Archive

I scanned through my 3rd year HS stuff and found our speech choir piece: (How I miss the good ole days..) :s

HOUND OF HEAVEN

by: Francis Thompson

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 Titatinic glooms of chasmes fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat--and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet--

"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

For, though I knew His love Who followed,

Yet was I sore adread

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)

But, if one little casement parted wide,

The gust of his approach would clash it to :

Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.

Across the margent of the world I fled,

And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,

Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars ;

I said to Dawn : Be sudden; to Eve : Be soon ;

With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over

From this tremendous Lover!

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see !

I tempted all His servitors, but to find

My own betrayal in their constancy,

In faith to Him their fickleness to me,

Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue ;

Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,

The long savannahs of the blue ;

Or whether, Thunder-driven,

They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,

Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following Feet,

And a Voice above their beat--

"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that after which I strayed,

In face of man or maid ;

But still within the little children's eyes

Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me !

I turned me to them very wistfully;

But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair

With dawning answers there,

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.

"Come then, ye other children, Nature's -- share

With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;

With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses, Banqueting

With her in her wind-walled palace,

Underneath her azured daïs,

Quaffing, as your taintless way is,

From a chalice

Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."

So it was done :

I in their delicate fellowship was one--

Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.

I knew all the swift importings

On the wilful face of skies;

I knew how the clouds arise

Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings ;

All that's born or dies

Rose and drooped with ; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine ;

With them joyed and was bereaven.

I was heavy with the even,

When she lit her glimmering tapers

Round the day's dead sanctities.

I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;

Against the red throb of its sunset-heart

I laid my own to beat,

And share commingling heat;

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.

For ah;

we know not what each other says,

These things and I;

in sound I speak--

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth ;

Let her, if she would owe me,

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

The breasts o' her tenderness;

Never did any milk of hers once bless

My thirsting mouth.

Nigh and nigh draws the chase,

With unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;

And past those noisèd Feet

A Voice comes yet more fleet--

"Lo ! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."

Naked I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke !

My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,

And smitten me to my knee ;

I am defenceless utterly.

I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

I shook the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me ; grimed with smears,

I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years --

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,

Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream;

My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;

And now my heart is as a broken fount,

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

Such is ; what is to be?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;

His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields

Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields

Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit

Comes on at hand the bruit;

That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

"And is thy earth so marred,

Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!

"Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?

But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child's mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

I am He Whom thou seekest!