"
By this device of rhythm the footfall of the Hound is heard in all the
pauses of the poem. In the short and staccato measures you hear the
patter of the little feet padding after the soul from the unseen
distance behind. It is a daring use of the onomatopoeic device in
poetry, and it is effective to a wonder, binding the whole poem into the
unity of a single chase.
The first nine lines are the story of a soul subjective as yet and
self-absorbed. The first covert in which it seeks to hide is its own
life--the thoughts and tears and laughter, the hopes and fears of a man.
This is in most men's lives the first attempt at escape. The verses here
give the inner landscape, the country of a soul's experience, with
wonderful compression. Then comes the patter of the Hound's feet, and
for the rest we are no longer in the thicket of the inner life, but in
the open country of the outer world. This is but the constantly repeated
transition which, as we have already seen, Browning illustrates in his
_Sordello_, the turning-point between the early introspective and the
later dramatic periods.
Having gained the open country of the outward and objective world, the
inevitable first thought is of love as a refuge from spiritual pursuit.
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