The Hound of Heaven

Francis Thompson was born in Lancashire in 1859. After failing his final exams three times at medical school, in despair, he left home to run away to London. Already a drug addict he ended up sleeping rough in the streets around Covent Garden. In the day time he sold newspapers and matches to support himself.

At an all time low, when he was contemplating suicide, he noticed one of his own poems published in a magazine edited by the poet Wilfred  Meynell. It became a turning point for Thompson and led to Meynell and his wife (both of whom were Christians) rescuing and restoring him to health in a Sussex monastery.

It was while here that Thompson wrote his best works of poetry, including the famous poem “The Hound of Heaven” which describes someone running away from pursuing footsteps. The poem was clearly a description of Thompson’s own experience, discovering that the ‘pursuing footsteps’ from which he was running away, were in fact those of a loving Heavenly Father running after His lost child.

I fled Him down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labrinthine ways
Of my own mind;  and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him……

from those strong feet that followed, followed after.
………But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat …….

All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand and come!”

The poem ends with the fugitive making a wonderful discovery:

“Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of his hand, outstretched,
caressing

From ‘The Hound of Heaven’

This is God who loves and identifies with the widow and the orphan, the underdog, the outcast and who always makes room for the stranger. With ‘His hand, outstretched caressingly‘ and with those words ringing in my ears ‘Rise, clasp My hand and come‘, how can I resist but come!

A Vision for London

Thompson’s other famous work, “In No Strange Land”, no doubt, also describes his own experience of sleeping in the streets of Covent Garden. The poem contains a wonderful Christ-centred vision for London, or indeed any place inhabited by mankind:

………..The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

                    

                         

                                                 

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