Francis Thompson

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of read more

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.

I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
read more

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.

So for thy spirit did devise
Its Maker seemly garniture,
Of its own essence parcel pure.--
read more

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.

The Summer looks out from her brazen tower,
Through the flashing bars of July.

The Summer looks out from her brazen tower,
Through the flashing bars of July.

The immortal could we cease to contemplate,
The mortal part suggests its every trait.
God laid His read more

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 smoothed keys,
And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies.