The Forgotten Threshold Part 2

August 2.

It is absolutely true that only music may shape woods and fountains and the beauty of souls, for it is the only medium of expression which is pure. Pure music is the true white magic, as black magic is music mixed with clay by human hands. Naked Beauty alone may mix music with clay in Its own image and likeness. Even poetry fails save in so far as it echoes the pure natural truths of music. And all creation may flow from a flute if the player breathes a prayer. Some day we shall have the great opera of the Incarnation and Redemption. It is the ideal goal of music, and so of all art. But it demands the poet, the painter, and the sculptor, too, for its actors shall be immortal statues and a living chorus singing the pa.s.sion of the race against the supreme dawn and the supreme sunset. But its greatest moments will be silence. Christ and His Mother will live this silence in the glory of transfigured stone, and the drama will be played in the open with the stars above as orchestra, to which the human music will be but a beautiful echo. To this Wagner and Craig point the way. I read Patmore's _Two Infinities_ today with bewilderment and emphatic disagreement. It seems absolutely lacking in vision, provincial, almost challenging Creation. And yet it is essentially true. Christ was a man of golden mediocrities. He speaks of the lilies of the field, but never of stars or of planets. And St. Francis perhaps hints at the solution. To him brother Wind and brother Fire and brother Worm are alike and equal, for he sees them in the light of infinity. But all are wonderful, and we must not sneer at the stars. ... Today writing as a means of expression has seemed to be absolutely futile.

Silence is the only active way of praise that I can find, provided that it informs some daily action. My will won again today. Horizons are wonderful. S---- told me that Lionel invited him into his Oxford rooms one evening at sunset and led him to a seat from which nothing lower than the horizon was to be seen. "There," he said, "nothing matters that is below that line." You see he knew that our souls in their beauty are always above it.

August 3.

To watch a gra.s.s-blade tapping will teach you wonderful music--the language of the wind. The sunlight running through my flesh in-flames the song of the will. I lost myself tonight in the crowded silences.

Joy stays with me now, and if I can only join it to sorrow, the will can then sing simply and freely a continuous song. The turning of the tide is soon to come, and my homesickness for G----ville is transforming itself into a different nostalgia. My planets are rising in song like little candle flames. I wish I possessed their humility.

Within me tonight are quiet moonlit waters very full and rich with silent promises of rest.

August 4.

At Ma.s.s today Mr. C---- showed a fine courtesy serving with the high humility of a punctilious gentleman. ... Today I saw the body of Christ, "infinite riches in a little room." The human body of Christ in its pa.s.sion is the sum of all our bodies, and it is this truth to which pantheism in its blindness dimly beckons. The saints and pure poets and those who have died for friends are the image of the Sacred Heart, and in them at moments of pure _reflection_ there is naked light and the vision which is insupportable. Hence in the greatest saints the stigmata. All G.o.d's lonely ones are the reflections of His pain when they attain to sanct.i.ty. And holy priests are the reflections of His Hands. Little children and saints may look into His Eyes and see their own. And repentant sinners may reflect His Feet in their tears. All the births and lives of the earth go to form His Human Body, which is vast as Eternity and radiating with Light from all points and inward to the Heart of Light. To some saints it has been permitted to be the spouse of this body and soul. Magic is white or black. White magic is the offspring of spiritual marriage and is a sacrament. Black magic is the offspring of unauthorized spiritual contacts. My frame tonight is possessed by angels dancing before the throne in a fearfully rapid rhythm. The secret of spiritual achievement is unremitting labor urged without ceasing by a fearful joy. No drama is more vast than that of the crucifixion, and yet I have seen it all in the heart of a strawberry blossom with wounds all glorified in an ecstasy of living trembling light, and heard the beating of His Sacred Heart while universe called out to universe in the anguish of His surrender and all the stars died into the Light of Eternity. The tide has turned.

August 5.

