The Hound of Heaven

by Francis Thompson

Other authorsJeff Hill (Illustrator)
Hardcover, 1975

Status

Available

Tags

Publication

Peter Pauper Press (1975), Edition: No Date 1970s???

Description

The following notes are by no means intended as a rule of thought by which nurses can teach themselves to nurse, still less as a manual to teach nurses to nurse. They are meant simply to give hints for thought to women who have personal charge of the health of others. Every woman, or at least almost every woman, in England has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid, -in other words, every woman is a nurse. Every day sanitary knowledge, or the knowledge of nursing, or in other words, of how to put the constitution in such a state as that it will have no disease, or that it can recover from disease, takes a higher place. It is recognized as the knowledge which every one ought to have-distinct from medical knowledge, which only a profession can have. If, then, every woman must at some time or other of her life, become a nurse, i.e., have charge of somebody's health, how immense and how valuable would be the produce of her united experience if every woman would think how to nurse. I do not pretend to teach her how, I ask her to teach herself, and for this purpose I venture to give her some hints.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member keylawk
One of the great odes in the English language, written while the author was . Thompson was born in 1859 into the middle classes of England, in part of that vein of gold romanticism. But through the same little casement which laudanum opened and through which DeQuincey ("Confessions of an Opium
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Eater") and Coleridge had crawled, clearly Thompson toppled head-first.
Other than in the title, little is said of the Hound. It is only a relentless pursuer -- I love this image of God as a dog! We pray to the God who pursues the soul-prey. The soul is dogged to ground; by grace, it is love's Heaven that is found.
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LibraryThing member Michael.Rimmer
Three starts for the writing (on a first reading, possibly to be revised), with an extra half-star for the woodcut illustrations, though it may well end up at four stars eventually.

I spotted this one on the shelf of Great Grandfather's Bookshop in Leyland, Lancashire, struck by the front cover
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illustration, then half remembering the title, then fully remembering the opening lines, though I can't quite place from where: the introduction to another book of poetry, I'm sure, but which one I can't recall. The disappointment of the slightly torn dust jacket and internal staining were ameliorated by the £1.50 price mark penciled in the front, so it ended up chiming home with me.

I recognised the author's name, too, and looking him up I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was born in Winkley Street in Preston, a street I walk down each week, and his name I recognise from the plaque hung there to commemorate his birth in the city. I'll pay more attention to it on my next visit.

As for the poem itself, it's written in a highly wrought Romantic style. I'm not entirely adverse to that, but at times it feels like it was laid on a bit thick. However, in the vastly more important opinion of J.R.R. Tolkien, Thompson is to be "ranked amongst the very greatest of poets" (The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Volume 1: Chronology, page 51), so there's that to recommend him.

Tolkien would, I'm sure, be drawn to the Catholic sentiment of The Hound of Heaven, in which the Hound is Christ, who lovingly hunts the lost soul of the poem's narrator, a biographical theme given Thompson's loss of faith, destitution, drug-addiction and ultimate return to the Christian fold. For myself, if I'm to get anything from the poem beyond the poetic imagery, and the rhythm and rhyme, it will be as symbolic of the finding of the Self in a psychological sense. I didn't find it in this, my first, reading, but I strongly suspect it's lying in wait for me in there, somewhere.
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Barcode

7501

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