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Francis Thompson: A boy and his dog.

PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING HE WROTE had the authentic air of the immortals. You can hardly open a page of his three volumes without finding something ravishing, something poignant. He is so poignant that only his wings lift one at times above unbearable sorrow. To read “To Monica Thought Dying,” is to listed to someone sobbing in the night, and to be inconsolable. The “Sister Songs,” which, it is an open secret, were written to the two daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Wilfred Meynell, fulfilled the promise of the Poems. Our day has not seen such a rush and passion of poetry. The “Sister Songs,” which only Shelley else could have written, so airily beautiful, so full of wealth of exquisite imagery, has its poignant moments. Midway of the flowers and the sun and the song of the lark comes the one explicit reference to the days when London was as stony a stepmother to him as ever she was to De Quincey. The episode it recalls is almost De Quincey’s own.

+++Once, bright Sylviola, in days not far,
Once in that nightmare time which still doth haunt
My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant;
++++++Forlorn and faint and stark,
I had endured through watches of the dark
+++The abashless inquisition of each star,
Yea, was the outcast mark
++++++Of all those heavenly passers’ scrutiny:
++++++Stood bound and helplessly
For Time to shoot his barbèd minutes at me.
Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour
++++++In Night’s slow-wheelèd car;
Until the tardy Dawn dragged me at length
From under those dread wheels; and bled of strength,
++++++I waited the inevitable last.
++++++Then there came past
A child; like thee a Spring-flower; but a flower
Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,
And through the City streets blown withering.
She passed,—O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!
And of her own scant pittance did she give
++++++That I might eat and live.
Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.

But apart from this one poignant passage, the poem is all sweetness and beauty.

++++++And I remembered not
+++The subtle sanctities which dart
From childish lips’ unvalued precious brush,
Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push
+++Between the loosening fibres of the heart.

And, again, there is the exquisite passage in which he describes the first coming of the child, and its corollary:—

+++++++++And now?
The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet!
++++++Beneath my casual feet.
++++++With rainfall as the lea
++++++The day is drenched with thee:
+++In little exquisite surprises
Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises
++++++From sudden places
++++++Under the common traces
Of my most lethargied and customed paces.

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