Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... NOTES Hound of Heaven.--With felicitous grace and reverential delicacy Thompson gives Our Lord an unwonted and daring title and throughout the poem never once explicitly refers to the metaphor. A lesser writer would inevitably have rendered the comparison very repellent. The fuller development is left to our own devotional, inward thoughts. Thompson, of course, had Scriptural warrant for using such type of comparisons from the animal world. No phrase of Holy Writ is more current than "the Lamb of God" (St. John i, 20, 36; Apoc. v, 12, vi, 16, vii, 14). Each Holy Week we hear Isaias' plaint (Isaias liii, 7): "He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer," which thought is repeated in Acts viii, 32. Opening the Apocalypse once more we find another metaphor (Apocalypse v, 5): "And one of the Ancients said to me: "Weep not; behold the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book." Lastly we find another metaphor in St. Paul (Hebrews xiii, 11-12), where with true and sound literary instinct he applies the symbolism of the offering but not the name to Our Lord, thus reversing the present process of Thompson: "For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the holies by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people by His own blood, suffered without the gate." Lines 1-/5 With the bold inclusive sweep of genius, Thompson in these first verses outlines the whole scope of the poem and suggests unmistakably its outcome. The merely material picture of these lines is noteworthy: a branching path, a portico, a maze, a mist, a sparkling stream, a forest glade and lastly a vast canyon. Line 1. With...