The Hound of Heaven

Thompson, Tabb, and Trench

There are great poets who have been forgotten or remain obscure. The same could be said of certain genres of poetry.

The beautiful 182-line poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” written by the British poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907), first published in Merry England in 1890 is his best known - and arguably the best known poem about the futility of trying to escape from God. What a magnificent title! And who isn’t immediately gripped by the vision of flight in Thompson’s opening lines:

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.”

Whether the poem is autobiographical or not seems an academic question, and I’ll address that in a future post, but today I want to point out (the obvious) that Thompson wasn’t the only poet - not the first or last - to show the futility of trying to escape from God (the inspired pages of Scripture often insist the same). Here are two examples - the first from Anglican (Church of Ireland) Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trent (1807-1886) - “If There Had Anywhere”:

If there had anywhere appeared in space

Another place of refuge where to flee,

My soul had found a refuge in that place

And not in Thee.

For we against creation’s bars had beat

Like prisoned eagles, through great world’s had sought

Though but a foot of ground to plant our feet,

Where Thou wert not.

But only when I found in earth and air

And heaven and hell that such could nowhere be,

That I could not flee from Thee anywhere,

I fled to Thee.

The second example is that of Father John Banister Tabb (1845-1909), the Catholic priest well-known for his quatrains (four line stanzas) - “The Wanderer”:

For one astray, behold

The Master, leaves the ninety and the nine,

Nor rest till, love controlled,

The Discord moves in Harmony divine.

These are three examples of what must be dozens, if not hundreds of poems of the same frustrated escape - there must be many more, so many that a genre of its own exists. I’d like to see someone assemble in book-form a volume of poetry dedicated to the futility of trying to outrun God. What would the title of such a collection be? It would be hard to beat The Hound of Heaven.