Francis Thompson

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

Here I make oath--Although the heart that knows its
Hear loath,
And credit less--That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses
Which hiss against his tears,

I    Secret was the garden;    Set i' the pathless awe    Where no star its breath can draw
Life, that is its warden,
Sits behind the fosse of death
Mine eyes saw not,      and I saw

The heart you hold too small and local thing,
Such spacious terms of edifice to bear
And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing,
The mighty Love has been impalaced there;

The after-even
Ah, did I walk,  Indeed, in her or even
For nothing of me or around  But absent She did leaven,
Felt in my body as its soul,  And in my soul its heaven

The wailful sweetness of the violin Floats down the hush-ed waters of the wind,
The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin To long in aching music
Spirit-pined,
In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until The wounded soul ooze...

I do not need the skies' Pomp, when I would be wise; For pleasaunce nor to use Heaven's champaign when I muse
One grass-blade in its veins Wisdom's whole flood contains; Thereon my foundering mind Odyssean fate can find
O little blade, n...

What is the song the stars sing
(And a million songs are as song of one) This is the song the stars sing: (Sweeter song's none) One to set, and many to sing, (And a million songs are as song of one) One to stand, and many to cling, The many t...

Too wearily had we and
Been left to look and left to long,
Yea, song and we to long and look,
Since thine acquainted feet

The hunchèd camels of the
Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon
The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing,
Star gathering

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...

A Phantasy
God took a fit of Paradise-wind,  A slip of coerule weather,
A thought as simple as Himself,  And ravelled them together
Unto His eyes He held it there,

Ah, drops of gold in whitening
Burning, we know your lovely name -Daisies, that little children pull
Like all weak things, over the
Ye do not know your power for wrong,

Phoebus, who taught me art divine,
Here tried his hand where I did mine;
And his white fingers in this
Set my Fair's sigh-suggesting grace

The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven,
Throbbing with unheard melody,
Shook Lyra all its star-cloud seven
When dusk shrank cold, and light trod shy,

Mortals, that behold a Woman,  Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun;
Who am I the heavens assume
an  All am I, and I am one
Multitudinous ascend I,  Dreadful as a battle arrayed,