Francis Thompson
Francis Thompson
Francis Thompsonwas an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but could only find menial work and became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book Poems in 1893. Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 December 1859
devil howl know-how
The devil doesn't know how to sing, only how to howl.
areas benefit lift quicker recover regions rest running state thrive
The storm-damaged areas will recover much quicker if the regions that are already up and running do better and benefit from revitalization, ... It's more important than ever before that the rest of the state -- Monroe, Shreveport, Alexandria and the agriculture areas -- can thrive so as to lift up the rest of the state.
begins born ends paid perish
Nothing begins and nothing ends That is not paid with moan; For we are born in other's pain, And perish in our own
english-poet
For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own.
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
believe child elves fairy godmother man mice pumpkins reach spirit streaming turn waters whisper
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.
home spring
Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet./ And all the things are made young with young desires.
fools happiness shadow
Happiness is the shadow of things past, Wich fools still take for that which is to be!
dog men judging
A dog, I will maintain, is a very tolerable judge of beauty, as appears from the fact that any liberally educated dog does, in a general way, prefer a woman to a man.
heart bird wounded
Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.
everlasting agnosticism
Agnosticism is the everlasting perhaps.
veils ill wells
In all change, well looked into, the germinal good out-veils the apparent ill.
women views world
Oh invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, o world unknowable, we know thee.
nature stars flower
Thou cannot stir a flower Without troubling a star.