"Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou drovest love from thee, who drovest Me."
It is a perfect ending for this very wonderful song of life, and it
tells the old and constantly repeated story of the victory of the Cross
over the pagan gods. It is through pain and not through indulgence that
the ideals gain for themselves eternal life. Until the soul has been
transformed and strengthened by pain, its attempt to fulfil itself and
be at peace in a pagan settlement on the green earth must ever be in
vain. And in our hearts we all know this quite well. We really desire
the Highest, and yet we flee in terror from it always, until the day of
the wise surrender. This is perhaps the greatest of all our paradoxes
and contradictions.
As has been already pointed out, the new feature which is introduced to
the aspect of the age-long conflict by _The Hound of Heaven_ is that the
parts are here reversed, and instead of the soul seeking the Highest,
the Highest is out in full cry after the soul. In this the whole quest
crosses over into the supernatural, and can no longer be regarded simply
as a study of human nature. Beyond the human region, out among those
Eternities and Immensities where Carlyle loved to roam, there is that
which loves and seeks. This is the very essence of Christian faith. The
Good Shepherd seeketh the lost sheep until He find it. He is found of
those that sought Him not. Until the search is ended the silly sheep may
flee before His footsteps in terror, even in hatred, for the bewildered
hour. Yet it is He who gives all reality and beauty even to those things
which we would fain choose instead of Him--He alone. The deep wisdom of
the Cross knows that it is pain which gives its grand reality to love,
so making it fit for Eternity, and that sacrifice is the ultimate secret
of fulfilment. Truly those who lose their life for His sake shall find
it. Not to have Him is to renounce the possibility of having anything:
to have Him is to have all things added unto us.
So far we have considered this poem as a record of personal experience,
but it may be taken also as a message for the age in which we live.
Regarded so, it is an appeal to pagan England to come back from all its
idols, from its attempt to force upon the earth a worship which she
repudiates:
"Worship not me but God, the angels urge."
The angels of earth say that, as well as those of heaven--the angels of
nature and the open field, of homes and the love of women and of men, of
little children and of grave science and all learning. The desire of the
soul is very near it, nay, is pursuing it with patient and remorseless
footsteps down every quiet and familiar street. The land of heart's
desire is no strange land, nor has heaven been lifted from about our
heads.
"Not where the whirling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;--
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry;--clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames."[7]
_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_