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

These lines come from Francis Thompson’s religious poem “The Hound of Heaven,” first published in 1893. Thompson (1859–1907), a Catholic convert who endured poverty, illness, and addiction, wrote the poem as a dramatic spiritual autobiography: a speaker flees God through pleasure, distraction, and self-will, only to find that divine pursuit is inescapable. The quoted passage occurs during the chase imagery that structures the poem, where God’s approach is described not as frantic or violent but as steady, inevitable, and sovereign—an “unhurrying” pursuit accompanied by an inner “Voice” that interprets the speaker’s flight as betrayal.

The passage contrasts the speaker’s frantic evasion with God’s calm inevitability. “Deliberate speed” and “majestic instancy” suggest a paradox: God’s pursuit is patient yet certain, beyond human haste because it cannot fail. The “Feet” evoke the relentless approach of grace, while the “Voice” is more immediate still—conscience or divine address that reaches the fugitive inwardly before any outward capture. The rebuke, “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me,” implies that turning from the divine source of meaning makes created things unreliable as ultimate refuges: pleasures, ambitions, and relationships cannot bear the weight of worship, and so they “betray” the one who has first betrayed God.