"Little Jesus, wast Thou shy
Once, and just as small as I?
And what did it feel like to be
Out of Heaven, and just like me?...
Hadst Thou ever any toys,
Like us little girls and boys?
And didst Thou play in Heaven with all
The angels, that were not too tall?...
So, a little Child, come down
And hear a child's tongue like Thy own;
Take me by the hand and walk,
And listen to my baby-talk."
But not even this refuge is open to the rebel soul.
"I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair."
Driven from the fairyland of childhood, he flees, as a last resort, to Nature. This time it is not in science that he seeks her, but in pure abandonment of his spirit to her changing moods. He will be one with cloud and sky and sea, will be the brother of the dawn and eventide.
"I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes,
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather."
Here again Francis Thompson is on familiar ground. If, like Mr. Chesterton, he holds the key of fairyland, like him also he can retain through life his wonder at the grass. His nature-poetry is nearer Shelley than anything that has been written since Shelley died. In it
"The leaves dance, the leaves sing,
The leaves dance in the breath of spring,"
or—
"The great-vanned Angel March
Hath trumpeted
His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead—
Beat his strong vans o'er earth and air and sea
And they have heard;
Hark to the Jubilate of the bird."
These, and such exquisite detailed imagery as that of the poem To a Snowflake—the delicate silver filigree of verse—rank him among the most privileged of the ministrants in Nature's temple, standing very close to the shrine. Yet here again there is repulse for the flying soul. This fellowship, like that of the children, is indeed fair and sheltering, but it is not for him. It is as when sunset changes the glory from the landscape into the cold and dead aspect of suddenly fallen night. Nature, that seemed so alive and welcoming, is dead to him. Her austerity and aloofness change her face; she is not friend but stranger. Her language is another tongue from his—