A SIGH OF THE SEA. "Why is it?" once the Ocean asked, "Why is it, that, unruffled still, While mine, with racking wind and tide, "Her richest gems, by night displayed, But safety for my treasures none, "The hands that from her diadem Are bold my depths to penetrate "A thousand ships with cruel keel 60 Why is it thus, that rest to her And toil to me is givenThat she the blessing ever meets, And I, the curse of Heaven ? "' The Ether heard. Through all her depths A deeper azure spread, And to the murmuring Ocean thus, With radiant smile, she said: FRANCIS THOMPSON It is very easy to cavil at, and still easier to ridicule, the poems of Mr. Francis Thompson. I am well aware of all that may be said, and not unjustly, in their disfavour. I shall in due time unpack my own little budget of grievances, and reckon up some of the bad marks I have immargined (as Mr. Thompson would say) in reading and re-reading his three books of verse. But the first thing to be done, and by far the most important, is to recognise and declare that we are here face to face with a poet of the first order—a man of imagination all compact, a seer and singer of rare genius. In the sheer essentials of poetry Mr. Thompson is rich to superfluity. He appeals mainly to the reader who loves poetry for its own sake, not for its possible but inessential accompaniments of sentiment, contemplation or passion, psychology, romance or drama. Mr. Thompson, as we shall see, is something of a psychologist and a good deal of a metaphysician. There are noble passages of thought and cosmic vision in his work. But it is not primarily for thought, ethical, metaphysical, or mystical, that one turns to Mr. Thompson. It is for the inexhaustible opulence, the superb daring, of his imagery, and for the pomp and majesty (mannered though it may often be) of his diction. If ever there was a born poet, a poet in spite of himself, who lisped in metaphors for the metaphors came, this surely is he. His worst faults proceed from excess, not from defect, of poetic endowment. To many poets rhythm is a snare, to some, imagery; Mr. Thompson belongs to the latter, and to my thinking nobler, company. He pours forth image after image in riotous, bewildering profusion; most of them beautiful, but some incongruous, contorted, and (in a literary sense) vicious. Moderation is not included among his gifts; but, for my part, I greatly prefer poems which superabound in imagery to poems which are all rhythm. A happy image is a thing of inherent beauty, even if it lack that relation to a larger whole which should be its beauty's crown of beauty. Mr. Thompson never sacrifices coherence to a mere gallop of accents, or sets a cockboat of meaning asway on a billowy ocean of words. Every period or strophe of his work is a poem in itself, an image, or a many-petalled flower of imagery. It is not yet ten years since he published his first book, Poems; and the Sister Songs, which form the matter of his second book, were written, he tells us, before the earlier collection appeared. These two books, then, may be grouped together; as the dates of individual poems are not given, we can scarcely hope to trace any development of style. Sister Songs, indeed, strike me as more superbly sustained, more evenly fraught with essential poetry, than the analogous sequence in the earlier volume, entitled Love in Dian's Lap; but while the resemblance is unmistakable, the difference may be fanciful. On the other hand, Mr. Thompson's third book, New Poems, shows a marked increase of power. There is more thought in it, less rhapsody; while the pressure of imagination to the square inch is, if possible, even higher than in the earlier volumes. It is easy to attribute some of Mr. Thompson's peculiarities of style to the influence of Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, and other spiritual singers of the seven |