ant loneliness, that tumultuous sense of want amidst plenty, which of all aches is the keenest. And so we pass, not unexpectedly, from the elevated passion in "Love in Dian's Lap " into the mystical torrent of "The Hound of Heaven "-of which poem it has been well said that it alone "should suffice to give the author his rightful place among the immortals." "The Hound of Heaven" is the outpouring of a passionate emotion which has reached out to the very Infinite and, aghast at its own venture, turns back and flees, thinking to find its heaven in less intense height. For it is afraid lest finding God it must lose its neighborly fellow creature and become in some way alien to itself: and not for all infinite delight can it endure this alienation.

For, though I knew His love Who followed,
Yet was I sore adread

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.

Fearful, the soul flees, yet ever the Divine Love follows, claiming the soul for itself. It seeks shelter "in face of man or maid," but these only show him his "own betrayal in their constancy"; he turns to little children, but their angels pluck them from him; then does he approach nature, and for a while in her "delicate fellowship" he thinks he has found peace, yet,

With unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

the Divine Love hunts him down, and at last he lay smitten utterly. Let it be noted how the soul has fled for refuge from its Divine pursuivant, only to those who are constant to him, not to his betrayers. For the soul is in real need of him; only it does not know him in his transcendence; it would have him come down amongst his creatures and enjoy him there; it has yet to learn that it may find the creature in him. And this it learns in the moment of its surrender. It is a great poem; yet to be understood aright, it must be read in relation to its companion poems.

Disease had laid its hand early in life upon Francis Thompson, perhaps it helped to keep him to the end in that simple, detached spirit which was a fitting raiment for a mind so pure; perhaps, too, it was the cause of certain external habits which seemed so incongruous with a soul so refined. He himself was

content that the world should take him simply as the singer or dreamer of dreams, and he was jealous that no song or dream of his should be false to the ideal which he worshipped. But with himself he was not content.

There were times when he felt the stirring of something more than a singer; when the aspiration of the saint flitted across his soul, creating there a deep discontent with himself. Very humble did such moments leave him, gently, enduringly humble. In the back courts of the Temple would he stand, with his eyes piercingly gazing into the sanctity beyond, not envious of the saints who had reached there, but thankful that they were there; and thankful, too, that his dreaming was true to the sanctity he adored. Because of this fidelity he claimed in his inmost desire-humbly indeed yet insistently-some fellowship with them. It was his hope in life; let us believe it was his peace in death. This hope gave to his unworldliness of soul something more than the unknowing unworldliness of the child, even a glow of otherworldliness. Fondly does this hope appear in the poem entitled "A Judgment in Heaven." It begins, expressing the spiritual attitude of a life-time:

Athwart the sod which is treading for God the poet paced with his splendid eyes.

And what he sees is his own judgment. The singer in him is there, "where God's light lay large"; but

clasping the singer's glories clings A dingy creature, even to laughter cloaked and clad in patchwork things:

The singer's earthly form.

Better thou wov'st thy woof of life than thou didst weave thy woof of song!

is the judgment of the sacred crowd. But there are two there who understand the poet better.

"Turn yon robe," spake Magdalen, "of torn bright song, and see and feel."

They turned the raiment, saw and felt what their turning did reveal

All the inner surface piled with bloodied hairs, like hairs of steel.

And the poet is saved by suffering which his song has brought him-suffering patiently borne as the price of song. Those who knew Francis Thompson will feel the pathos of these verses, burdened with so personal a note; but they will be glad that in his judgment of himself the rhymer as well as the singer would not be found unworthy:

Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, two spirits greater than they know.

Yet to appreciate the dead poet aright, one must turn from these poems of deeper burden to his poems on children. In some respects these latter poems exhibit him in the character in which he more easily revealed himself to his friends; the deeper burden being kept with a delicate reticence more exclusively for his song. The simple gaiety breaking easily through the subdued pain of his life, like a child's laughter through its tears, the somewhat wayward fun which would come as a sigh of relief into his most serious moods, and the moan which would come in spite of himself at the end of an hour's quiet merriment-all this is reflected in his poems when he wandered into "the nurseries of heaven." In truth he was at home there where the spirit of childhood lives; happy, perhaps, for him if he could always have abided there; and yet no, for he would then have missed the bliss and the wisdom which grow only in the midst of pain.

