{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_30730/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_30730","id":"gutenberg_30730","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30730","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Poetry","Category: Religion/Spirituality","English poetry"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Cover art]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Front end papers]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOUND OF HEAVEN\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Frontispiece:\n\n  When she lit her glimmering tapers\n  Round the day's dead sanctities  _Page 52_]\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Title page]\n\n\n\nTHE HOUND OF HEAVEN\n\n_By_ FRANCIS THOMPSON\n\n\n\n\nWITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY\n\nSTELLA LANGDALE\n\n\n\n\nNEW YORK\n\nDODD, MEAD AND COMPANY\n\n1926\n\n\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1922,\n\nBY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.\n\n\nPRINTED IN THE U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThe Rev. Mark J. McNeal, S. J., who was one of the successors of\nLafcadio Hearn in the chair of English Literature at the Tokyo Imperial\nUniversity, in an interesting article recounts the following incident\nof his experience in that institution.  \"I was seated on the examining\nboard with Professor Ichikawa, the dean of the English department...\nThere entered the room a student whom I recognized as among the best in\nthe class, a sharp young chap with big Mongolian eyes, and one who had\nnever to my knowledge given any hint of even a leaning toward\nChristianity.  I remembered, however, that his thesis submitted for a\ndegree had been a study of Francis Thompson.  Following the usual\ncustom, I began to question him about his thesis.\n\n\"'Why did you choose Thompson?'\n\n\"'Well, he is quite a famous poet.'\n\n\"'What kind of poet is he?'\n\n\"'We might call him a mystic.'\n\n\"'Is he a mystic of the orthodox sort, like Cynewulf or Crashaw; or an\nunorthodox mystic, like Blake or Shelley?'\n\n\"'Oh, he's orthodox.'\n\n\"'Well, now, what do you consider his greatest production?'\n\n\"'Why, I should say \"The Hound of Heaven.\"\n\n\"'Well, what on earth does Thompson mean by that Hound?'\n\n\"'He means God.'\n\n\"'But is not that a rather irreverent way for Thompson to be talking\nabout God, calling Him a hound?  What does he mean by comparing God to\na hound?'\n\n\"'Well, he means the pursuit of God.'\n\n\"'Oh, I see, Thompson is pursuing God, is he?'\n\n\"'Oh, no.  He is rather running away from God.'\n\n\"'Well, then, God is pursuing Thompson, is that it?'\n\n\"'Yes, that's it.'\n\n[Illustration: Titanic glooms of chasmed fears  _Page 45_]\n\n'\"But, see here; according to Thompson's belief God is everywhere,\nisn't He?'\n\n\"'Yes.'\n\n\"'Well, then, how can God be going after Thompson?  Is it a physical\npursuit?'\n\n\"'No.  It is a moral pursuit.'\n\n\"'A moral pursuit!  What's that?  What is God after?'\n\n\"'He is after Thompson's love.'\n\n\"And then we, the Jesuit and the Buddhist, began to follow the windings\nand turnings of that wondrous poem, the most mystic and spiritual thing\nthat has been written since St. Teresa laid down her pen.  What the\nother member of the examining board thought of it all I never heard.\nBut I think I acquired a satisfactory answer to that question so often\nput to me: Can the Japanese really grasp a spiritual truth?  Do they\nreally get at the meaning of Christianity?  This, of a race that has\nproduced more martyrs than any other nation since the fall of Rome and\nthat kept the Faith for two centuries without a visible symbol or\ndocument!\"\n\nThe incident supplies matter for other conclusions more germane to the\nsubject of this essay.  The late Bert Leston Taylor, a journalist whose\njournalism had a literary facet of critical brilliance, once declared\nthat he could not perceive the excellence of Francis Thompson's poetry.\nWhen someone suggested that it might be that he was not spiritual\nenough, the retort was laconic and crushing, \"Or, perhaps, not\necclesiastical enough.\"  Like most good retorts Taylor's had more wit\nthan truth.  He was obsessed by the notion, prevalent among a certain\nclass of literary critics, that Francis Thompson's fame was the\nartificially stimulated applause of a Catholic coterie, whose\nenthusiasm could hardly be shared by readers with no particular\ncuriosity about Catholic ideas or modes of religion.  It was probably\nthis obsession which prompted that able critic, Mr. H. D. Traill, to\nwrite to Mr. Wilfrid Meynell when the \"Hound of Heaven\" first appeared:\n\"I quite agree with you in thinking him a remarkable poet, but, if he\nis ever to become other than a 'poet's poet' or 'critic's poet'--if\nindeed it is worth anyone's ambition to be other than that--it will\nonly be by working in a different manner.  A 'public' to appreciate the\n'Hound of Heaven' is to me inconceivable.\"  Mr. William Archer, an\nexperienced judge of popular likes, was of the same opinion.  \"Yet,\"\nFrancis Thompson's biographer tells us, \"in the three years after\nThompson's death the separate edition of the 'Hound of Heaven' sold\nfifty thousand copies; and, apart from anthologies, many more thousands\nwere sold of the books containing it.\"  When the \"Hound of Heaven\" is\nselected for study, and explained in words of one syllable, by a young\nJapanese student in the Tokyo Imperial University almost thirty years\nafter the poem was published, one can hardly maintain that it calls for\ncertain ecclesiastical affiliations before it can be understood and\nfelt, or that its \"public\" is necessarily circumscribed.\n\nIt must be owned indeed that Francis Thompson was a puzzle to his\ncontemporaries of the nineties.  He paid the usual penalty of vaulting\noriginality.  The decade is famous for its bold experiments and shining\nsuccesses in the art of poetry.  One might expect that a public, grown\naccustomed to exquisitely wrought novelties and eager to extend them a\nwelcome, would have been preordained to recognize and hail the genius\nof Thompson.  But it was not so.  The estheticism of the nineties, for\nall its sweet and fragile flowers, was rooted in the dark passions of\nthe flesh.  Its language was the language of death and despair and\nannihilation and the Epicurean need of exhausting the hedonistic\npossibilities of life ere the final engulfing in darkness and silence.