Kingdom of God - A Many Splendored Thing

The Kingdom of God

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 rumor 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 estrangèd faces,

That miss the many-splendored 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 to Heaven by the hems;

And lo, Christ walking on the water,

Not of Genesareth, but Thames!




Francis Thompson