To Francis Thompson the presence of the Divine in all things is the one
overwhelming fact. As a result of this sense, the consciousness that
everything is closely related, closely linked together, is ever present
in his poetry. It is the vision of this truth, he believes, which will
be the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth.
When to the new eyes of thee
All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.
_The Mistress of Vision._
His "Divine intoxication," his certainty of the presence of God, is the
more remarkable when it is realised through what depths of want and
degradation and suffering Thompson passed, and what his life was for
many years. His father, a north-country doctor, wished him to follow the
profession of medicine, but the son could not bear it, and so he ran
away from home with--for sole wealth--a Blake in one pocket and an
Aeschylus in the other. In his struggle for life in London, fragile in
body and sensitive in soul, he sank lower and lower, from selling boots
to errand-boy, and finally for five years living as a vagabond without
home or shelter, picking up a few pence by day, selling matches or
fetching cabs, and sleeping under the archways of Covent Garden Market
at night.
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