\nWhen the speech of Thompson, laden with religion and spirituality and\nChristian mystery, broke with golden turbulence upon the world of the\nnineties, the critics were abashed and knew not what to think of it.\nThe effect was somewhat like that produced by Attwater, in Stevenson's\n\"The Ebb-Tide,\" when he began suddenly to discourse on Divine Grace to\nthe amazement of Herrick and his crew of scoundrels from the stolen\n_Farallone_.  \"Oh,\" exclaimed the unspeakable Huish, when they had\nrecovered breath, \"Oh, look 'ere, turn down the lights at once, and the\nBand of 'Ope will oblige!  This ain't a spiritual seance.\"  It had\nsomething akin to the madness of poor Christopher Smart when he fell\ninto the habit of dropping on his knees and praying in the crowded\nLondon streets.  There was incongruity, verging on the indecent, in\nthis intrusion of religion into art, as if an archangel were to attend\nan afternoon tea in Mayfair or an absinthe session in a Bohemian cafe.\nIt was, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, \"an unnecessary deviation from the\nusual modes of the world\" which struck the world dumb.\n\nThe poetry of Francis Thompson appeared in three small volumes:\n\"Poems,\" published in 1893; \"Sister Songs,\" in 1895; and \"New Poems,\"\nin 1897.  The first of these volumes contained the \"Hound of Heaven\";\nthough it staggered reviewers at large, they yielded dubious and\ncarefully measured praise and waited for developments.  The pack was\nunleashed and the hue-and-cry raised on the coming of \"Sister Songs\"\nand \"New Poems.\"  Andrew Lang and Mr. Arthur Symons led the chorus of\ndisapproval.  It is amusing to read now that Francis Thompson's \"faults\nare fundamental.  Though he uses the treasure of the Temple, he is not\na religious poet.  The note of a true spiritual passion never once\nsounds in his book.\"  Another critic of the poet declares that \"nothing\ncould be stronger than his language, nothing weaker than the impression\nit leaves on the mind.  It is like a dictionary of obsolete English\nsuffering from a severe fit of delirium tremens.\"  A prominent literary\nperiodical saw, in the attempt to foist Thompson on the public as a\ngenuine poet, a sectarian effort to undermine the literary press of\nEngland.  In the course of a year the sale of \"Sister Songs\" amounted\nto 349 copies.  The \"New Poems\" fared worse; its sale, never large,\npractically ceased a few years after its appearance, three copies being\nsold during the first six months of 1902.\n\n[Illustration: Across the margent of the world I fled  _Page 47_]\n\nAnd all this despite strong recommendations from fastidious quarters.\nGeorge Meredith's recognition was instantaneous and unreserved.\nHenley's was accompanied by reproofs.  Mr. Richard LeGallienne was\nenthusiastic.  Mr. William Archer said to a friend, \"This is not work\nwhich can possibly be _popular_ in the wide sense; but it is work that\nwill be read and treasured centuries hence by those who really care for\npoetry.\"  And he wrote to Thompson, \"I assure you no conceivable\nreaction can wipe out or overlay such work as yours.  It is firm-based\non the rock of absolute beauty; and this I say all the more confidently\nbecause it does not happen to appeal to my own speculative, or even my\nown literary, prejudices.\"  The most extravagant admirer of all, and\nthe one who will probably turn out to have come nearer the mark than\nany of Francis Thompson's contemporaries, was Mr. J. L. Garvin, the\nwell known English leader-writer in politics and literature.  \"After\nthe publication of his second volume,\" he wrote in the English\n_Bookman_, March 1897, \"when it became clear that the 'Hound of Heaven'\nand 'Sister Songs' should be read together as a strict lyrical\nsequence, there was no longer any comparison possible except the\nhighest, the inevitable comparison with even Shakespeare's Sonnets.\nThe Sonnets are the greatest soliloquy in literature.  The 'Hound of\nHeaven' and 'Sister Songs' are the second greatest; and there is no\nthird.  In each case it is rather consciousness imaged in the magic\nmirror of poetry than explicit autobiography....  Even with the\ngreatest pages of 'Sister Songs' sounding in one's ears, one is\nsometimes tempted to think the 'Hound of Heaven' Mr. Thompson's\nhigh-water mark for unimaginable beauty and tremendous import--if we do\ndamnably iterate Mr. Thompson's tremendousness, we cannot help it, he\nthrusts the word upon us.  We do not think we forget any of the\nsplendid things of an English anthology when we say that the 'Hound of\nHeaven' seems to us, on the whole, the most wonderful lyric (if we\nconsider 'Sister Songs' as a sequence of lyrics) in the language.  It\nfingers all the stops of the spirit, and we hear now a thrilling and\ndolorous note of doom and now the quiring of the spheres and now the\nvery pipes of Pan, but under all the still sad music of humanity.  It\nis the return of the nineteenth century to Thomas a Kempis....  The\nregal air, the prophetic ardors, the apocalyptic vision, Mr. Thompson\nhas them all.  A rarer, more intense, more strictly predestinate genius\nhas never been known to poetry.  To many this will seem the simple\ndelirium of over-emphasis.  The writer signs for those others, nowise\nashamed, who range after Shakespeare's very Sonnets the poetry of a\nliving poet, Francis Thompson.\"\n\nWe do not associate Mr. Arnold Bennett with any of the ideas in\nreligion or literature which supplied impulse to Francis Thompson.  It\nis a surprise of the first magnitude to find him carried away into the\nrapture of prophecy by the \"Sister Songs.\"  \"I declare,\" he says in an\narticle appearing in July, 1895, \"that for three days after this book\nappeared I read nothing else.  I went about repeating snatches of\nit--snatches such as--\n\n  'The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,\n  Moves all the labouring surges of the world.'\n\nMy belief is that Francis Thompson has a richer natural genius, a finer\npoetical equipment, than any poet save Shakespeare.  Show me the\ndivinest glories of Shelley and Keats, even of Tennyson, who wrote the\n'Lotus Eaters' and the songs in the 'Princess,' and I think I can match\nthem all out of this one book, this little book that can be bought at\nan ordinary bookseller's shop for an ordinary prosaic crown.  I fear\nthat in thus extolling Francis Thompson's work, I am grossly outraging\nthe canons of criticism.  For the man is alive, he gets up of a morning\nlike common mortals, not improbably he eats bacon for breakfast; and\nevery critic with an atom of discretion knows that a poet must not be\ncalled great until he is dead or very old.  