human
Can you write me a poem about francis thompson in the style of Alice Brown?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem about francis thompson in the style of Alice Brown:
  When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities  _Page 52_]
The Rev. Mark J. McNeal, S. J., who was one of the successors of
"'Why did you choose Thompson?'
"'Well, he is quite a famous poet.'
"'What kind of poet is he?'
"'We might call him a mystic.'
"'Well, now, what do you consider his greatest production?'
"'Why, I should say "The Hound of Heaven."
"'Well, what on earth does Thompson mean by that Hound?'
"'Well, he means the pursuit of God.'
"'Oh, I see, Thompson is pursuing God, is he?'
"'Oh, no.  He is rather running away from God.'
"'Well, then, God is pursuing Thompson, is that it?'
"'No.  It is a moral pursuit.'
"'A moral pursuit!  What's that?  What is God after?'
"'He is after Thompson's love.'
artificially stimulated applause of a Catholic coterie, whose
enthusiasm could hardly be shared by readers with no particular
It must be owned indeed that Francis Thompson was a puzzle to his
The poetry of Francis Thompson appeared in three small volumes:
sequence, there was no longer any comparison possible except the
greatest pages of 'Sister Songs' sounding in one's ears, one is
sometimes tempted to think the 'Hound of Heaven' Mr. Thompson's
We do not associate Mr. Arnold Bennett with any of the ideas in
'The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.'
coldest.  If the general reading-public of the nineties suspected
I knew how the clouds arise,
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings  _Page 51_]
temporary and blessed oblivion by a drug whenever the means for
magazine, received the following letter: "_Feb. 23rd, '87_--Dear
"Kindly address your rejection to the Charing Cross Post Office."
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
..... smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly   _Page 55_]
high-strung spirit wandering in pain, hunger and exile amid the
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer  _Page 55_]
During the last year of his life, when consumption had almost
poet-novelist's message: "A true poet, one of the small band."
respected critics of the time, and the conviction of its justness
The hid battlements of Eternity:
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again  _Page 56_]
understood of all.  A soul-shaking thought, prevalent throughout
"The heavens," says Hazlitt, "have gone farther off and become
Christian conception of the Godhead, as expressed by St. Thomas
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields
Be dunged with rotten death?  _Page 57_]
attributes of love.  The more prodigal God is discovered to be in
Manchester, to qualify as a doctor.
But his gift as prescriber and healer lay elsewhere than in the
Titanic glooms of chasmed fears
Across the margent of the world I fled
I said to dawn: Be sudden
I knew how the clouds arise
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
Yea, faileth now even dream
The hid battlements of Eternity
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside
Thunder-driven, They clanged His chariot
In her wind-walled palace
I shook the pillaring hours
And now my heart is as a broken fount
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind]
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes, I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
I pleaded, out law-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside);
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to dawn: Be sudden; to eve: Be soon--
With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover!
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:--
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."
Thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet]
I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
_They_ at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
Come then, ye other children,
Nature's--share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
So it was done;
_I_ in their delicate fellowship was one--
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
_I_ knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise,
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine--
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound _I_ speak--
_Their_ sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake by drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
And past those noisèd Feet
A Voice comes yet more fleet--
"Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me]
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth, with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Designer infinite!--
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity:
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again;
But not ere Him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver]
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come."
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."