Francis Thompson: 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 chasme d hears 
From those strong feet that followed, followed after 
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe d 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, 
Spume d 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.

Public Domain

Francis Thompson (1859 – 1907) was an English poet and Catholic mystic. At the behest of his father, a doctor, he entered medical school at the age of 18, but at 26 left home to pursue his talent as a writer and poet. He spent three years on the streets of London, supporting himself with menial labour, becoming addicted to opium which he took to relieve a nervous problem. In 1888 a married couple, publishers, read his poetry and took him into their home for a time. They published his first book Poems in 1893. In 1897, he switched to writing prose, drawing inspiration from life in the countryside, Wales and Storrington. His health, always fragile, continued to deteriorate, and he died of tuberculosis in 1907. By that time he had published three books of poetry, along with other works and essays.

Thompson’s most famous poem, The Hound of Heaven, describes the pursuit of a person by God. Phrases from his poetry have been lifted by others and made famous. The U.S.Supreme Court in Brown II used “with all deliberate speed” for the remedy sought in their famous decision on school desegregation. A phrase in “The Kingdom of God” is the source of the title of Han Suyin’s novel A Many-Splendoured Thing. G. K. Chesterton said shortly after his death that “with Francis Thompson we lost the greatest poetic energy since Browning.” Among Thompson’s devotees was the young J. R. R. Tolkien, who purchased a volume of Thompson’s works in 1913–1914, and later said that it was an important influence on his own writing. Halliday Sutherland borrowed the second line of The Hound of Heaven for the title of his 1933 autobiographical best-seller “The Arches of the Years”. The American novelist Madeleine L’Engle used a line from the poem “The Mistress of Vision” as the title of her last Vicki Austin novel, Troubling a Star.

A persistent theory put forward in 1988 by the pathologist Joseph C. Rupp, revived periodically, posits that Francis Thompson was Jack the Ripper. This intriguing theory is based on circumstantial evidence, including that Thompson had studied medicine (the murderer showed a knowledge of human anatomy); Thompson had written about the sinfulness of prostitutes (all six murders occurred on Saints’ Days); Thompson lived near where the murders occurred and may have known one of the prostitutes; and one of his unpublished poems “The Nightmare of the Witchbabies” describes a knight killing a woman with a knife. However, the accusation that Thompson is the famous murderer of Spitalfields has never been established sufficiently to be accepted as true by most historians.

This post was curated by Michael Simms