O how I miss you any casual day!
And as I walk
Turn, in the customed way,
Towards you with the talk
Which who but you should hear?
And know the intercepting day
Betwixt me and your only listening ear;
And no man ever more my tongue shall hear,
And dumb amid an alien folk I stray.
He grieved for Patmore as a wife grieves for the husband who dies before the birth of her child. "This latest, highest, of my work," he says of a portion of New Poems, "is now born dumb. It had been sung into his sole ears. Now there is none who speaks its language." His loss made a visit to his friends in London desirable.
Of the dedication he had previously written to Patmore:—
"The book (A. M.'s The Colour of Life) is dedicated to you, and just a fortnight ago I sent to London a volume of poems—the product of the last three years—which I had also (knowing nothing then of her intention, or even that she had a book on the point of appearing) taken the liberty of dedicating to you."
That dedication to Patmore runs:—
Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down,
Under the banner of your spread renown!
Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme
Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time,
Yet this one page shall fend oblivion's shame
Armed with your crested and prevailing name.
The tribute is handsomely conceived without any of the insincerity that cowered behind the handsomeness of eighteenth century dedications. It was an occasion for setting forth the humility which was a very real part of Thompson's character. In a printed note the author explains:—
"This dedication was written while the dear friend and great Poet to whom it was addressed yet lived. It is left as he saw it—the last verses of mine that were ever to pass under his eye."
To Francis, Mrs. Patmore wrote just before the publication of the book:—