488 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
are glorifying the limits in which our every day life is set and they 
are also manifesting that vast kingdom of which our life here is but a 
provincial subdivision. May I quotehere a poem by Francis Thompson 
called “The Kingdom of God’’: 
“O world invisible, we view thee, 
O world intangible, we touch thee, 
O world unknowable, we know thee, 
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee. 
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 opinions, would we hearken, 
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.” 
‘’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangéd faces, that miss the many-splendoured 
thing.” That is the line to pause upon for the immediate purpose of 
this writing. The words are from a modern poet who died ‘practically 
unhonoured in 1907. He was a Voice crying in the wilderness. Only 
since his death have many listened to his truth and fire. Recently 
his publishers have slapped their pockets, but only recently. ‘“’Tis 
ye.” That is the poet’s indicting finger. You, the modern public, 
by your docile servility to facts, by your stupid blindness, by the 
hardness of your practical hearts, you have missed the ‘‘many- 
splendoured thing.” The age is not little and sordid and wrong. 
You are little and sordid and wrong, that is what the poet would 
say. 
