The Kingdom of God
Francis Thompson 1859 (City of Preston, Lancashire) – 1907 (London)
'_In no Strange Land_'
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;--
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
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.
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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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 49 sec read
- 286 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | X AAAA BCBC BDBD EFEF GHGH GIGI |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 889 |
Words | 163 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"The Kingdom of God" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/13941/the-kingdom-of-god>.
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