Well, please yourself what\nyou think.  But, in time to come, don't say I didn't tell you.\"  A\nwhole generation of men has passed away since these words appeared; but\nthey do not seem to be so fantastic and whimsical now as they seemed to\nbe then.\n\n[Illustration: I said to dawn: Be sudden  _Page 47_]\n\nIt can scarcely be claimed that the prophecies of Meredith, Mr. Garvin,\nand Mr. Arnold Bennett were of the kind which ultimately assures the\nevent.  The reading-world dipped curiously into the pages about which\nthere was so much conflict of opinion; it was startled and bewildered\nby a novel and difficult form of verse; and finally it agreed with the\nmajority of critics that it was mostly nonsense--too Catholic to be\ncatholic.  The poems sold badly, the 'Hound of Heaven' faring best.  It\nis a common mark of genius to be ahead of its time.  Even Thompson's\ncoreligionists were cold.  Indeed, it may be said they were the\ncoldest.  If the general reading-public of the nineties suspected\nThompson of being a Victorian reactionary of ultra-montane mould, the\nCatholic public feared him for his art.  It was a wild unfettered thing\nwhich took strange liberties with Catholic pieties and could not be\ntrusted to run in divine grooves.  One can afford to extenuate the\nattitude of reserve.  It was a period when brilliant heterodoxies and\nflaunting decadence were in the air.  The fact is, that critics and\npublic delivered Thompson over to the Catholics; and the Catholics\nwould have nothing to do with him.  Canon Sheehan could write of\nThompson in 1898:\n\n\"Only two Catholics--literary Catholics--have noticed this surprising\ngenius--Coventry Patmore and Wilfrid Meynell.  The vast bulk of our\ncoreligionists have not even heard his name, although it is already\nbruited amongst the Immortals; and the great Catholic poet, for whose\nadvent we have been straining our vision, has passed beneath our eyes,\nsung his immortal songs, and vanished.\"  This was written almost ten\nyears before Thompson died, but after his resolve to write no more\npoetry.\n\nIt is easily within the probabilities that, small as was Thompson's\naudience during his lifetime, it would have been still smaller but for\nthe extraneous interest excited by the strange story of his life.  He\nwas born on December 16, 1859, in Preston, Lancashire, whence he went\nat the age of eleven to Ushaw College, a Catholic boarding school for\nboys.  This is the college where Lafcadio Hearn received his education;\nhe had left the school a year or two before young Thompson's arrival.\nBoth boys were designed for the priesthood.  Hearn lost his faith then\nor shortly afterwards: Thompson's irregular habits of dreamy\nabstraction rendered him unfit for a sacerdotal career.  When he had\ncompleted his course at college, where he had distinguished himself in\nEnglish composition and attained respectable standing in the classics,\nhis father, a hard-working physician, entered the lad, now eighteen, as\na student of medicine in Owen College, Manchester.  The Thompson family\nhad moved from Preston to Ashton-under-Lyne, where proximity to\nManchester made it possible for the young medical student to spend his\nnights at home.\n\nFrancis was of the silent and secretive sort where he could not hope to\nfind intelligent sympathy.  This, and some cloudy compromise with his\nsense of filial dutifulness, will perhaps explain why he passed six\nyears as a student of medicine without any serious purpose of becoming\na physician and without informing his father of his disinclination.\nThree examinations and three failures at intervals of a year were\nnecessary to convince the father of the true state of affairs.  Stern\nmeasures were adopted; and, although the consequences were pitifully\ntragical, it is hard to blame the father of Francis.  How are we to\ndiscover the extraordinary seal in a case that requires special and\nextraordinary treatment?\n\nFrancis was twenty-four years old with no more idea than a child's of\nhow life is planned on practical lines of prosperity.  The senior\nThompson thought it time for him to learn and issued orders to find\nemployment of some remunerative kind.  Accordingly during the next two\nyears Francis served indifferently for brief periods as a clerk in the\nshop of a maker of surgical instruments and as a canvasser of an\nencyclopedia.  Both experiments in the art of making a living were\nfailures, increasing paternal dissatisfaction.  The desperate young man\nthen enlisted in the army, and after a few weeks' of drilling was\nrejected on the score of physical weakness.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  I knew how the clouds arise,\n  Spumed of the wild sea-snortings  _Page 51_]\n\nDuring these shiftless and unhappy years as a listless medical student\nand laggard apprentice the poet's chief solace was the public library\nof Manchester.  In his daily absences from home his misery suggested\nanother solace of a sinister kind.  After a severe illness during his\nsecond year of medicine his mother, says his biographer, presented him\nwith a copy of De Quincey's \"Confessions of an Opium Eater.\"  It is\nincredible that a _helluo librorum_, like Thompson, should have reached\nthe age of twenty without ever having read a book which is one of the\nfirst to attract every bright school-boy.  This would be particularly\ntrue of a school-boy who lived near Manchester, De Quincey's own town.\nBut the evidence seems to be against probabilities.  Thompson succumbed\ncompletely to the influence of the great genius whose temper and\ncircumstances of life were singularly like his own.  Experiments in\nlaudanum were made and habits contracted which accentuated a natural\nunfitness to wrestle with the practical problems of getting on and\nrendered family intercourse drearier than ever.\n\nIn 1885, when he was twenty-six years old, Francis decided to leave\nhome.  After a week in Manchester he requested and received from his\nfather the price of a railway ticket for London.  The trip to the vast\nand strange city must have been made with only the vaguest of plans for\nthe future.  The despairing youth seemed to have no other purpose than\nto rid his father of his vexatious presence.  There were friends in\nLondon, on one of whom Francis was directed to call for a weekly\nallowance from home.  But a temperamental reluctance kept the young man\naway from those who could help him, and even the weekly allowance after\na while came to be unclaimed.  