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. Conscience and remorse ran wild, and the Hound of Hell
was a characteristic part of the machinery that made the tragedy of life
so terrific in those old days. But here, by a _tour de force_ in which
is summed up the entire transformation from ancient to modern thought,
the hell-hounds are transformed into the Hound of Heaven. That something
or some one is out after the souls of men, no man who has understood his
inner life can question for a moment. But here the great doctrine is
proclaimed, that the Huntsman of the soul is Love and not Hate, eternal
Good and not Evil. No matter what cries may freeze the soul with horror
in the night, what echoes of the deep-voiced dogs upon the trail of
memory and of conscience, it is God and not the devil that is pursuing.

The poem, by a strange device of rhythm, keeps up the chase in the most
vividly dramatic realism. The metre throughout is irregular, and the
verses swing onward for the most part in long, sweeping lines. But five
times, at intervals in the poem, the sweep is interrupted by a stanza of
shorter lines, varied slightly but yet in essence the same--

"But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

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