In _New Poems_ Francis Thompson put forth in _The Mistress of Vision_ his stark gospel of renunciation. It is the last word of an asceticism which he practised as well as preached--most strait in its abnegation of everything but the beauty his verse, unlike his life, never could renounce. Coventry Patmore, Thompson's true "Captain of Song," used to say that the young poet's prose was even finer than his poetry, and his talk better than both. This was a statement with the true Patmorean touch of paradox. Any way, the talk had no reporter, and of his prose--his "heroic prose," as it has been called--only one example passed, during his life, into book form--the complaint made by Brother Ass, the Body, against its rider, the Soul. This was published under the title of _Health and Holiness_, accompanied by a Note from Father Tyrrell. But his experiences in prose, as a reviewer, were wide as his sympathies, and these were sanely universal. His articles in _The Academy_, under Mr Lewis Hind's editorship, must choke up many a scrapbook. Later, his contributions to _The Athenæum_ afforded him his greatest scope and stimulant; and only with his death came the eclipse of his powers. Editors forbore to be angry at his delays, for, after a while of waiting, they got from him, at last, what none else could give at all. * * * * * About ten weeks before the darkness fell on him the little flame of his life began visibly to flicker. A change to the country was advised; and he became the carefully tended guest of Mr Wilfrid Blunt--not many miles from the Storrington of his early love, to which, however, not wild arabs could any longer draw him. He was too weak for any travel, save that which brought him back to London--better, he himself said, but surely dying, as it seemed to solicitous eyes. Ten days before his death he went as a private patient to the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, in St John's Wood, and there, at the age of forty-eight, on November 13, 1907, he passed away at dawn--the dawn that was the death-hour in his _Dream Tryst_. He was laid to rest in St Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green. In his coffin were roses from the garden of Mr George Meredith, inscribed with Mr Meredith's testimony, "A true poet, one of the small band"; and violets from kindred turf went to the dead poet's breast from the hand of her whose praises he had divinely sung. Devoted friends lament him, no less for himself than for his singing. He made all men his debtors, leaving to those who loved him the memory of a unique personality, and to English poetry an imperishable name. W.M. _Reprinted, with revisions, from_ THE ATHENÆUM _of November 23, 1907._ The Dedications DEDICATION OF "POEMS" To WILFRID AND ALICE MEYNELL