Francis Thompson, The Kingdom of God

Francis Thompson, The Kingdom of God

O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry--
clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson lived in late 19th century England. He was educated at Oxford but eventually dropped out because of the opium addiction he struggled with his whole life. He was poet, an addict, and mostly desitute in London. He was in and out of homelessness, living for a while with a couple who supported his poetry, living in monastaries while he detoxed. He is most well known for his religious poetry, particularly Hound of Heaven which describes a poet fleeing from God while God persists in pursuit of him. At the end of his life Thompson was sick, in poverty and homeless. He would write poetry on newspaper and send them to back to the local paper. They published these anonymous poems and wrote, "There is one among us greater than Milton. Please show yourself". but he never did. He lived destitute and in poverty and died that way on the bank of the River Thames. This poem was found with his things written on newspaper when he died. In this, the last line: " And lo, Christ walking on the water, Not of Genesareth, but Thames!".

Genesareth is the river thought to be referenced in Luke 5 where Jesus walks on water. Thompson says as he lay dying, God was not flat on a page in story or in some tradition. But in Thompson's eleventh hour on the bank of Thames the Lord walking toward him.