Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.
Francis Thompson (18591907)245. The Kingdom of God
O
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!