[1] From _The Hope of the World_ by William Watson. Copyright, 1897,
by John Lane Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
[2] From _The Hope of the World_ by William Watson. Copyright, 1897,
by John Lane Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
_Francis Thompson_
Born in 1859 at Preston, Francis Thompson was educated at Owen's
College, Manchester. Later he tried all manner of strange ways of
earning a living. He was, at various times, assistant in a boot-shop,
medical student, collector for a book seller and homeless vagabond;
there was a period in his life when he sold matches on the streets of
London. He was discovered in terrible poverty (having given up
everything except poetry and opium) by the editor of a magazine to
which he had sent some verses the year before. Almost immediately
thereafter he became famous. His exalted mysticism is seen at its
purest in "A Fallen Yew" and "The Hound of Heaven." Coventry Patmore,
the distinguished poet of an earlier period, says of the latter poem,
which is unfortunately too long to quote, "It is one of the very few
_great_ odes of which our language can boast."
Thompson died, after a fragile and spasmodic life, in St. John's Wood
in November, 1907.