Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth, Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, Than thy shadow soothes this weak And distempered being of mine. In all I work, my hand includeth thine; Thou rushest down in every stream Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge; Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream; Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge! As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, Moves all the labouring surges of the world. Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree. This poor song that sings of thee, This fragile song, is but a curled Shell outgathered from thy sea, And murmurous still of its nativity. Thompson's third and last volume was published in 1897, under the title _New Poems_. This volume contains some of his longest and most elaborate compositions. Like many of the poems in Volume One outside those already noticed, the most important poems of Volume Three are expressions of Thompson's religious mysticism, and with this is combined a free use of symbolism derived from the Hebrew Prophets and the Eastern mythologies. Although no one can fail to recognize the splendour of the poetry in this third volume, a full appreciation of it requires a somewhat special equipment. "The main region of Mr. Thompson's poetry," says Patmore, "is the inexhaustible and hitherto almost unworked mine of Catholic philosophy." To one not specially versed in that philosophy, an attempt to give an appreciation of the poems is a dangerous task, and one full of pitfalls. Suffice it to say that Thompson's mysticism is not an apparently aimless plunging about in the darkness of the void like that of Maeterlinck and other modern mystics. Thompson's mysticism was kept within bounds and given a definite direction by common sense and the authority of the Church. "Dante," he said, "is a perfect rebuke to those who believe that a mystical genius must be dissociated from common sense. Every such poet should be able to give a clear and logical prose _résumé_ of his teaching as terse as a page of scholastic philosophy." And so we find that the rule of Thompson's practice is summed up in the words, "To the Poet life is full of visions, to the Mystic it is one vision." Having regarded the visions as a poet, and set them down as a mystic, he would call them one. The one great vision enfolded and explained them all. Such is the explanation of his poems, _The Orient Ode_, _The Anthem of Earth_, and _The Ode to the Setting Sun_.