But it was as with a sense of native freedom that he came into the city of the child, and felt the cool breath of childhood upon his brow. His spirit would then relax into smiles and quaint frolic, as witness "The Making of Viola," and "The Daisy," and the lilt in the verse and thought of "Ex Ore Infantium." Yet ever at the end there comes the moan of one who has drunk too deeply of the sorrow of life ever to forget the pain which is latent in the cradle of the child. For a while he will play at the sweet make-believes of childhood, only to remember that life is not a make believe.

A child and a man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;

But between the clasp of his hand and hers
Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.

And the man is happy as the child as long as the withered years are not felt; but felt they will shortly be, brought to remembrance "in swift child's whim."

Peace be to his soul who, in his earthly life, knew so little of the soul's peace, but whose message has brought calm strength and ennobling thought to many a fellow-mortal. But so it is most commonly with the poet and the seer: the peace they bring on earth is born of their own travail.

I have written of the spiritual quality of Francis Thompson's poetry. Of its literary quality it has been said that it was too exuberant to be artistically perfect. This is true of some of his work, but not of all; it is least true of his earlier work, where the seemingly riotous flow of his imagery is but the counterpart of glorious spontaneity. In his later work he was less spontaneous, less vital; here it is as though he were recalling experience rather than being compelled by a present experience; and the exuberance is, therefore, less artistically correct. The similarity of quality and style between Francis Thompson and that other Catholic poet, Crashaw, has often been pointed out; but it is a similarity with a difference. In both the poet's style is as a rich red wine, or as the flow of hot embers; words blaze with color, and the emotion is charged, almost over-charged, with fancy. But in Francis Thompson there is a wider range of emotion; a more piercing vision of life. Crashaw wanders across the surface of mystery, whereas Francis Thompson dives down into the deep waters. It is in some respects the difference between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth. Crashaw could never have written "The Daisy," could never have enshrined in verse the invigorating breezes of the South Downs; he would have been hopelessly lost in the tumultuous crash of human experience of "The Hound of Heaven."

Francis Thompson is dead, yet in his death he will assuredly live in the mind and heart of coming generations. For to the sublimely true, death ever brings a resurrection even amidst mortality; his message will search out the true and sublime in many who live after him, and remain for them a witness to the Catholic faith from which he drew his inspiration. So he will remain with us, he whose splendid eyes paced ever faithfully

Athwart the sod which is treading for God.

LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.*

BY CANON P. A. SHEEHAN, D.D.,

Author of "My New Curate"; "Luke Delmege"; " Glenanaar," etc.

CHAPTER XV.

"QUASI PER IGNEM."

UGH HAMBERTON was not killed by his fall from the cliff. But when the fishermen, who had pulled in furiously to save the children, had leaped from their boat and placed the girls in safety, they found much trouble in raising him from the waters that now were seething around him. He was quite unconscious; and all that they could do was to raise him up and take him beyond the reach of the waves, until his carriage would arrive from Brandon Hall. But they lifted him tenderly and reverentially, as a hero who had probably given his life to save little children from a terrible death.

And when the news of the event had reached the village, all hands struck work, and hastened to assist in every way the brave man who was now and forevermore enshrined in their hearts. Around the cottage firesides for many a night the tale was told, and every circumstance gone over again and again, as the custom is amongst this story-loving people—the call of the child to come down and play, the cheery response of the grave Englishman, whom no adult dare approach or address without deference, the cry of the fishermen, the screams of the girls, the gallant manner in which Hamberton had attempted to rescue them, his fall, etc., all were narrated with some poetical exaggeration that only enhanced his reputation, and sent it far and wide.

Claire Maxwell was terribly shocked and grieved; but kept her feelings to herself under an appearance of calm composure. She would have written or wired to her husband; but waited to obtain the doctor's verdict. That was soon ascertained. No danger to life, but probably hopeless paralysis from * Copyright. 1906. Longmans, Green & Co.