“BIRD OF THE sun, the stars’ wild honey-bee,” there is no poet whose flight makes so securely for the sun and the stars as this poet. He is at home among the stars, his soul keeping the loftiest company, however ill his body fared on earth. The flight of “The Hound of Heaven” is through the stars, and through the stars the feet of the Pursuer. I know nothing in literature which has the sense of flight and pursuit like this. The sound of the flying feet beats through the magnificent passages, till it dies off in the exquisite cessation and silence of the close when the pursued is taken to the breast of the Pursuer. This poem more than any other must be Francis Thompson’s warrant for immortality. To read it is to read breathlessly.
I fled Him down the nights and down the days,
I fled Him down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways,
Of my own mind: and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him and under running laughter:
Up vistaed hopes I sped
And shot precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet:
“All things betray thee who betrayest Me.”
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities:
For though I knew His love Who followèd
Yet was I sore adread,
Lest having Him I must have naught beside.
But if one little casement parted wide
The gust of His approach would clang it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter of their clangèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to dawn—Be sudden: to eve, Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover!
Float thy vague veil about me lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me.
Their traitorous trueness and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept smoothly-fleet
The long savannahs of the blue,
Or whether thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot athwart a heaven
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
The whole poem is magnificent, down to its strange, tender, unexpected close.
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught,” He said.
“And human love needs human meriting.
How hast thou merited?
Of all men’s clotted clay the dingiest clot:
Alack thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost I have stored for thee at home.
Rise, take my hand and come!”
Is my gloom after all
Shade of His hand outstretched caressingly?
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.”
Patmore considered “The Hound of Heaven” one of the very few great odes of which the language can boast. It is unmistakably of the immortal things, and if Francis Thompson had written only that one poem his place among the immortals would be assured. Here, surely, Heaven is taken by violence and the violent bear it away.