— filed under Worship