The Hound of Heaven

In her book The Flawless Mirror, where she records her 27-year association with her guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, Kamala Silva writes:

One Christmas, Master gave me a lovely printing of “The Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson. On long-past occasions I had heard him give part of it on the lecture platform. Now, in his room, sitting by him quietly, I referred to this poem he loved. His face lit up, and to my delight, as I had hoped, he began to repeat the immortal lines which picture God ever-pursuing while we run from Him.

Not only did Yogananda refer to the poem in his lectures but he even mentions it in his spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi and a recording of him reciting it can be found on “Songs of My Heart,” available from Self-Realization Fellowship. We might, therefore, justifiably ask what it was about this poem that so appealed to him.

Francis Thompson

Though the 182-line poem itself is well-known, it was written by a little-known English poet, Francis Thompson (1859-1907), and was published first by the literary magazine Merry England in July 1890 and subsequently in Thompson’s first volume of poems in 1893.

Thompson was born in the provincial, industrial town of Preston into a devout Catholic family. He had a love of literature from an early age, but his sensibility was not shared by his family, sent away to study in a seminary to test his vocation for the priesthood. When it became evident that this was not to be his life and given the fact that his father was a doctor, he entered medical school. Repeatedly failing the medical exams and amid growing tension with his family, Thompson went, in 1885, to London to pursue his wish to write, believing this to be his true vocation. He very soon found himself destitute and living on the streets.

But he had an even more serious problem. Having fallen ill with a fever at medical school, Thompson had been treated with laudanum, the medicinal liquid form of opium, and became addicted. Urged by the publisher of Merry England, he was persuaded to seek help, retiring to the countryside to recover in the priory at Storrington. It was there, in that pastoral setting, that he wrote “The Hound of Heaven.” After its publication, Thompson continued to write poetry and literary essays for another 17 years, until his death from tuberculosis in 1907, aged 47.

It is primarily for this poem, however, that Thompson is remembered. It has been called a Christian poem and he did become more and more ecclesiastical, as G.K. Chesterton puts it, in his later writings but the poem’s appeal is due to the fact that it transcends religion and expresses a universal spiritual experience that speaks to the souls of sincere truth seekers. In fact, J.R.R. Tolkein, who declared the poem had had a profound influence on his own writing, hailed it as: “…one of the most profound expressions of mature spiritual experience.”

It is not a difficult poem in the sense that its allegorical meaning is easily understood. In an early study of the poem in 1912, John Francis Xavier O’Conor writes:

As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and unperturbed 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.

In what follows, I juxtapose lines from the poem with quotes from Yogananda’s teachings and add a brief commentary. It is obviously not possible in the space of a short article to attempt a full analysis of the poem and show how the poem, in many ways, exhibits similarities with the teachings of Yogananda but a few salient points may be mentioned.

1.
“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.” (ll. 1-5)

The soul cannot find its lost happiness in material things for the simple reason that the comfort they offer is counterfeit. Having lost contact with divine bliss within, man hopes to satisfy his need for it in the pseudo-pleasures of the senses. On deeper levels of his being, however, he remains aware of the former, supernal state in God. True satisfaction eludes him, for what he seeks, while rushing restlessly from one sense pleasure to another, is his lost happiness in the Lord. -Paramhansa Yogananda

Everyone seeks happiness and it is their fundamental right to do so, though their main error is to seek it in the world of the senses rather than in God, for outer happiness is only ever transitory. For those, however, who seek it and find it in God, the search is over, for He is the only lasting happiness. As St. Augustine so succinctly put it, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” And this is what the protagonist of the poem comes to realize at the end of the poem; namely that the thing he is fleeing from is the one thing he has always been looking for: “‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, / I am He whom thou seekest.” (ll.180-1)

2.
“…and a Voice beat, / More instant than the feet:” (ll.13-14) 

“All things betray thee, who betrayest me.” (l. 15)
“Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.” (l. 51)
“Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me!” (l. 110)
“Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!” (l. 160)
“Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.” (l. 182)

