It is a perfect ending for this very wonderful song of life, and it tells the old and constantly repeated story of the victory of the Cross over the pagan gods.  It is through pain and not through indulgence that the ideals gain for themselves eternal life.  Until the soul has been transformed and strengthened by pain, its attempt to fulfil itself and be at peace in a pagan settlement on the green earth must ever be in vain.  And in our hearts we all know this quite well.  We really desire the Highest, and yet we flee in terror from it always, until the day of the wise surrender.  This is perhaps the greatest of all our paradoxes and contradictions.

As has been already pointed out, the new feature which is introduced to the aspect of the age-long conflict by The Hound of Heaven is that the parts are here reversed, and instead of the soul seeking the Highest, the Highest is out in full cry after the soul.  In this the whole quest crosses over into the supernatural, and can no longer be regarded simply as a study of human nature.  Beyond the human region, out among those Eternities and Immensities where Carlyle loved to roam, there is that which loves and seeks.  This is the very essence of Christian faith.  The Good Shepherd seeketh the lost sheep until He find it.  He is found of those that sought Him not.  Until the search is ended the silly sheep may flee before His footsteps in terror, even in hatred, for the bewildered hour.  Yet it is He who gives all reality and beauty even to those things which we would fain choose instead of Him—­He alone.  The deep wisdom of the Cross knows that it is pain which gives its grand reality to love, so making it fit for Eternity, and that sacrifice is the ultimate secret of fulfilment.  Truly those who lose their life for His sake shall find it.  Not to have Him is to renounce the possibility of having anything:  to have Him is to have all things added unto us.

So far we have considered this poem as a record of personal experience, but it may be taken also as a message for the age in which we live.  Regarded so, it is an appeal to pagan England to come back from all its idols, from its attempt to force upon the earth a worship which she repudiates: 

     “Worship not me but God, the angels urge.”

The angels of earth say that, as well as those of heaven—­the angels of nature and the open field, of homes and the love of women and of men, of little children and of grave science and all learning.  The desire of the soul is very near it, nay, is pursuing it with patient and remorseless footsteps down every quiet and familiar street.  The land of heart’s desire is no strange land, nor has heaven been lifted from about our heads.

     “Not where the whirling systems darken,
       And our benumbed conceiving soars!—­
     The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
       Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

     The angels keep their ancient places;—­
       Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 
     ’Tis ye, ’tis your estranged faces,
       That miss the many-splendoured thing.