astrously failed, and he who can redeem that failure for us will
indeed be a benefactor to his race. Religion should lead us not merely
to inquire in God's holy place, but to behold the beauty of the Lord;
and to behold it in all places of the earth until they become holy
places for us. Christ, the Man of Sorrows, has taught the world that
wild joy of which Mr. Chesterton speaks such exciting things. It remains
for Thompson to remind us that he whose visage was more marred than any
man yet holds that secret of surpassing beauty after which the poets'
hearts are seeking so wistfully.

Besides all this, we shall find here something which has not as yet been
hinted at in our long quest. The sound of the age-long battle dies away.
Here is a man who does not fight for any flag, but simply tells us the
mysterious story of his own soul and ours. It is a quiet and a fitting
close for our long tale of excursions and alarums. But into the quiet
ending there enters a very wonderful and exciting new element. We have
been watching successive men following after the ideal, which, like some
receding star, travelled before its pilgrims through the night. Here the
ideal is no longer passive, a thing to be pursued. It halts for its
pilgrims--"the star which chose to stoop and stay for us." Nay, more, it
turns upon them and pursues them. The ideal is alive and aware--a real
and living force among the great forces of the universe. It is out after
men, and in this great poem we are to watch it hunting a soul down. The
whole process of idealism is now suddenly reversed, and the would-be
captors of celestial beauty are become its captives.

As has been already stated, we must be in sympathetic understanding with
the pagan heart in order to be of any account as advocates of idealism.
No reader of Thompson's poetry can doubt for a moment his fitness here.
From the days of Pindar there has been a brilliant succession of singers
and worshippers of the sun, culminating in the matchless song of
Shelley. In Francis Thompson's poems of the sun, the succession is taken
up again in a fashion which is not unworthy of the splendours of
paganism at its very highest.

"And the sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven,
Before his way
Went forth the trumpet of the March
Before his way, before his way,
Dances the pennon of the May!
O Earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long
Lifting in patient pine and ivy