Today looking into a narrow dome I saw the seeded planets banded by circles of light whereon they turned. And color changed into silence at the bidding of the central suns. And these were the eyes of happy innocence wherein all others died to the Living Light, G.o.d being in them by their childishness. The tide turned yesterday, and today I have spent entirely in eternity surrounded by a host of fair-winged Possibilities, G.o.d's angels to humanity. Death is glorified by their pa.s.sage from the future to the past, and we respond by plunging our lights into the Light wherein it dies. _Abt Vogler_ is the musical philosophy of it all. At my first symphony concert as a little boy, I saw the face of the dying Christ through the wall, and in it the music of the seventh Symphony sang through the naked eyes calling me inward to the Sacred Heart. This morning and noon at table I smiled at white horizons and in the evening I swam through the Host on my future wings. We love earth, air, fire, and water now, but the eternal joy of swimming through the Light of G.o.d and reflecting His Light in song and silence is the infinity of all poets' dreams incarnate in the awful speed of Absolute Music. It is the privilege of laughing into the Eyes of G.o.d, those Eyes before which the angels veil their faces. It is the privilege of smelling the blossom of the Living Rose, of tasting and consuming forever the Body and Blood, of touching the Sacred Knees, and of hearing the Divinity who is Music. Priests and poets shall swim in the song of his heart, and those who have died for friends will reflect its resolving rhythm. How I pity Blake his pride, though he was preserved from the pride of humility. G.o.d will let me see more of Him in this life than Blake did, though it is of the most trifling significance to antic.i.p.ate eternity in poor time, the crippled heir of original sin. Since it is to be, I wish with all my blood that my will were worthier.

August 6.

A day of happy drudgery reading proofs. I rode through them in the winds of eternity. That is the secret of it all,--to teach us joy. The human symbol of it is a martyr's ecstasy, which is in no way sensuous or voluptuous since it has completely forgotten the body. The Sacred Heart is the Mystical Rose spreading its petals over the Cross of Time. In _Flame and Dew_ is the first application of an idea and belief that the day will come when anthologies will be books containing the wisdom of the poets on special sciences, such as the science of childhood, the science of love, the science of death, and the science of silence.

August 7.

Imagination being Eternal Life, it shows the blind instinct of language that the word should mean the creation of images. Imagination is the instrument of G.o.d's creation in his own _image_ and likeness.

Today I came to Petrarch and Dante--the mystics of the supreme elements. To contrast their serenity with Blake's wrath shows the whiter heights. All height is inward through narrow circles to the Central Fire of Silent Love from which the angels shrink in spiral messages of inspiring flame, and toward which humanity aspires in narrowing and advancing circles of expiring flesh. But depth is outward to the hearts of men. Sirius sings to my living stars tonight its light in the music of the ancient winds, telling me of the crucifixion in burning colors of a dying world. Why am I unworthy of an equal death? The blood runs toward it in a pa.s.sion of harmony. The day is near when my morning stars shall sing their lives out together in praise of their Creator, though it is futile to measure it in terms of time. One is not curious of time if one lives in eternity. Death is then only the fulfilment of our operative desires. I wish that I were one of the tears of G.o.d. Joy is for those _of good will_.

August 8.

I met one of Wordsworth's old men today gathering f.a.ggots on the sh.o.r.e. "I have been to all places and cities and I found no one happy on the world, and now I wish me to be dead." ... Tonight I bowed in silence under the vault of stars. To be holy is to lose the knowledge of good and evil through "clinging Heaven by the hems." To refuse evil is to refuse the apple _(malum)_ of the Tree of Knowledge. There is no possibility of finding the ideal unless we look pa.s.sionately for nothing but the beauty of souls, seeing therein G.o.d's image and refusing to perceive the clouds of evil. Circles lead to Heaven, but straight lines to h.e.l.l. Straight lines are the tangents that "err"

from the sphere of the ideal. Miss C---- told me about a little boy who was visiting Italy with his mother. He fell down hill, and stopped before a roadside crucifix. And then he forgot his fall. They found him crying as if his heart would break, and he told them that it was because he was so sorry for that sad Man whom everybody had made suffer so. The angels drop seed into our souls which make them invisible to other men, and we also may plant seed with modesty and humility. It is G.o.d's fernseed to mortals. How strange it is that we measure time by moons, cold satellites, and thus the symbol of death.

But after all time is the dark night of the soul. I realized for the first time today that I was born in December, the month of creation, when the flame turns in upon itself in the hard cold earth and gives birth to high hopes whose fulfilment are in eternity. It is the month of Christmas on that account. I have begun to perceive what awful wings my thoughts have, and know that they are given them by G.o.d through me to carry them humbly into the most secret circle of the Sacred Breast. We must do the labor of G.o.d with human hands, yet the Labor of G.o.d is the Creation of Beauty. As the vegetable kingdom renews its life once a year through time and so preserves its secret, our souls must renew themselves in infinite recurrence through eternity. Our life differs only in ardor which is speed. The greatest speed lies in submission, for submission is the greatest strength. At high moments it is Atlas supporting the earth. At the supreme moment, it becomes the mystery of the Redemption.

