Francis Thompson Quotes

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.
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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.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish read more

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish in our own.

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

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain read more

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain And perish in our own.

There is no expeditious road
To pack and label men for God,
And save them by the read more

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.

She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings read more

She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.

But lilies, stolen from grassy mold,
No more curled state unfold,
Translated to a vase of gold;
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But lilies, stolen from grassy mold,
No more curled state unfold,
Translated to a vase of gold;
In burning throne though they keep still
Serenities unthawed and chill.

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.

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like read more

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.