The Kingdom of God
In no Strange Land_' O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air-- That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there? Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars!-- The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places;-- Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing. But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo,
Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!
Francis Thompson
Other author posts
The Poppy
'To Monica'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
To Olivia
I fear to love thee, Sweet, because Love's the ambassador of loss; White flake of childhood, clinging so To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow At tenderest touch will shrink and go Love me not, delightful child
Daisy
Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill— O breath of the distant surf — The hills look over on the South, And southward dreams the sea; And with the sea-breeze hand ...
Contemplation
This morning saw I, fled the shower, The earth reclining in a lull of power: The heavens, pursuing not their path, Lay stretched out naked after bath,