August 9.

Singing through the universal stars that were woven into His Flesh, I saw the Son of G.o.d tonight glorified in the joy of a living Smile. And all the angels bowed laughing toward Him and clapped and danced before His Name, though the sum of their song was silence. And then every living star was scourged by the sins of men, and died into the darkness, saying "Thy Will be done," and it was morning with the Eucharist in the sky. Only Redemption trembled through the air. The stars are the eternal reflections of G.o.d's patience, for they endure His Human Pa.s.sion, since together they form the shadow of the Word made Flesh. They are the singing echo in time of G.o.d's speechless patience, as we are destined to be if we conquer our wills. But patience is suffering, and Alpha must submit to the yoke of Omega.

Since G.o.d is the Alpha and Omega he caused the Incarnation and Pa.s.sion. THE IDEAL OF HUMAN LIFE IS THE Pa.s.sIONATE REDEMPTION OF THE WILL. This is life's darkest secret, _unless_ we live in the Eucharist. We are to be the silent reflections of speechless patience in the still waters of eternity. The evil came when Lucifer stole fire from heaven and brought it down to men. Conquer fire, and we conquer the will. Then heaven is ours. My body and blood ache with my prayer for it.

August 10.

The angels weave what G.o.d creates, according to their functions. His archangels are the weavers of time, and all the others of material nature, uninformed by a soul. This is a branch of the heavenly song.

To weave G.o.d's image is the function of the saints and of all those on earth. It is the wonder of incarnate Music that saved the world, Absolute Silence born into Sound, and dying with all Sound into Silence. The archangels are G.o.d's messengers of life and death, for they control the days. But they are sent from Him to His Image, and our weaving is made out of their materials as we adapt them to our song. All outer powers and forces are brought us by the angels, and among the dearest to G.o.d's heart are his flame-winged Possibilities that hover on the borderline between today and tomorrow, Time and Eternity. They alone may not enter time unless we beckon them. The starry heaven is the heaven of the body; the crystal sphere, of the intellect; and the empyrean, of the pure soul. We may live in the starry heaven in this life, if G.o.d gives us the grace. But it is then a heaven of desire. But the weaving of the angels is the whole philosophy of nature. Their music explains its sympathies and sorrows, its deaths and resurrections, and above all its solemn silences of night and noon. And the song of their weaving becomes nature's love of wisdom, that is to say, adoration of the Word. The saints are the only complete philosophers. The object of asceticism is generally misunderstood, particularly in one phase of its endeavors,--to forget the body. The truth of the matter is that the flesh and blood in their highest song toward which we should strive are so occupied with praising G.o.d that they completely lack self-consciousness, and do not distract the intellect or the will. G.o.d is with them in naked purity.

It is His simplest and dearest starry music. He demands that our life should be a programme of infinite proportions. And yet I wonder if a saint can ever be both a great prophet and a great apostle. I do not believe a great prophet can be tender enough to persuade. That is why prophets are scorned or ignored by their generation. Gentleness is the absolute breath of music, which alone can penetrate the soul or even the material body of nature. The supreme gentleness of St. Francis of a.s.sisi made the birds listen to his music, for his breath ran dancing in a cool breeze through all their singing stars. We need a St.

Francis at present burningly. Is it possible to form a religious order of the poets? Here is an ideal. But it must be Franciscan: a gown, a girdle, and sandals, poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience. Where is the wise man to obey? I can believe that jewels are potent for good or evil, since they are condensed flame and a secret word lies hidden in each of their hearts. A day of tempestuous wind and rain.

August 11.

Today I found myself progressing slowly to a triumphant rhythm round the circ.u.mference of a vast musical plane. The celestial earth is flat but progresses upwards to its central point, the cone of aspiration and song. And then I remembered the vision of St. Frances of Rome wherein she saw the Supreme G.o.dhead as a vast Circle of Light in the midst of which was a Pillar, the Cone of Redemption and Silence. Death is the point of meeting. Perhaps the Zodiac is the merry-go-round of the stars. A second day of tempest. The great message of future poetry will be to proclaim that nature is the expression of man, rather than man of nature, and thus to reveal the essential n.o.bility of man as the image of G.o.d rather than the image of nature. Suns and winds and waters are what we make them. Pantheism confuses the image of the image with the face. Nature is the mirror of man as man is the mirror of G.o.d. Nay more, nature is the mirror in time of man's eternity, as man is the image in time and eternity of G.o.d. It is for this reason that the stars are the open book of the future, though they are not to be read by men aloud. Astrology is forbidden because it violates the precept of silence, which is the courtesy we pay as gentlemen to G.o.d.

