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 rumour of thee there? Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars: The drift of pinions, would we harken, 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-splendoured 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 heaven by the hems: And lo, Christ walking on the water, Not of Gennesareth, but Thames! Thompson planned a series of Ecclesiastical Ballads, of which he completed only two--_Lilium Regis_ and _The Veteran of Heaven_. These were found among his papers, and were published in the January-April 1910 number of the _Dublin Review._ Both are great poems; but _Lilium Regis_ is made doubly impressive by the present war. With the clairvoyance of approaching death, Thompson foresaw the world-struggle, the temporary eclipse of the Christian Church, and its ultimate triumph. The Lily of the King is Christ's Holy Church. I do not see how any one can read this poem without a thrill. LILIUM REGIS O Lily of the King! low lies thy silver wing, And long has been the hour of thine unqueening; And thy scent of Paradise on the night-wind spills its sighs, Nor any take the secrets of its meaning. O Lily of the King! I speak a heavy thing, O patience, most sorrowful of daughters! Lo, the hour is at hand for the troubling of the land, And red shall be the breaking of the waters. Sit fast upon thy stalk, when the blast shall with thee talk, With the mercies of the king for thine awning; And the just understand that thine hour is at hand, Thine hour at hand with power in the dawning. When the nations lie in blood, and their kings a broken brood, Look up, O most sorrowful of daughters! Lift up thy head and hark what sounds are in the dark, For His feet are coming to thee on the waters! O Lily of the King! I shall not see, that sing, I shall not see the hour of thy queening! But my song shall see, and wake, like a flower that dawn-winds shake, And sigh with joy the odours of its meaning. O Lily of the King, remember then the thing That this dead mouth sang; and thy daughters, As they dance before His way, sing there on the Day, What I sang when the Night was on the waters!