This is about the fear that rules all of us in one way or another, in particular the fear of love. The hounds of love that are hunting you is imagery for love itself as something to be feared, to run away from lest it catch you and rip you up. At the same time, it says that perhaps the hounds are friendly and one should not fear love ("I've always been a coward, and never know what's good for me").
The song was inspired in part by an old black-and-white movie which was sort of a cult classic in Kate's family titled Night Of The Demon. The movie was about demons who hid waiting in trees - the song's opening line (in a male voice) "It's coming! It's in the trees!" is taken directly from the movie.
The title track from Bush's most commercially successful album, "Hounds Of Love" is one of five songs from Side One of the album, four of which charted in the UK. These five songs are very much separate pieces ("Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)," "Hounds of Love," "The Big Sky," "Mother Stands for Comfort" and "Cloudbusting" - "Mother Stands for Comfort" is the one that didn't chart in the UK). The last seven songs are a conceptual suite called The Ninth Wave written to be one piece of music. A remaster of the album was released in 1996 with four additional songs from the same period.
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