The rough, cyclonic forces of the huge\ncity caught this helpless child of a man's years in the full swing of\ntheir blind sweep and played sad tricks with him.  In a period\nextending over nearly three years Francis Thompson led the life of a\nvagrant in the streets and alleys.  He made one or two brave essays at\nregular work of the most commonplace character, but without success.\nThe worn copies of Aeschylus and Blake in the pockets of this ragged\nand gaunt roustabout contained no useful hints for the difficulties of\nthe peculiar situation; its harshness could be transmuted into\ntemporary and blessed oblivion by a drug whenever the means for\npurchase could be acquired.  The Guildhall Library was much frequented\nuntil shabbiness was excluded by the policeman.  This outcast poet,\napproaching thirty years of age, was at various times a bootblack, a\nnewsboy, a vendor of matches, a nocturnal denizen of wharves and\nlounger on the benches of city-parks.  His cough-racked frame was the\nexposed target of cold and rain and winds.  He became used to hunger.\nAt one time a six-pence, for holding a horse, was his only earnings for\na week.  It was while he was aimlessly roaming the streets one night\nalmost delirious from starvation that a prosperous shoe-merchant,\nbenevolently engaged in religious rescue-work, came across Thompson,\nand, struck by the incongruity of his gentle speech, induced him to\naccept employment in his shop.  But one cannot allow business to suffer\non account of an inveterate blunderer, even though the blunderer wear\nwings and has endeared himself to the family.  Mr. McMaster, kindly\nAnglican lay-missionary, who deserves grateful remembrance for\nrecognizing and temporarily helping merit under the most deceptive\ndisguise, was obliged much against his inclination to dismiss Francis\nand to allow him to fall back into the pit of squalor and vagabondage.\n\nBut the few months of reprieve had supplied Thompson with the impulse\nto write.  Shortly after he was dropped from the McMaster establishment\nMr. Wilfrid Meynell, the editor of _Merry England_, a Catholic\nmagazine, received the following letter: \"_Feb. 23rd, '87_--Dear\nSir,--In enclosing the accompanying article for your inspection, I must\nask pardon for the soiled state of the manuscript.  It is due, not to\nslovenliness, but to the strange places and circumstances under which\nit has been written.  For me, no less than Parolles, the dirty nurse\nexperience has something fouled.  I enclose stamped envelope for a\nreply, since I do not desire the return of the manuscript, regarding\nyour judgment of its worthlessness as quite final.  I can hardly expect\nthat where my prose fails my verse will succeed.  Nevertheless, on the\nprinciple of 'Yet will I try the last,' I have added a few specimens of\nit, with the off chance that one may be less poor than the rest.\nApologizing very sincerely for any intrusion on your valuable time, I\nremain yours with little hope,\n\n\"Francis Thompson.\n\n\"Kindly address your rejection to the Charing Cross Post Office.\"\n\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!\n  ..... smitten me to my knee;\n  I am defenceless utterly   _Page 55_]\n\n\nThe unpromising aspect of the manuscript, thus introduced, was the\noccasion of editorial neglect for some months.  When at last Mr.\nMeynell gave it his attention he was electrified into action.  He wrote\nto the address given by Thompson.  The letter was returned from the\ndead-letter office after many days.  Then he published one of the poems\nmentioned in the letter, \"The Passion of Mary,\" in the hope that the\nauthor would disclose his whereabouts.  The plan succeeded and brought\na letter from Thompson with a new address.  Mr. Meynell tried to waylay\nhim at the new address, a chemist's shop in Drury Lane, but with\ncharacteristic shiftlessness the poet forgot to call there for possible\nletters.  But the seller of drugs finally established communications\nbetween the editor and the poet, and one day, more than a year after\nThompson's first literary venture had been sent, he visited the office\nof _Merry England_.  Mr. Everard Meynell, the poet's biographer, thus\ndescribes the entrance of the poet into his father's sanctum.  \"My\nfather was told that Mr. Thompson wished to see him.  'Show him up,' he\nsaid, and was left alone.  Then the door opened, and a strange hand was\nthrust in.  The door closed, but Thompson had not entered.  Again it\nopened, again it shut.  At the third attempt a waif of a man came in.\nNo such figure had been looked for; more ragged and unkempt than the\naverage beggar, with no shirt beneath his coat and bare feet in broken\nshoes, he found my father at a loss for words.  'You must have had\naccess to many books when you wrote that essay,' was what he said.\n'That,' said Thompson, his shyness at once replaced by an acerbity that\nafterwards became one of the most familiar of his never-to-be-resented\nmannerisms, 'that is precisely where the essay fails.  I had no books\nby me at the time save Aeschylus and Blake.' There was little to be\ndone for him at that interview save the extraction of a promise to call\nagain.  He made none of the confidences characteristic of a man seeking\nsympathy and alms.  He was secretive and with no eagerness for plans\nfor his benefit, and refused the offer of a small weekly sum that would\nenable him to sleep in a bed and sit at a table.\"\n\nBy patience and delicately offered kindnesses Mr. and Mrs. Meynell at\nlength won the difficult privilege of helping the shy, nervous,\nhigh-strung spirit wandering in pain, hunger and exile amid the\nindecencies of extreme penury in a great city.  They were helped by the\nfriendly sympathy and care of Premonstratensian and Franciscan monks.\nThompson had sounded, and become familiar with, the depths of social\ndegradation in all its external aspects of sordidness.  The most\nextraordinary part of his singular experience is that he affords a\nstriking instance of the triumph of soul and mind over beleaguering\ncircumstance.  The nightmare of his environment failed to subdue him.\nHe preserved his spiritual sensitiveness, and literary ideals of a most\nexalted kind, through the most depressing and demoralizing experiences.\nThe following passage in that first essay offered to Mr. Meynell,\nentitled \"Paganism: Old and New,\" a vindication of Christian over pagan\nideals in art, shows the rich, colorful tone of mind of one who could\nwalk unstained among the world's impurities.  \"Bring back then, I say,\nin conclusion, even the best age of Paganism, and you smite beauty on\nthe cheek.  But you _cannot_ bring back the best age of Paganism, the\nage when Paganism was a faith.  None will again behold Apollo in the\nforefront of the morning, or see Aphrodite in the upper air loose the\nlong lustre of her golden locks.  But you _may_ bring back--_dii\navertant omen_--the Paganism of the days of Pliny, and Statius, and\nJuvenal; of much philosophy, and little belief; of superb villas and\nsuperb taste; of banquets for the palate in the shape of cookery, and\nbanquets for the eye in the shape of art; of poetry singing dead songs\non dead themes with the most polished and artistic vocalisation; of\neverything most polished, from the manners to the marble floors; of\nvice carefully drained out of sight, and large fountains of virtue\nspringing in the open air;--in one word, a most shining Paganism\nindeed--as putrescence also shines.\"  Unlike George Gissing and so many\nothers who had to wade to celebrity through sloughs of bitter\ndestitution, Francis Thompson felt no inclination to capitalize his\nexpert knowledge of back streets and alleys for profit and the morbid\nentertainment of the curious.  His single failing in yielding to the\nattraction of an insidious drug seemed to be impotent to affect his\nhigh admirations and his clear perceptions in the regions of honor and\nreligion.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Yea, faileth now even dream\n  The dreamer  _Page 55_]\n\nIt is surely one of the literary glories of a distinguished family that\nMr. and Mrs. Meynell succeeded in helping Thompson to emancipate\nhimself from the enslavement of a tyrannic habit.  His poetic genius\nbegan to flower in the new liberty.  For the next ten years interest in\nhis poetry and literary friends and connections, few and select, made\nhis life comparatively happy.  But he maintained a large measure of\nindependence to the last.  That he was never ungrateful to those who\nbefriended him, his poems are ample proof.  But in London he always had\nhis own lodgings in a cheap but respectable quarter of the city.  His\nunpunctual and preoccupied manner sometimes created small distresses\nfor his devoted friends to relieve.  During the last ten years of his\nlife he wrote little poetry.  His vitality, never vigorous, was ebbing\nand unequal to the demands of inspired verse.  But during these years\nof decline he wrote much golden prose.  He was a regular and highly\nvalued contributor to the _Academy_, the _Athenaeum_, the _Nation_, and\nthe _Daily Chronicle_.  One can hardly fail to be impressed by the mere\nindustry of a writer of reputed slack habits of work.  The published\nvolume of his selected essays is literary criticism, as learned and\nallusive as Matthew Arnold's, and as nicely poised, with the advantage\nof being poised in more rarified heights than Arnold's wings could hope\nto scale.  In this book is his classic and most wonderful essay on\nShelley, written before his strength began to flag, in which prose\nseems to be carried off its feet, as it were, in a very storm of poetic\nimpulse.  The published essays are not a tithe of Thompson's writings\nfor the press.  Moreover, we have a study of Blessed John de la Salle,\na little volume on \"Health and Holiness,\" and a large \"Life of St.\nIgnatius Loyola,\" none of them suggesting even remotely the plantigrade\nwriting of the mechanical hack.\n\nDuring the last year of his life, when consumption had almost\ncompletely undermined resistance, his old habit reasserted its empire.\nBut it was not for long, and can hardly be said to have hastened the\nend, which came on November 13, 1907, in the Hospital of St. John and\nSt. Elizabeth.  He was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green, and\non his coffin were roses from George Meredith's garden, with the\npoet-novelist's message: \"A true poet, one of the small band.\"\n\nThe \"Hound of Heaven\" has been called the greatest ode in the English\nlanguage.  Such was the contemporary verdict of some of the most\nrespected critics of the time, and the conviction of its justness\ndeepens with the passing of years.  Recall the writers of great odes,\nMilton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley,\nColeridge,--the best they have done will not outstare the \"Hound of\nHeaven.\"  Where shall we find its equal for exaltation of mood that\nknows no fatigue from the first word to the last?  The motion of\nangelic hosts must be like the movement of this ode, combining in some\nmarvellous and mysterious way the swiftness of lightning with the\nstately progress of a pageant white with the blinding white light of an\nawful Presence.  The note of modernness is the quality which is most\nlikely to mislead us in forecasting favorably the durability of\ncontemporary poetry, appealing as it does to so many personal issues\nirrelevant to the standards of immortal art.  This is precisely the\nnote which is least conspicuous in the \"Hound of Heaven.\"  The poem\nmight have been written in the days of Shakespeare, or, in a different\nspeech, by Dante or Calderon.  The Rev. Francis P. LeBuffe, S. J., has\nwritten an interesting book on the \"Hound of Heaven,\" pointing out the\nanalogy between the poem and the psalms of David; and another Jesuit,\nthe late Rev. J. F. X. O'Connor, in a published \"Study\" of the poem,\nsays that in it Francis Thompson \"seems to sing, in verse, the thought\nof St. Ignatius in the spiritual exercises,--the thought of St. Paul in\nthe tender, insistent love of Christ for the soul, and the yearning of\nChrist for that soul which ever runs after creatures, till the love of\nChrist wakens in it a love of its God, which dims and deadens all love\nof creatures except through love for Him.  This was the love of St.\nPaul, of St. Ignatius, of St. Stanislaus, of St. Francis of Assist, of\nSt. Clare, of St. Teresa.\"\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  The hid battlements of Eternity:\n  Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then\n  Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again  _Page 56_]\n\nThe neologisms and archaic words employed in the poem seem to be a\nlegitimate and instinctive effort of the poet's inspiration to soar\nabove the limitations of time and to liberate itself from the transient\naccretions of a living, and therefore constantly changing, mode of\nspeech.  He strove after an enfranchisement of utterance, devoid of\nstratifying peculiarities, assignable to no age or epoch, and\nunderstood of all.  