Style and Influence
His most famous poem The Hound of Heaven, describes the pursuit of the human soul by God. This poem is the source of the phrase "with all deliberate speed," used by the Supreme Court in Brown II, the remedy phase of the famous decision on school desegregation. A phrase in his The Kingdom of God is the source of the title of Han Suyin's novel and the movie Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. In addition, Thompson wrote the most famous cricket poem, the nostalgic At Lord's. He also wrote Sister Songs (1895), New Poems (1897), and a posthumously published essay, "Shelley" (1909). He wrote a treatise On Health and Holiness, dealing with the ascetic life, which was published in 1905.
G. K. Chesterton said shortly after his death that "with Francis Thompson we lost the greatest poetic energy since Browning." His grave is in St.Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery in London. Among Thompson's devotees was the young J.R.R. Tolkien, who purchased a volume of Thompson's works in 1913-1914, and later said that it was an important influence on his own writing. The American novelist Madeleine L'Engle used a line from the poem "The Mistress of Vision" as the title of her last Vicki Austin novel, Troubling a Star.
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Famous quotes containing the words style and, style and/or influence:
“A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.”
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971)
“All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.... For me “style” is matter.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,—more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)