Hound of Heaven

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The Hound of Heaven is a 182 line religious poem by Francis Thompson, and the source of much of his posthumous reputation. It was included in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917). It was also an influence on J. R. R. Tolkien, who read it a few years before that.

The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and impertubed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit. The Neuman Press "Book of Verse", 1988.

Thompson's poem was the inspiration for a series of 23 paintings by the American painter R. H. Ives Gammell (1893 - 1981). Titled, "A Pictorial Sequence Painted by R. H. Ives Gammell Based on The Hound of Heaven," it is considered Gammell's magnum opus. Gammell began making plans to execute the pictorial sequence during World War II and completed the series in 1956. For his paintings, Gammell used symbols drawn from C. G. Jung, primitive and medieval cultures, and Biblical and mythological sources, to give visual form to Thompson's poem. The "Pictorial Sequence" is currently housed at the Maryhill Museum of Art, Goldendale, Washington, USA.

Thompson's poem is also the source of the phrase, "with all deliberate speed," used by the Supreme Court in Brown II, the remedy phase of the famous decision on school desegregation.^[1]