A soul-shaking thought, prevalent throughout\nChristendom, was felt imaginatively by a highly endowed poet, and, like\nimpetuous volcanic fires that fling heavenward mighty fragments and\nboulders of mountain in their red release, found magnificent expression\nin elemental grandeurs of language, shot through with the wild lights\nof hidden flames and transcending all pettiness of calculated artifice\nand fugitive fashion.\n\nThe dominating idea in the \"Hound of Heaven\" is so familiar, so--one\nmight say--innate, that it is almost impudent to undertake to explain\nit.  Even in the cases of persons to whom the reading of poetry is an\nuncultivated and difficult art, there is an instantaneous leap of\nrecognition as the thought emerges from the cloudy glories of the poem.\nStill, modern popular systems of philosophy are so dehumanizing in\ntheir tendencies, and so productive of what may be called secondary and\nartificially planted instincts, that it is perhaps not entirely useless\nto attempt to elucidate the obvious.\n\n\"The heavens,\" says Hazlitt, \"have gone farther off and become\nastronomical.\"  The home-like conception of the universe in mediaeval\ntimes, when dying was like going out of one room into another, and man\nentertained a neighborly feeling for the angels, has a tendency to\ndisappear as science unfolds more and more new infinities of time and\nspace, new infinities of worlds and forms of life.  The curious notion\nhas crept in, that man must sink lower into insignificance with every\nnew discovery of the vastness and huge design of creation.  God would\nseem to have over-reached Himself in disclosing His power and majesty,\nstunning and overwhelming the intellect and heart with the crushing\nweight of the evidences of His Infinity.  We have modern thinkers\nregarding Christian notions of the Godhead as impossible to a mind\nacquainted with the paralyzing revelations of scientific knowledge.\nThe late John Fiske used to deride what he called the anthromorphism of\nthe Christian idea of God, as of a venerable, white-bearded man.  And\nthese philosophers deem it more reverent to deny any personal\nrelationship between God and man for the reason that God is too great\nto be interested in man, and man too little to be an object of interest.\n\nBefore indicating the essential error of this attitude, it is necessary\nto state, merely for the sake of historical accuracy, that the\nChristian conception of the Godhead, as expressed by St. Thomas\nAquinas, Dante, Lessius, and a host of Christian writers, has never\nbeen approached in its sublime suggestions of Infinite and Eternal\npower and glory by any modern philosopher.  In the second and third\nLectures of Cardinal Newman's, \"Scope and Nature of University\nEducation,\" there is an outline of the Christian teaching of the nature\nof God which, in painstaking accuracy of thought and sheer grandeur of\nconception, has no counterpart in modern literature.\n\nLet us always remember that telescope and microscope in all the range\nof their discoveries have not uncovered the existence of anything\ngreater than man himself.  The most massive star of the Milky Way is\nnot so wonderful as the smallest human child.  Moreover man's present\nentourage of illimitable space and countless circling suns and planets\ncannot be said to have cost an omnipotent God more trouble, so to\nspeak, than a universe a million times smaller.  The prodigality of the\nCreator reveals His endless resources; if the vision of sidereal\nabysses and flaming globes intimidates me and makes me cynical about my\nunimportance, is it not because I have lost the high consciousness of a\nspiritual being and forgotten the unplumbed chasms which separate\nmatter from mind?\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Whether man's heart or life it be which yields\n  Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields\n  Be dunged with rotten death?  _Page 57_]\n\nIn Francis Thompson's Catholic philosophy, which must be partially\nunderstood if the reader is to get at the heart of the \"Hound of\nHeaven,\" the tremendous manifestations of God's attributes of power\nprepare us to expect equally tremendous manifestations of His\nattributes of love.  The more prodigal God is discovered to be in\nlavish expenditures of omnipotence in the material universe, the more\nalert the soul becomes to look for and to detect overwhelming surprises\nof Divine Love.  Hence, to Thompson there was nothing irrational in the\nspecial revelation of God to man, in His Incarnation, His death on the\ncross, and His sacramental life in the Church.  The Divine energy of\nGod's love, as displayed in the supernatural revelation of Himself,\nseems to be even vaster and more intense than the Divine energy of\ncreation displayed in the revelation of nature.  Every new revelation\nof God's power and wisdom which science unfolds serves only to restore\na balance in our mind between God's power and God's love.  The more\nastronomical the heavens become, the closer they bring God to us.\n\nAnother conception of God to be kept in mind, if we are to grasp the\nmeaning of the \"Hound of Heaven,\" is the omniscient character, the\ninfinite perfection, of God's knowledge.  God sees each of us as fully\nand completely as if there were no one else and nothing else to see\nexcept us.  Practically speaking, God gives each one of us His\nundivided attention.  And through this spacious channel of His Divine\nand exclusive attention pour the ocean-tides of His love.  The weak\nsoul is afraid of the terrible excess of Divine Love.  It tries to\nelude it; but Love meets it at every cross-road and by-path, down which\nit would run and hide itself, and gently turns it back.\n\nFrancis Thompson, in an interpretation of \"A Narrow Vessel,\" has left\nus in prose a description of human weakness and wilfulness reluctant of\nits true bliss.  The following passage is an excellent commentary on\nthe \"Hound of Heaven.\" \"Though God,\" he says, \"asks of the soul but to\nlove Him what it may, and is ready to give an increased love for a poor\nlittle, the soul feels that this infinite love demands naturally its\nwhole self, that if it begin to love God it may not stop short of all\nit has to yield.  It is troubled, even if it did go a brief way, on the\nupward path; it fears and recoils from the whole great surrender, the\nconstant effort beyond itself which is sensibly laid on it.  It falls\nback with relieved contentment on some human love, a love on its own\nplane, where somewhat short of total surrender may go to requital,\nwhere no upward effort is needful.  