-tree
Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy,
Behold how all things are made true!
Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you
Exceeding glad and strong!"

The great song takes us back to the days of Mithra and the _sol
invictus_ of Aurelian. That outburst of sunshine in the evening of the
Roman Empire, rekindling the fires of Apollo's ancient altars for men
who loved the sunshine and felt the wonder of it, is repeated with
almost added glory in Thompson's marvellous poems.

Yet for Francis Thompson all this glory of the sun is but a symbol. The
world where his spirit dwells is beyond the sun, and in nature it
displays itself to man but brokenly. In the bloody fires of sunset, in
the exquisite white artistry of the snow-flake, this supernatural
world is but showing us a few of its miracles, by which the miracles of
Christian faith are daily and hourly matched for sheer wonder and
beauty. The idealist claims as his inheritance all those things in which
the pagan finds his gods, and views them as the revelations of the
Master Spirit.

It is difficult to write about Thompson's poetry without writing mainly
about himself. In _The Hound of Heaven_, as in much else that he has
written, there is abundance of his own experience, and indeed his poems
often remind us of the sorrows of Teufelsdroeckh. That, however, is not
the purpose of this lecture; and, beyond a few notes of a general kind,
we shall leave him to reveal himself. Except for Mr. Meynell's
illuminative and all too short introduction to his volume of _Thompson's
Selected Poems_, there are as yet only scattered articles in magazines
to tell his strange and most pathetic story. His writings are few,
comprising three short books of poetry, his prose _Essay on Shelley_,
and a _Life of St. Ignatius_, which is full of interest and almost
overloaded with information, but which may be discounted from the list
of his permanent contributions to literature or to thought. Yet that
small output is enough to establish him among the supreme poets of our
land.

Apart from its poetic power and spiritual vision, his was an acute and
vivid mind. On things political and social he could express himself in
little casual flashes whose shrewd and trenchant incisiveness challenge
comparison with Mr. Chesterton's own asides. His acquaintance with
science seems to have been extensive, and at times he surprises us with
allusions and metaphors of an unusually techn