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 rumour 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-splendoured 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 Heaven by the hems;

And lo, Christ walking on the water

Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

- Francis Thompson (1859 - 1907)

Francis Thompson was an English poet. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book Poems in 1893. Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907. More of his poems can be found at Poets Corner.