Francis Thompson

If you try hard enough, you can always find someone worse off than you are. How about the poet Francis Thompson (1859 – 1907). Sent at age 11 to Ushaw College, a Catholic seminary, he stayed seven years then went to Owens College to become a doctor like his father. Not really wanting a career as a doctor, he went to London to become a writer, but ended up living on the streets selling newspapers and matches. Due to poor health most of his life, he became addicted to opium.

Finally, in 1888 he sent a few poems to the publishers of Merrie England (William and Alice Meynell) who recognized his talent and helped him by encouraging hospitalization. By 1893 they published his first volume of poetry Poems. Even so, he still suffered from bad health and finally contracted tuberculosis. He died in 1907 at the age of 47.

His most famous poem was The Hound of Heaven, a description of a man chased by God and his futile attempt to avoid Him. Most of his poems were religious in nature, but another noted poem called At Lord’s, is about cricket, a game he was quite attached to, although he never played it.

Here is a poem that was written for Passion-Tide and tells of the hope the Cross can bring.

L'ENVOY

O thou who dwellest in the day!

Behold, I pace amidst the gloom:

Darkness is ever round my way

With little space for sunbeam-room.

Yet Christian sadness is divine

Even as thy patient sadness was:

The salt tears in our life's dark wine

Fell in it from the saving cross.

Bitter the bread of our repast;

Yet doth a sweet the bitter leaven:

Our sorrow is the shadow cast

Around it by the light of Heaven.

O light in Light, shine down from Heaven!