The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

These lines are from Francis Thompson’s poem “The Kingdom of God,” written in the 1890s and published in his first collection, *Poems* (1893). Thompson (1859–1907), a Catholic convert and one-time medical student who endured poverty and homelessness in London, repeatedly wrote about the nearness of the divine within ordinary life. In this poem he counters the notion that God’s presence is remote or confined to churchly spaces, insisting instead that the supernatural is close at hand—so close it can be “started” by the smallest act of attention. The address (“’Tis ye…”) rebukes modern estrangement and spiritual inattentiveness rather than any absence of grace.

Thompson suggests that the world is still charged with spiritual reality: “angels keep their ancient places” and remain ready to reveal themselves. The failure lies not in a diminished cosmos but in the perceiver—“your estrangèd faces”—whose alienation and dulled vision cause them to “miss the many-splendored thing.” The image of turning a stone and startling a wing implies that wonder and holiness are hidden in the commonplace, accessible through a renewed gaze. The passage thus critiques disenchantment and spiritual distraction, urging a recovery of reverence and attentiveness to the sacramental depth of everyday experience.