"The Hound of Heaven," A Biblical View of God
- cjoywarner
- Feb 12
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 25
This famous ode of the late-Victorian era was composed by one of the unlikeliest poets of British literature. And yet, as a brilliant nobody struggling with a lifetime addiction to doctor-prescribed opium, Francis Thompson was, in fact, the perfect person to write this lyrical narrative. Who is better qualified to write of his own conversion than the one who is so lost that only God can find him? Now even a possible suspect as Jack the Ripper, Francis Thompson began his life piously enough.
A devout Catholic in an age of foggy doubt and waning faith, Thompson was born in December of 1859, the same year in which Charles Darwin published his infamous Origin of Species. While poets as great as Alfred, Lord Tennyson could speak of “lame hands of faith” groping after God (In Memoriam A. H. H.), with John Henry Newman pleading, “Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,” Thompson never doubted God’s existence. He was all too painfully aware of Him. Why Thompson was rejected as unsuitable for the priesthood, or why he twice failed his medical examinations, or why he was rejected even from enlisting as a soldier remain cruel jokes of society. To a man who endured bullying and beatings as a matter of course, it is no wonder that Thompson felt that God was against Him.
That he left his mark upon the world is now unmistakable. G. K. Chesterton said, after Thompson’s death, “with Francis Thompson we lost the greatest poetic energy since Browning.” Those who count him a great influence upon their writing include J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, who used the phrase, “the Hound of Heaven,” to characterize his own almost unwilling conversion to Christianity. A very long list of writers, playwrights, filmmakers, and actors have borrowed from Thompson’s masterpiece or have performed the work outright in altered form. A dramatic reading of the poem by David Suchet captures the suppressed tension and power of this epic journey of the lost soul returning to his God.
Almost Poe-esque in his ability to find fame posthumously, Thompson did enjoy a period of respite in his later years before returning to his addiction to opium. During this respite, in 1890, he published The Hound of Heaven, and thrived poetically for the next two years. To his publisher, Wilfrid Meynell, who had searched for him for many months prior to his success, after publishing Thompson’s poem, “The Passion of Mary,” in 1887, Thompson owed his stability and healing. Not only did the Meynell’s provide Thompson a place to live, they played a role in his long hospital stay in 1889, where he was cured of the opium addiction he had fought for ten years, to the extent of attempting to end his own life in 1888. A serious bout with tuberculosis in 1879 had caused Thompson’s doctor to prescribe opium, a tragic tale too often told.
The Hound of Heaven, then, captures Thompson’s eleven-year nightmare of running from himself and from God. That his conversion was genuine would seem obvious from his poem, but terrible nerve pains in Thompson’s later years lured him to return to his use of opium. He died of tuberculosis in 1907, at the age of 48. Always a man of slight build, Thompson weighed only 70 pounds at his death. The size of a child, he was laid to rest with these words of his own writing inscribed upon his grave, “Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.”
So poignant is Thompson’s life in an age riddled with disease, poverty, homelessness, and addiction, that we can only breathe, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” And we see in Thompson’s story that which resonates with the greatest minds of the Christian age in men such as C. S. Lewis. How such a great mind trapped in such a small body and burdened with the cares of the entire world while not finding a place at home within it could so eloquently capture the truth of Psalm 139 shows to us how omnipresent is the love of the God who pursues—and serves as a vivid correction of theological mist beleaguering our day.
Too often do we, like Tennyson and Newman, sing feeble songs of “chasing after God.” Bad theology and worse dishonesty, this vain profession simply is not so. Not only has God never moved, it is He, our Creator, who seeks to become our Redeemer. In no way a doctrine to be conflated with the Calvinist’s “irresistible grace,” the doctrine of the Great Shepherd of our souls who seeks tirelessly for that lost sheep is one we need to recapture in our day.
We think perhaps too glibly that this “lost soul” for whom Christ seeks is that one who strayed away after knowing Him—the backslider of heart. But I am not convinced it is this person alone of whom Christ speaks. If we take Christ at His Word when He blesses the children, that “of such is the kingdom of God,” and, if we take into account the age of accountability, we must see that every soul that has graced this earth at one time belonged to God. We have all become “lost” and need to be found. Oh, how this must pain the heart of our Great Savior!
When we read Thompson’s poem, The Hound of Heaven, we find striking parallels with Psalm 139, even though Thompson’s imagery does not draw directly from Scripture and, in fact, at times almost seems irreverent. Who, for example would ever compare God to a “Hound”? And yet Thompson himself uses this word only in his title. We can imagine in Thompson’s day some tweedy detective with his deerstalker cap and magnifying glass releasing bloodthirsty hounds on someone’s trail in the eerie streets of a London midnight. In days before technology could track us down, nature did, instead, whether to our salvation or peril. Thompson thinks this Hound of Heaven is tracking him to his doom.
All 182 lines of Thompson’s poem speak of an originality that cannot exist in the imagination alone. This poem is great because it was wrung from his soul. The vividness of the poem is all too real, and within its mirror we find our own depravity. In fact, I would venture to say that the person who has never seen himself thus has never truly been saved. If there were nothing else about Thompson’s haunting poem that rings true, it is his utter abject brokenness and self-loathing which at last rues the years that he resisted his only true Friend.
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Thompson would cry, and to our dying day, so should we! I encourage you to read this magnificent poem. It will be worth every minute you spare to spend on it.
David Suchet reads The Hound of Heaven
The Hound of Heaven text
Video of Thompson's Story:
This poem left a deep impression on me the first time I read it in college, and your analysis reminds me of how powerful the poem is. Praise God that He is relentless in His pursuit of His children!
I have always liked this poem but was unfamiliar with much of Thompson’s personal story, which now adds a new depth of meaning to his work!
This was interesting! Thank you for writing the post. :)