Hounded by Heaven

 The Hound of Heaven

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 chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

All right, however bad my day is, it’s a lot better than most of Francis Thompson’s probably were.

I know this because I had to take a quick trot over to Wikipedia, to check in on Thompson, since in fact I had never heard of the guy, whom G. K. Chesterton called “the greatest poetic energy since Browning.”

Well, Thompson got acclaim at the end, but it wasn’t easy getting there. Born in 1859, he studied to be a doctor, became one, but never practiced. Instead, he moved to London, hoping to be a writer, but did menial work. Then ill health struck, and he began taking opium. And that led him to the street—he was homeless and destitute for years, until 1888, when he was rescued by a couple, Wilfred and Alice Meynell. But he remained an invalid all his life; at one point he contemplated suicide, but had a vision of the poet Thomas Chatterton. Chatterton had killed himself a century back, but apparently drifted back to nix the idea to Thompson. Common stuff for poets….

So Thompson had been on the street, writing letters and poetry to the newspapers, who proclaimed that there was a genius greater than Milton walking around out there—but where, exactly? Thompson had no return address, since he was down sleeping with all the other vagrants down by the Thames. Although at one point, a prostitute took him in, and he lived off her earnings.

Finally in 1893 he published his first book of poems, in which the most famous of his work, The Hound of Heaven, appeared. But though he attained critical success, his health was never good; he died at age 48 in 1907.

I am today a refugee from my life, since every annoyance seems to have been pressed on me. Note the word “annoyance,” which I use deliberately. For whatever reason, I cannot wake up in the morning—today I arose at noon, having been up at midnight for an hour or so. And so I missed a class, which I hate doing. My computer is quitting the Internet every thirty seconds or so, and so I am using my spare laptop, which has the feeling of Linus’s piano. There is a major leak in Raf’s bathroom, and guess who has to fix it? The cats have taken to pissing everywhere, and the ficus tree which is growing on the side of the building is shooting its root into our gallery. Which, by the way, has huge pot and pans in it, to collect the water that courses in at the smallest rain.

Two days ago, I was feeling rapturous; today I am holding on by a silk thread. I feel as if, rather than the hound of heaven, the gnats of hell are buzzing around my heads. What will I do?

What I always do, dammit. I’ve lost my mind and found it again, I’ve lost my mother and given birth to her again, I’ve lost my job and found something else. In short, I’m luckier than most; many other people have it much worse than I. I know about iguanas falling from the trees, and I know what they—and I—gotta do.

I wonder, though, how it is that some of us, living yes in London but on the streets, can still hear the feet and the voice of the hound of heaven. And I wonder, as well, about the people who don’t hear. Are they happier?

Here’s Thompson’s answer:

Ah, fondest, blindest weakest,

I am he whom thou seekest!

Thou drawest love from thee, who drawest me.