Francis Thompson Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

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

Francis Thompson
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.

Francis Thompson
Upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Francis Thompson
Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, And all things are made young with your desires.

Francis Thompson
Baby smiled, mother wailed, Earthward while the sweetling sailed; Mother smiled, baby wailed, When to earth came Viola.

Francis Thompson
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.

Francis Thompson
Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.

Francis Thompson
Starry amorist, starward gone, Thou art — what thou didst gaze upon! Passed through thy golden garden's bars, Thou seest the Gardner of the Stars.

Francis Thompson
The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand.

Francis Thompson
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.

Francis Thompson
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

Francis Thompson
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Francis Thompson
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity.

Francis Thompson
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

Francis Thompson
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

Francis Thompson
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.

Francis Thompson
Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven,
So ready is Heaven to stoop to him.

Francis Thompson
I said to dawn, Be sudden; to eve, Be soon.

Francis Thompson
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro:—
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!

Francis Thompson
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.

Francis Thompson
The hills look over on the South,
And Southward dreams the sea;
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand,
Came innocence and she.

Francis Thompson
Thou canst not stir a flower / Without troubling of a star.

Francis Thompson
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson
The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose.

Francis Thompson
Such is: what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

Francis Thompson
The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.

Francis Thompson
The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

Francis Thompson
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars:
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.

Francis Thompson
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.

Francis Thompson
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Francis Thompson