LECTURE X
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN
In bringing to a close these studies of the long battle between paganism
and idealism,--between the life which is lived under the attraction of
this world and which seeks its satisfaction there, and that wistful life
of the spirit which has far thoughts and cannot settle down to the green
and homely earth,--it is natural that we should look for some literary
work which will describe the decisive issue of the whole conflict. Such
a work is Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_, which is certainly one
of the most remarkable poems that have been published in England for
many years.
To estimate its full significance it is necessary in a few words to
recapitulate the course of thought which has been followed in the
preceding chapters. We began with the ancient Greeks, and distinguished
the high idealism of their religious conceptions from the paganism into
which these declined. The sense of the sacredness of beauty, forced upon
the Greek spirit by the earth itself, was a high idealism, without which
no conception of life or of the universe can be anything but a maimed
and incomplete expression of their meaning.
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