| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 245. The Kingdom of God |
| By Francis Thompson (1859–1907) |
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| O WORLD invisible, we view thee, | |
| O world intangible, we touch thee, | |
| O world unknowable, we know thee, | |
| Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! | |
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| Does the fish soar to find the ocean, | 5 |
| The eagle plunge to find the air— | |
| That we ask of the stars in motion | |
| If they have rumour of thee there? | |
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| Not where the wheeling systems darken, | |
| And our benumbed conceiving soars!— | 10 |
| The drift of pinions, would we hearken, | |
| Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. | |
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| The angels keep their ancient places;— | |
| Turn but a stone, and start a wing! | |
| ‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces, | 15 |
| That miss the many-splendoured thing. | |
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| 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. | 20 |
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| 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! | |
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