A bit more on the poem from yesterday’s blog. The author of “The Hound of Heaven” (1890) was Francis Thompson. He was a religious mystic who, like John Keats and Anton Chekhov, was trained in medicine; he preferred poetry and other literature. He died from tuberculosis at 47. As Wikipedia notes: “A lifetime of poverty, ill-health, and opium addiction had taken their toll on him, even though he found success in his last years.” Thompson had tried to commit suicide but was saved by a vision, then befriended and taken in by a prostitute (he called her his savior) who eventually left him.
I neglected to mention yesterday that a standard interpretation of this poem is that the hound of the title is a symbol for God. The hound remarks, “‘All things betray thee, who betrayest me…'” But the speaker evades divinity: “Across the margent of the world I fled,” margent meaning margin. But he or she cannot find satisfaction in the material world: “Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth,” meaning relieve his drought.
The hound of heaven blames the speaker’s evasions for his or her condition: “‘Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me.'” The use of a capital letter for the hound supports the idea that it is a metaphor for God.