God calls to you from beyond life’s little pleasures. He calls to you from beyond pain, pleasure’s twin. “Seek Me,” He calls, “Find in Me the changeless joy that you’ve sought so long on the waves of change. All that you’ve wanted for incarnations you shall find forever in Me alone.” -Paramhansa Yogananda

Fortunately, there is always the insistent divine voice deep in our hearts, reminding us of our true nature; reminding us that there is no security, no respite, no contentment, no permanence, no love to be found other than in God. In the Yogic tradition, knowledge of Self or Self-realization is an act of remembering (smriti). The true Self (the immortal soul) is already divine, so knowledge of Self or Self-realization means remembering who and what we truly are; remembering our divine nature, remembering, like the prodigal son, that the Father awaits us even after all our misguided pursuits and transgressions.

3.
“For, though I knew His love who followèd, / Yet was I sore adread, lest having Him, / I should have nought beside.” (ll. 19-21)

The purpose of human life is to find God. That is the only reason for our existence. Job, friends, material interests—these things in themselves mean nothing. They can never provide you with true happiness, for the simple reason that none of them, in itself, is complete. Only God encompasses everything. That is why Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.” Seek ye first the Giver of all gifts, and you shall receive from Him all His gifts of lesser fulfillment. -Paramhansa Yogananda

Our tendency, however, is to seek to attain “all these things” (whatever they may be for each one of us) and only then, if at all, to seek God. For we are afraid, like the poem’s protagonist, to let go of our attachments to the things in which we may find a little temporary happiness in order to find lasting happiness in God’s love. All the spiritual Masters concur that in order to have God, we must relinquish all other desires, realize that the only thing worth having is Him, love Him, as Jesus said, with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul and with all our strength.

4.
“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.” (ll. 171-3).

Through trials we learn life’s lessons. Trials are not intended to destroy us, but to help us develop our power. They are part of the natural law of evolution and are necessary if we are to advance from a lower to a higher level. -Paramhansa Yogananda

It goes against all our ingrained and inculcated beliefs to view affliction, loss, and suffering not as a calamity but as a God-given opportunity for spiritual growth, and yet it is the way for the realization of God as this line of Thompson’s poem suggests. A similar idea is expressed by the psalmist (119:71): “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.”

There is always a lesson to be learned from suffering and we are responsible for how many times we suffer in the same way before learning and attaining a higher level of divine consciousness.

5.
“Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, / Save me, save only me?” (ll. 169-70).

I sought love in many lives. I shed bitter tears of separation and repentance to understand what love is. I sacrificed everything, all attachment and delusion, to learn at last that I am in love with Love—with God—alone. Then I drank love through all true hearts. I saw that He is the One Cosmic Love -Paramhansa Yogananda

The poem talks of the great love affair (the divine romance according to Yogananda) between God, who is “the tremendous lover” (l. 32), and the soul. The love between God and the soul is perfect love. It is the only love that is ever truly requited, for, as Yogananda says:

God understands us when all others misunderstand. God loves us when others turn against us. God remembers us when everyone forgets us.

It is only when the soul meets “the greatest lover of the universe,” that the love we have been seeking for incarnations through human love is at last ours.

The poem is clearly autobiographical as was the poem “Amazing Grace,” written more than 100 years earlier by John Newton. Yet both poems are also universal and archetypal, as they describe the devotee’s spiritual experience of his return to God.

Thompson’s poem, in particular, may be seen as an elaboration of the parable of the Good Shepherd, who leaves his flock to go in search of the lost sheep. In this case, the Hound of heaven, God’s grace, pursues the prodigal human soul until the soul realizes there is nowhere for it to flee except back to God. No matter where the soul seeks happiness in the world, it will inevitably be disillusioned. For happiness, as Yogananda repeatedly stated, will never come from anything less than the return to God. Given the poem’s exposition of some of Yogananda’s basic teachings, it’s easy to see why he so loved and so often quoted from this poem.

In Him,
Sanjaya

The Hound of Heaven