{"id":21020,"date":"2025-08-15T19:38:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T23:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21020"},"modified":"2025-08-15T19:38:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T23:38:20","slug":"the-hound-of-heaven-read-by-richard-burton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21020","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The Hound of Heaven,&#8217; read by Richard Burton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Richard Burton reads the haunting poem &#039;The hound of Heaven&#039; by Francis Thompson\" width=\"474\" height=\"356\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gToj6SLWz8Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This Friday night,<\/strong> instead of music, a poem. Actor Richard Burton (a lost soul, if there ever was one) reads one of the great English Christian poems, &#8220;The Hound of Heaven.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Francis_Thompson\">Francis Thompson<\/a> (1859-1907), an impoverished Catholic poet who died young of tuberculosis, wrote this amazing ode to the relentless love of Christ, which was published in a collection in 1893.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was a time &#8212; it doesn&#8217;t seem long ago, but it was &#8212; when I could recite this entire poem from memory. I still have big chunks of it in my head, and can recall the others when prompted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I always recited it more slowly and meditatively than Burton, who reads it rapidly, in the tone of a fugitive, his pacing tight with dramatic tension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Friday night, instead of music, a poem. Actor Richard Burton (a lost soul, if there ever was one) reads one of the great English Christian poems, &#8220;The Hound of Heaven.&#8221; Francis Thompson (1859-1907), an impoverished Catholic poet who died young of tuberculosis, wrote this amazing ode to the relentless love of Christ, which was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21020\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;The Hound of Heaven,&#8217; read by Richard Burton<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[1008,5660,5661],"class_list":["post-21020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-religion","tag-francis-thompson","tag-richard-burton","tag-the-hound-of-heaven"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21021,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21020\/revisions\/21021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}