And it ends by giving for the\nmeanest, the most unsufficing and half-hearted return, that utter\nself-surrender and self-effacement which it denied to God.  Even (how\nrarely) if the return be such as mortal may render, how empty and\nunsatiated it leaves the soul.  One always is less generous to love\nthan the other.\"\n\nGod walks morning, noon and eve in the garden of the soul, calling it\nto a happiness which affrights it.  And the timid and self-seeking soul\nstrives to hide itself under the stars, under the clouds of heaven,\nunder human love, under the distractions of work and pleasure and\nstudy, offers itself as a wistful servitor to child and man and nature,\nif they will but afford it a refuge from the persistent and gentle\naccents of pursuivant Love.  But all things are in league with God, Who\nmade and rules them.  They cannot conspire against Him.  They betray\nthe refugee.  He turns in abject surrender, and is astonished to find\nthe rest and happiness that he quested for so wildly.  The Divine\nthwartings which had harassed the soul become a tender mystery of\nInfinite Love forcing itself upon an unworthy and unwilling creature.\nSomeone has said that every life is a romance of Divine Love.  The\n\"Hound of Heaven\" is a version of that romance which smites the soul\ninto an humble mood of acknowledgment and penitence.\n\nJAMES J. DALY, S. J.\n\n\n\n\nOF \"THE HOUND OF HEAVEN\"\n\nFrancis Thompson, born in Preston in 1859, spent the greater part of\nhis mature life in London where he died in 1907.  He was educated at\nUshaw College near Durham, and afterwards went to Owens College,\nManchester, to qualify as a doctor.\n\nBut his gift as prescriber and healer lay elsewhere than in the\nconsulting-room.  He walked to London in search of a living, finding,\nindeed, a prolonged near approach to death in its streets; until at\nlength his literary powers were discovered by himself and by others,\nand he began, in his later twenties, an outpouring of verse which\nendured for a half-decade of years--his \"Poems,\" his \"Sister Songs,\"\nand his \"New Poems.\"\n\n\"The Hound of Heaven\" \"marked the return of the nineteenth century to\nThomas a Kempis.\"  The great poetry of it transcended, in itself and in\nits influence, all conventions; so that it won the love of a Catholic\nMystic like Coventry Patmore; was included by Dean Beeching in his\n\"Lyra Sacra\" among its older high compeers; and gave new heart to quite\nanother manner of man, Edward Burne-Jones.\n\nW. M.\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nILLUSTRATIONS\n\n\nWhen she lit her glimmering tapers . . . . . . . . .   _Frontispiece_\n\nTitanic glooms of chasmed fears\n\nAcross the margent of the world I fled\n\nI said to dawn: Be sudden\n\nI knew how the clouds arise\n\nNaked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!\n\nYea, faileth now even dream\n\nThe hid battlements of Eternity\n\nWhether man's heart or life it be which yields\n\nI fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways\n\nLest, having Him, I must have naught beside\n\nThunder-driven, They clanged His chariot\n\nIn her wind-walled palace\n\nI shook the pillaring hours\n\nAnd now my heart is as a broken fount\n\nThat Voice is round me like a bursting sea\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways\n  Of my own mind]\n\n\n\nTHE HOUND OF HEAVEN\n\n  I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;\n  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;\n  I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways\n    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears\n  I hid from Him, and under running laughter.\n        Up vistaed hopes, I sped;\n        And shot, precipitated,\n  Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,\n    From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.\n        But with unhurrying chase,\n        And unperturbed pace,\n      Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,\n        They beat--and a Voice beat\n        More instant than the Feet--\n      \"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n        I pleaded, out law-wise,\n  By many a hearted casement, curtained red,\n    Trellised with intertwining charities\n  (For, though I knew His love Who followed,\n        Yet was I sore adread\n  Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside);\n  But, if one little casement parted wide,\n    The gust of His approach would clash it to.\n    Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.\n  Across the margent of the world I fled,\n    And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,\n    Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;\n        Fretted to dulcet jars\n  And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.\n  I said to dawn: Be sudden; to eve: Be soon--\n    With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over\n        From this tremendous Lover!\n  Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!\n    I tempted all His servitors, but to find\n  My own betrayal in their constancy,\n  In faith to Him their fickleness to me,\n    Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.\n  To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;\n    Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.\n        But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,\n      The long savannahs of the blue;\n          Or whether, Thunder-driven,\n      They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven\n  Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:--\n    Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.\n          Still with unhurrying chase,\n          And unperturbed pace,\n  Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,\n          Came on the following Feet,\n          And a Voice above their beat--\n  \"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.\"\n\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Thunder-driven,\n  They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven\n  Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet]\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n  I sought no more that after which I strayed\n      In face of man or maid;\n      But still within the little children's eyes\n    Seems something, something that replies,\n  _They_ at least are for me, surely for me!\n  I turned me to them very wistfully;\n  But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair\n      With dawning answers there,\n  Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.