Of formally devotional poetry Francis Thompson has written little—"Ex Ore Infantium," the soaring, surging lines of "Assumpta Maria," and a few others. Yet through all his work the spiritual element is the one commanding, indubitable thing. And religion is more than an emotion to him: it is a philosophy. The mystery of pain and evil one finds acknowledged, not lightly, but through cataclysmic rending of the spirit; and a thousandfold more convincing, because of this wide-eyed out-look upon Life, is the poet's ultimate and persistent hold upon Faith. "If hate were none," he has somewhere dared to ask:
If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright?
God's fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin;
Yea, and His mercy, I do think it well,
Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell.
Throughout the mystical poems which form, then, so large a proportion of Thompson's work, there burns a most poignant message. It is the old, primal story of God and the soul, and one finds it thrilling with never-to-be-forgotten intensity in that magnificent ode, "The Hound of Heaven."
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 mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat,
More instant than the Feet—
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
