came on November 13, 1907, in the Hospital of St. John and
St. Elizabeth. He was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green, and
on his coffin were roses from George Meredith's garden, with the
poet-novelist's message: "A true poet, one of the small band."

The "Hound of Heaven" has been called the greatest ode in the English
language. Such was the contemporary verdict of some of the most
respected critics of the time, and the conviction of its justness
deepens with the passing of years. Recall the writers of great odes,
Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley,
Coleridge,--the best they have done will not outstare the "Hound of
Heaven." Where shall we find its equal for exaltation of mood that
knows no fatigue from the first word to the last? The motion of
angelic hosts must be like the movement of this ode, combining in some
marvellous and mysterious way the swiftness of lightning with the
stately progress of a pageant white with the blinding white light of an
awful Presence. The note of modernness is the quality which is most
likely to mislead us in forecasting favorably the durability of
contemporary poetry, appealing as it does to so many personal issues
irrelevant to the standards of immortal art. This is precisely the
note which is least conspicuous in the "Hound of Heaven." The poem
might have been written in the days of Shakespeare, or, in a different
speech, by Dante or Calderon. The Rev. Francis P. LeBuffe, S. J., has
written an interesting book on the "Hound of Heaven," pointing out the
analogy between the poem and the psalms of David; and another Jesuit,
the late Rev. J. F. X. O'Connor, in a published "Study" of the poem,
says that in it Francis Thompson "seems to sing, in verse, the thought
of St. Ignatius in the spiritual exercises,--the thought of St. Paul in
the tender, insistent love of Christ for the soul, and the yearning of
Christ for that soul which ever runs after creatures, till the love of
Christ wakens in it a love of its God, which dims and deadens all love
of creatures except through love for Him. This was the love of St.
Paul, of St. Ignatius, of St. Stanislaus, of St. Francis of Assist, of
St. Clare, of St. Teresa."

[Illustration:

The hid battlements of Eternity:
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again _Page 56_]

The neologisms and archaic words employed in the poem seem to be a
legitimate a