\n\n\n[Illustration: In her wind-walled palace]\n\n\n  Come then, ye other children,\n    Nature's--share\n    With me\" (said I) \"your delicate fellowship;\n    Let me greet you lip to lip,\n    Let me twine with you caresses,\n        Wantoning\n    With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,\n        Banqueting\n    With her in her wind-walled palace,\n    Underneath her azured dais,\n    Quaffing, as your taintless way is,\n        From a chalice\n  Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.\"\n        So it was done;\n  _I_ in their delicate fellowship was one--\n  Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.\n        _I_ knew all the swift importings\n        On the wilful face of skies;\n        I knew how the clouds arise,\n        Spumed of the wild sea-snortings;\n          All that's born or dies\n      Rose and drooped with; made them shapers\n  Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine--\n        With them joyed and was bereaven.\n        I was heavy with the even,\n    When she lit her glimmering tapers\n      Round the day's dead sanctities.\n      I laughed in the morning's eyes.\n  I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,\n      Heaven and I wept together,\n  And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;\n  Against the red throb of its sunset-heart\n          I laid my own to beat,\n          And share commingling heat;\n  But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.\n  In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.\n  For ah! we know not what each other says,\n        These things and I; in sound _I_ speak--\n  _Their_ sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.\n  Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake by drouth;\n        Let her, if she would owe me,\n  Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me\n        The breasts o' her tenderness:\n  Never did any milk of hers once bless\n          My thirsting mouth.\n        Nigh and nigh draws the chase,\n          With unperturbed pace,\n        Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,\n          And past those noised Feet\n          A Voice comes yet more fleet--\n        \"Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.\"\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  I shook the pillaring hours\n  And pulled my life upon me]\n\n\n  Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!\n  My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,\n          And smitten me to my knee;\n          I am defenceless utterly.\n          I slept, methinks, and woke,\n  And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.\n  In the rash lustihead of my young powers,\n          I shook the pillaring hours\n  And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,\n  I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--\n  My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.\n  My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,\n  Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.\n      Yea, faileth now even dream\n  The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;\n  Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist\n  I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,\n  Are yielding; cords of all too weak account\n  For earth, with heavy griefs so overplussed.\n        Ah! is Thy love indeed\n  A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,\n  Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?\n          Ah! must--\n          Designer infinite!--\n  Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?\n  My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;\n  And now my heart is as a broken fount,\n  Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever\n          From the dank thoughts that shiver\n  Upon the sighful branches of my mind.\n          Such is; what is to be?\n  The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?\n  I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;\n  Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds\n  From the hid battlements of Eternity:\n  Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then\n  Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again;\n          But not ere Him who summoneth\n          I first have seen, enwound\n  And now my heart is as a broken fount,\n  Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever\n  From the dank thoughts that shiver\n  With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;\n  His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.\n  Whether man's heart or life it be which yields\n          Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields\n          Be dunged with rotten death?\n\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  And now my heart is as a broken fount,\n  Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever\n  From the dank thoughts that shiver]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n  Now of that long pursuit\n  Comes on at hand the bruit;\n  That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:\n          \"And is thy earth so marred,\n          Shattered in shard on shard?\n    Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!\n        Strange, piteous, futile thing,\n  Wherefore should any set thee love apart?\n  Seeing none but I makes much of naught\" (He said),\n  \"And human love needs human meriting:\n        How hast thou merited--\n  Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?\n        Alack, thou knowest not\n  How little worthy of any love thou art!\n  Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,\n        Save Me, save only Me?\n  All which I took from thee I did but take,\n        Not for thy harms,\n  But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.\n        All which thy child's mistake\n  Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:\n        Rise, clasp My hand, and come.\"\n          Halts by me that footfall:\n          Is my gloom, after all,\n    Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?\n          \"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,\n          I am He Whom thou seekest!\n  Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.\"\n\n\n\n[Illustration: That Voice is round me like a bursting sea]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Back end papers]","title":"The Hound of Heaven","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":8236}