Poetry Codex

Victorian

Francis Thompson

1859–1907

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) was an English poet who spent years destitute and addicted to opium on the streets of London before his talent was discovered and he found refuge among Catholic friends.

His best-known poem, The Hound of Heaven, describes a soul fleeing and finally yielding to divine pursuit.

Major Works (1)

  1. Sister Songs — Poem sequence, 1895

Poems (131)

  1. Dedication: To Wilfrid and Alice Meynell
  2. Before Her Portrait in Youth
  3. To a Poet Breaking Silence
  4. Manus Animam Pinxit
  5. A Carrier Song
  6. Scala Jacobi Portaque Eburnea
  7. Gilded Gold
  8. Her Portrait
  9. Epilogue (to Love in Dian's Lap)
  10. To the Dead Cardinal of Westminster
  11. A Fallen Yew
  12. Dream-Tryst
  13. A Corymbus for Autumn
  14. The Hound of Heaven
  15. A Judgment in Heaven
  16. Epilogue (to A Judgment in Heaven)
  17. Daisy
  18. The Making of Viola
  19. To My Godchild: Francis M. W. M.
  20. The Poppy: To Monica
  21. To Monica Thought Dying
  22. Love’s Almsman Plaineth His Fare
  23. A Holocaust
  24. Beneath a Photograph
  25. After Her Going
  26. My Lady the Tyranness
  27. Unto This Last
  28. Ultimum
  29. Envoy
  30. The Proem
  31. Part the First
  32. Part the Second
  33. Inscription
  34. To Olivia
  35. An Arab Love-song
  36. Dedication: To Coventry Patmore
  37. The Mistress of Vision
  38. Contemplation
  39. ‘By Reason of Thy Law’
  40. The Dread of Height
  41. Orient Ode
  42. New Year’s Chimes
  43. From the Night of Forebeing
  44. Any Saint
  45. Assumpta Maria
  46. The After Woman
  47. Grace of the Way
  48. Retrospect
  49. A Girl’s Sin: I. In Her Eyes
  50. A Girl’s Sin: II. In His Eyes
  51. Love Declared
  52. The Way of a Maid
  53. Beginning of the End
  54. Penelope
  55. The End of It
  56. Epilogue (to A Narrow Vessel)
  57. Ode to the Setting Sun
  58. A Captain of Song
  59. Against Urania
  60. An Anthem of Earth
  61. ‘Ex Ore Infantium’
  62. A Question
  63. Field-flower
  64. The Cloud’s Swan-Song
  65. To the Sinking Sun
  66. Grief’s Harmonics
  67. Memorat Memoria
  68. July Fugitive
  69. To a Snow-flake
  70. Nocturn
  71. A May Burden
  72. A Dead Astronomer
  73. ‘Chose Vue’
  74. ‘Whereto Art Thou Come?’
  75. Heaven and Hell
  76. To a Child
  77. Hermes
  78. House of Bondage
  79. The Heart
  80. A Sunset
  81. Heard on the Mountain
  82. Desiderium Indesideratum
  83. The Kingdom of God
  84. The Veteran of Heaven
  85. Proemion
  86. Domus Tua
  87. In Her Paths
  88. Lilium Regis
  89. An Echo of Victor Hugo
  90. Buona Notte
  91. The Passion of Mary
  92. Messages
  93. At Lord's
  94. Love and the Child
  95. Daphne
  96. Absence
  97. To W. M.
  98. The Sere of the Leaf
  99. To Stars
  100. Lines for a Drawing of Our Lady of the Night
  101. Orison-Tryst
  102. Song of the Hours
  103. Pastoral
  104. Past Thinking of Solomon
  105. Cheated Elsie
  106. The Fair Inconstant
  107. Threatened Tears
  108. The House of Sorrows
  109. Insentience
  110. Carmen Genesis
  111. Ad Castitatem
  112. Laus Amara Doloris
  113. To the English Martyrs
  114. Ode for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, 1897
  115. The Nineteenth Century
  116. Peace
  117. Cecil Rhodes
  118. Of Nature: Laud and Plaint
  119. Ad Amicam
  120. Love's Varlets
  121. Non Pax — Expectatio
  122. Not Even in Dream
  123. A Hollow Wood
  124. To Daisies
  125. Of My Friend
  126. To Monica: After Nine Years
  127. A Double Need
  128. St Monica
  129. Marriage in Two Moods
  130. All Flesh
  131. The Singer Saith of His Song

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