In Thompson's poem the
soul is never allowed, even in dream, to rest in lower things until
satiety brings disillusion. The higher destiny is swift at her heels;
and ever, just as she would nestle in some new covert, she is torn from
it by the imperious Best of All that claims her for its own.
There is no obvious sequence of the phases of the poem, nor any logical
order connecting them into a unity of experience. They may or may not be
a rescript of Thompson's own inner life, but every detail might be
placed in another order without the slightest loss to the meaning or the
truth. The only guiding and unifying element is a purely artistic
one--that of the Hound in full cry, and the unity of the poem is but
that of a day's hunting. One would like to know what remote origin it is
to which we owe the figure. Thompson was a Greek scholar, and some such
legend as that of Actaeon may well have been in his mind. But the chase
of dogs was a common horror in the Middle Ages, and many of the mediaeval
fiends are dog-faced. In those days, when conscience had as yet received
none of our modern soporifics, and men believed in hell, many a guilty
sinner knew well the baying of the hell-hounds, masterless and
bloody-fanged, that chased the souls of even good men up to the very
gates of heaven.
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