Wilfrid Meynell opened his mailbox in 1887 to retrieve a small bundle of poems written on dirty scraps of paper. As publisher of the London magazine Merry England, he was accustomed to receiving variously shaped parcels. He filed it away and retrieved it three months later. Immediately, he recognized the writing of a prodigious talent. He couldn’t locate its author at the address on the package. Little wonder. Francis Thompson (1859-1907) lived on the streets and was addicted to opium. Wilfrid decided to flush him out by publishing one of his poems. Upon their subsequent meeting, Wilfrid realized Francis needed help. The Meynell’s, with their seven children, invited Francis to live with them. Years later, when Francis relapsed, they arranged for him to live at a monastery, where the brothers nursed him to sobriety.
The poem for which Francis is famous, “The Hound of Heaven,” first appeared in Merry England in 1890. His one hundred eighty two-line poem is clearly autobiographical, telling his improbable story of being lost, relentlessly pursued by God, and ultimately found. He describes his flight from God, “I fled him down the nights and down the days. I fled him, down the arches of the years; of my own mind, and in the midst of tears, I hid from him.” God doesn’t give up on him easily. Like a hound after a hare, God’s pursuit is described three times in the poem with the words, “With unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic constancy came the following feet…” God’s relentless pursuit culminates in a glorious rescue.
While we have no written prayers of Thompson, Psalm 139 was a prayer he knew well: