THOMPSON, FRANCIS. - English Catholic poet, b. at Preston on 16 Dec. 1859, d. in London on 13 Nov. 1907.
After unsuccessful attempts to become a priest, T., through a strange misunderstanding, leaves his family and finds himself destitute on the pavements of London, whence he is rescued by the charity and friendship of Wilfrid and Alice Meynell. His poetry takes as its subject the enchantment of creation, contemplated not so much in its apparent simplicity as exalted through the intimations and suggestions of ancient mythologies and new scientific discoveries, in a language largely indebted, besides the poets of the seventeenth century and Romanticism, to the liturgy and above all to Holy Scripture. T.’s best-known poem is The Hound of Heaven, in which God is represented, in the manner of medieval mystics, as a Divine hound, untiring in the pursuit of the soul, anxious to escape Him by clinging to creation, yet unable to evade the pursuit of that divine love.
Of his prose writings, which deal with the most varied subjects but always contain religious references, the most celebrated is the essay on Shelley, a poet akin to T. in more than one respect.