We may only read the stars in little children's eyes, wherein their future is concealed. The breast of Mary is the fountain of the stars, and round it fly the seraphim in flaming adoration of the blessed womb. Her eyes are G.o.d's dew, wherein the secret of His Light is whispered by the thrones. I felt through the morning His human Presence graciously walking the roads, and I was resting on His left Arm that brought me to His Heart, the country wherein the dreams of my will are born.

August 12.

I have been sick today. Rain and tempest, but G.o.d was on the wind, and I am happy.

August 13.

Still ill. Rain and fog with intermittent sunshine. But I am as happy as I have ever been.

August 14.

Still ill. Fog in the morning breaking into a wonderful pearl day of summer haze. Our bodily senses are instruments in our orchestra.

August 15.

Today I sank into Beauty several times in the sunlight.

August 16.

Read through the last proofs and on the dunes with my mother in the afternoon I lived in the light of G.o.d. The sun I caused to smile and I wrapped myself in the blue of the Virgin's sky. I found myself causing a shower twice by failing in humility. But the laughing Light of G.o.d's eyes in my soul is eternal, and when I submit it controls the tides of my body and mind. Tonight a woodp.e.c.k.e.r alighted on Father K----'s shoulder and stayed with him nearby. The Brahmin may attain to the shadow of the first syllable of the Word. He does not believe that there are others. _Om_ is simply the symbol of inward breath, inspiration. I heard myself today very near to the Heart of Silence, whose systole and diastole is the ebb and flow of Love from Eternity to Eternity. Time is the sound of silence and is dead to all eternity.

It is the only beautiful death that the angels do not mourn, for in the death of Time is the Redemption of the World. It takes the circle of eternity to unite the four points of the cross, and a crucifixion to unite two parallel lines.

August 17.

Out of the summer I am weaving the pattern web of the future in threads of desire. Every resurrection of a body is the last judgment of infinite planets, which fly to or flee from the human song of G.o.d's first syllable. Yet those that flee may be purchased by an infinite Redemption. This opens a terrible possibility of mercy. Is G.o.d continually becoming man for the love of His image? This is the joyful secret of G.o.d's sad fourth syllable. I clothe it in words to guard it from my intellect. Infinite incarnations prove time an illusion, since they make it eternity. G.o.d's Sacred Heart is the silent ocean beyond the universe. It reflects. The Incarnation is its flood. The Host tonight was more white than shining silver in a lonely pearl sky. It was Absolute Music unveiled to the human eye. Tonight I stood out for long alone with the stars, and watched a thunderstorm come over the sea. We must guard our dreams and intuitions not only from the intellects of others but most of all from our own. Yet our faith must be precisely bounded, although this boundary is to be none other than the infinite succession of points where time and eternity meet and bow down before G.o.d. This morning I saw His Beauty in a daisy. ... I do not believe that G.o.d will reveal His mysteries if we seek to know them, without inflicting a penalty. The way of knowledge is the way of silent patience, which lies quietly dreaming of Love till the flood washes it with Living Light.

August 18.

Every time we look into another's soul we may enter Paradise. There is an indescribable grace in the air this first day of prescient autumn.

The summer has taught me the secret of loneliness and the infinite way of satisfying its desire. To be alone with G.o.d we must be intimate with the beauty in the eyes of every face, and yet absolutely detached save from one's family and friend. Life's ideal is to see the end in the beginning, and act the road between. This is no other than the eternal life of the Alpha and Omega. But the essence of it in time is that the whole tide of humanity should ebb and flow in our breast. It requires a crucifixion to drink in all its saltness. I found the dunes beyond the lagoon this morning and sank into G.o.d in the wind of the sunlit blue. When I returned, the people were coming from Church.

Tonight the Host was quivering gold, and as I write the planets are ringing in my ears. I pray that at the end I may come to the Heart of Eternal Silence.