| Share page |
|
NEAR WORTHING 197
comes into a poem of Wordsworthian simplicity and poignancy:
" O, there were flowers in Storrington, On the turf and on the spray ; But the sweetest flower on Sussex Hills Was the Daisy-flower that day !
*****
She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be."
Thompson left Storrington in February, 1890, and in the next year he wrote his masterpiece, " The Hound of Heaven," which might well stand for an echo of the spiritual fret and uneasiness of the last twenty-five years. In this poem Thompson also epitomised his own life. Whilst some men were toiling and piling up earthly treasures of one kind or another, he cared nothing for such things, and it was evident that it was his wish to remain poor. But could any better symbol of the undercurrent of the bewildered modern mind be desired than the opening stanza :
" I fled Him down the nights and down the days ; I fled Him down the arches of the years ; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind ; and in the midst of tears |
||