New Poems

Francis Thompson's "New Poems" (1897) gathers the mature work of a poet who wrote as though prayer and passion were the same burning act. Best known for "The Hound of Heaven," Thompson brings that same terrified tenderness to these verses - his vision of divine pursuit rendered through gardens where women sing in tongues of longing, through landscapes where the sacred bleeds inextricable from the sensual. The collection opens with "The Mistress of Vision," an intoxicating exploration of desire and transcendence that sets the tone: Thompson's God is not comfortable absolution but overwhelming presence, the hunt that is also homecoming. The poems move between earthly ache and heavenly hunger, dense with imagery that makes the physical and spiritual indistinguishable. This is poetry for readers who want language to burn.