Francis Thompson

"Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven."

"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."

"The angels keep their ancient places;— Turn but a stone, and start a wing! ‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing."

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

"Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. 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 soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space; it is To see a world in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour; it is to know not as yet that you are under sentence of life, nor petition that it be commuted into death."

"O GAIN that lurk’st ungainèd in all gain! O love we just fall short of in all love! O height that in all heights art still above! O beauty that dost leave all beauty pain! Thou unpossessed that mak’st possession vain,"

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The fairest things have fleetest end, Their scent survives their close: But the roses scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose."