“To a Snowflake” || Poem by Francis Thompson (1897)

What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.”

Francis Joseph Thompson (1859 – 1907) was an English poet and Catholic mystic. He entered medical school at the age of 18, but at 26 left home to pursue his talent as a poet and writer and poet. He spent three years on the streets of London, supporting himself with menial labor. He become addicted to opium which he took to relieve a nervous problem. His first volume, "Poems" was published, in 1893. he began writing prose in 1897. His fragile health continued to deteriorate and he died of tuberculosis in 1907. 

This poem was published in 1897 and it is in the Public Domain.