Shelley: An Essay

by Francis Thompson

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62 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 12, 2012

About the author

Francis Thompson was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book Poems in 1893. Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an essay written in 1889 and is a fascinating if very dated exploration of one poet, writing at the end of the 19th Century writing about another poet who was creating at the other end of the same Century. Thompson, as a catholic at a time when the Church was fairly hidebound, might have been expected to denigrate and belittle the work and contribution of one who, it would have to be said, would not have had the highest regard for men and women of faith. Yet this is not the case. It is a sympathetically written reflection on Shelley's contribution to humanity not only in poetic terms but in also in his challenge to work for a just world. Thompson shows his own poetic spirit in images and expressions
' Grief is a matter of relativity; sorrow should be estimated by its proportion to the sorrower....Pour a puddle into a thimble, or an Atlantic into Etna; both thimble and mountain overflow. Adult fools, would not the angels smile at our griefs, were not angels too wise to smile at them ? '
Purple prose certainly and talk of angels would inevitably alienate many modern readers but his sensitivity to the idea of a child's,in this case Shelley's, grief is lovely.
Thompson sees how Shelley's retreat from the insensitive disregard of adults at his suffering preserved a childlike power of imagination and wonder which served him well in his subsequent poetry.
Thompson's essay is undoubtedly far more prissy and precious than would be written now, his religious imagery is perhaps outside the experience of many modern day readers and many would feel uncomfortable with his high emotionalism
For example, writing of Percy and Mary Shelley's marriage he writes
' Yet few poets were so mated before, and no poet was so mated afterwards, until Browning stooped and picked up a fair-coined soul that lay rusting in a pool of tears'.
Now Elizabeth Barrett Browning is my favourite poet so any mention of her is welcome but that is one over the top flight of fancy.

He does however have great turns of phrase which could bring appreciative smiles rather than shakes of the cynical head. Writing of Shelley's republicanism Thompson says
' And is it not a mere fact - regret it if you will - that in all European countries, except two, monarchs are a mere survival, the obsolete buttons on the coat-tails of rule, which serve no purpose but to be continually coming off '.
This is a clever, pithy statement which, allowing for the ten monarchies which survive in Europe today, was dramatically proven true with the domino affect of European monarchical abolition from 1917 till 1948.

The essay is a peculiar one as it must be read with eyes squinting into the bright sunlight of the modern world which necessitates us looking at it from an angle but maybe this enables us to see its truth whilst allowing for its being of its time and of its style. Thompson wrote it in 1889 because he felt not only that poetry had become detached from God and faith which , in his opinion meant its impoverishment but he also makes clear that he believes the act by which ' Catholicism cast her from the door...the seperation has been ill for poetry, it has not been well for religion '
It is a challenge to the Church of 100 years ago to enter into dialogue with seemingly opposing ideas rather than pulling up the drawbridge. Now i might not phrase it as Thompson does in such high flown language and the ideas might be different ones but the challenge still remains

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This odd little essay was originally written for an Irish Catholic magazine in 1889. The magazine rejected it, and then after Thompson's death someone discovered it in its archives and published it. The purpose of the article was to help Catholics embrace poetry and see the genius of Shelley. He seems an odd choice given that he was both an atheist and a radical. However, Thompson makes the case for his poetry claiming his was a childlike genius who he was searching for God. If he had lived long enough, the author assures us, he would have come to the true faith. Like I said, it is an odd little book that tells the reader much more about this minor Catholic poet, than it does about Shelley.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francis Thompson on Shelley. Perceptive Christian analysis.