I have been called by God to be a minister since I was 16. It is a strange feeling to feel that call, and it can be scary sometimes. On and off, over the years, the Calling would come. When I was 25, God called me especially "loud". I told a dear friend, a former Nun, about this "pressure' from God. She gave me this poem, and told me to read it. I thought I would share it with you, in the hope that you might tell all of us if you have ever felt this call. i am surprised that with all the hits already, no one has written. Please do not be frightened at the length of the poem. It is really good.
Bless you. Enjoy.
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN Francis Thompson
I fled Him, down the nights and down
the days;
I fled Him, down the
arches of the years;
I fled Him,
down the labyrinthine ways
Of my
own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running
laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms
of chasmed fears,
From those
strong Feet that followed, followed
after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—<p>
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'.<p>
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,<p> By many a hearted
casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining
charities;
(For, though I knew His
love Who followed,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught
beside.)
But, if one little
casement parted wide,
The gust
of His approach would clash it to:
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist
to pursue.
Across the margent of
the world I fled,
And troubled
the gold gateway of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clanged
bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o'
the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be
sudden—to Eve: Be soon;
With thy
young skiey blossom heap me over
From this tremendous Lover—
Float thy vague veil about
me, lest He see!
I tempted all
His servitors, but to find
My own
betrayal in their constancy,
In
faith to Him their fickleness to me,
To all swift things
for swiftness did I sue;
Clung
to the whistling mane of every
wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or, whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with
flying lightnings round the spurn o'
their feet:—
Fear wist not to
evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,<op>
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat—
'Naught shelters thee, who
wilt not shelter Me.'
I sought no more after that which I
strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's
eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for
me, surely for me!
I turned me to
them very wistfully;
But just as
their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them
from me by the hair.
Come then, ye
other children, Nature's—share
With
me’ (said I) 'your delicate
fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dais,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the
dayspring.’
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one—
Drew the bolt of Nature's
secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or
wailful divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened
with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were
salt with mortal mine:
Against the
red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was
eased my human smart.
In vain my
tears were wet on Heaven's grey
cheek.
For ah! we know not what
each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their
stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my
drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of
sky, and show me
The breasts o’ her tenderness:
Never did any milk of
hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic
instancy;
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet—
'Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.'
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted
stroke!
My harness piece by piece
Thou has hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me
stripped in sleep.
In the rash
lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me;
grimed with smears,
I stand amidst
the dust o' the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the
heap.
My days have crackled and
gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and
burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the
lutanist;
Even the linked
fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my
wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all
too weak account
For earth with
heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amarinthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to
mount?
Ah! must—
Designer infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere
Thou canst limn with it?
My
freshness spent its wavering shower i'
the dust;
And now my heart is as a
broken fount,
Wherein
tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down
ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of
my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste
the rind?
I dimly guess what Time
in mists confounds;
Yet ever and
anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid
battlements of Eternity;
Those
shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly
wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes
purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His
name I know and what his trumpet
saith.
Whether man's heart or life
it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit<p>
Comes on at hand the bruit;<p>
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:<p>
'And is thy earth so marred,<p>
Shattered in shard on shard?<p>
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!<p>
'Strange, piteous, futile thing!<p> Wherefore should any set
thee love apart?
Seeing none but I
makes much of naught' (He said),
'And human love needs human
meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest
clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou
art!
Whom wilt thou find to love
ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but
take,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My
arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have
stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!'<o>
Halts by me that footfall:
Is
my gloom, after all,
Shade of His
hand, outstretched caressingly?
'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou
dravest love from thee, who dravest
Me.'<p