Hound of Heaven

I've always had a special place in my heart for the poem Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson the Catholic poet. Something about a God so loving that it would persue someone who ran in ignorant fear always felt real to me. Perhaps, that is why when I converted to Christianity, God stalked me in the quiet places and in the public places until I stopped fighting back. What does this poem remind you of?

The Hound of Heaven


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 midst of tears

I hid from him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated

Adown titanic glooms of chasmed hears

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.

I pleaded, outlaw--wise by many a hearted casement,

curtained red, trellised with inter-twining charities,

For though I knew His love who followed,

Yet was I sore adread, lest having Him,

I should have nought beside.

But if one little casement parted wide,

The gust of his approach would clash 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 on their clange d bars,

Fretted to dulcet jars and silvern chatter

The pale ports of 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 thwart a heaven,

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn of their feet,

Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following feet, and a Voice above their beat:

Nought shelters thee who wilt not shelter Me.

I sought no more that after which I strayed

In face of Man or Maid.

But still within the little childrens' eyes

Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me.

But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair,

With dawning answers there,

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.

Come then, ye other children, Nature's

Share with me, said I, your delicate fellowship.

Let me greet you lip to lip,

Let me twine with you caresses,

Wantoning with our Lady Mother's vagrant tresses,

Banqueting with her in her wind walled palace,

Underneath her azured dai:s,

Quaffing, as your taintless way is,

From a chalice, lucent weeping out of the dayspring.

So it was done.

I in their delicate fellowship was one.

Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies,

I knew all the swift importings on the wilful face of skies,

I knew how the clouds arise,

Spumed of the wild sea-snortings.

All that's born or dies,

Rose and drooped with,

Made them shapers of mine own moods, or wailful, or Divine.

With them joyed and was bereaven.

I was heavy with the Even,

when she lit her glimmering tapers round the day's dead sanctities.

I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

and its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.

Against the red throb of its sunset heart,

I laid my own to beat

And share commingling heat.

But not by that, by that was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.

For ah! we know what each other says,

these things and I; In sound I speak,

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake my drouth.

Let her, if she would owe me

Drop yon blue-bosomed veil of sky

And show me the breasts o' her tenderness.

Never did any milk of hers once bless my thirsting mouth.

Nigh and nigh draws the chase, with unperturbe d pace

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

And past those noise d feet, a Voice comes yet more fleet:

Lo, nought contentst thee who content'st nought Me.

Naked, I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke. My harness, piece by piece,

thou'st hewn from me

And smitten me to my knee,

I am defenceless, utterly.

I slept methinks, and awoke.

And slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

I shook the pillaring hours,

and pulled my life upon me.

Grimed with smears,

I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years--

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,

Have puffed and burst like sunstarts on a stream.

Yeah, faileth now even dream the dreamer

and the lute, the lutanist.

Even the linked fantasies in whose blossomy twist,

I swung the Earth, a trinket at my wrist,

Have yielded, cords of all too weak account,
For Earth, with heavy grief so overplussed.

Ah! is thy Love indeed a weed,

albeit an Amaranthine weed,

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?

Ah! must, Designer Infinite,

Ah! must thou char the wood 'ere thou canst limn with it ?

My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust.

And now my heart is as a broken fount,

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

From the dank thoughts that shiver upon the sighful branches of my
mind.

Such is. What is to be ?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds,

Yet ever and anon, a trumpet sounds

From the hid battlements of Eternity.

Those shaken mists a space unsettle,

Then round the half-glimpse d turrets, slowly wash again.

But not 'ere Him who summoneth

I first have seen, enwound

With glooming robes purpureal; Cypress crowned.

His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.

Whether Man's Heart or Life it be that yield thee harvest,

Must thy harvest fields be dunged with rotten death ?

Now of that long pursuit,

Comes at hand the bruit.

That Voice is round me like a bursting Sea:

And is thy Earth so marred,

Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me.

Strange, piteous, futile thing;

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 Man'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'st but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.

All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,

I have stored for thee at Home.

Rise, clasp my hand, and come.

Halts by me that Footfall.

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.