The Forgotten Threshold | Page 5

in the midst of a general conversation, yet my absence was not noted in the least. Out of it I hope will develop the ability to be with life always in the tangle and confusion of city circumstance. This afternoon I read Phaedrus aloud on a sunny cliff, and in the evening read aloud Keats' "I stood tiptoe" on the green heights in the wind and the rain. Rossetti's lines do not forbid a life of contemplation, but rather encourage it as distinguished from quietism. ... Through the summer I am to see the Crucifixion. How I envy St. Francis the Stigmata! Even as a little boy I desired them--but I shall never be able perhaps to love passionately enough. The nights that I cried as a little fellow without knowing why, just because I loved, were nearer than I shall ever be again.
July 21.
At Benediction after Mass today I saw the Wonder in all Humanity with Light surrounding It, and I shook with an awful thunder of sound. ... Today I have been happy to tears, and in the blue afternoon on the cliffs with my mother, I shared "Endymion" and "Epipsychidion." ... I do not understand why silence is spoken of as a precept. To me it is the living attribute of God. ... How nobly scornful is Sir Aubrey De Vere's phrase, "witless ecstasies"!
July 22.
Simply a day of hard work. But I was happy in it. In an odd way I felt as I wrote all day on the smooth white paper that I was stroking the sleek breasts of doves. Tonight the steady patter of the rain upon the eaves.
July 23.
A day of hard routine work. ... Tonight in the inky darkness I walked to the postoffice in the thundering wind and rain and surf, and learned how the deeps can praise the Lord. I have always felt the wonder of that psalm.
July 24.
Rose at 4:30 and saw the sun rise a pure and shimmering symbol of the Host above the silver outline of Wonder Island. The day was dumb. A little boy has come whose face is his sacrament. What a song he must sing! I look forward to the morrow as a day of special grace and wonder. ...
July 25.
It is evident to me that music is wrong before a play or during intermissions. But it is necessary until our dramatists provide some other prelude. That prelude must be a beautiful setting of silence for a few moments showing the protagonist under the light of eternity. In the beginning all words contained a spiritual "import,"--were angels. At Babel many fell. Now all our spiritual words are material words grown out of their meanings. When expression becomes passion, it is the passion of creation, clothing itself in images as God does through eternity in the Passion of Creation. This is near the heart of life's most awful secret, but words conceal it except from experience. For Passion proceeds from Creation as Preservation proceeds from both, though they are all from Eternity in the Unity of the Godhead. All my planets at the contemplation of This are dancing before the throne. The thunderous rhythm of their music is shaking me physically like the engines of a steamer in shallow water. Every atom struggles against the law of cohesion. God loves the beautiful boy. His name is Henry R----. The Greeks, Emerson says, called the world Cosmos, Beauty. Reading this on the veranda this afternoon, I closed my eyes and sank contentedly into life. When I returned the faces were foreign, and even my mother never knew. On the dunes this morning I heard the silence of Eternity on the edge of time. I think it is a pine forest. Babel took away the Word, until It came to earth, and in material form took on supreme Spirit coming from the Father. ...
July 26.
I wish I could raise a singing altar of planets by some great sacrifice. My fingers drummed upon the sands this morning a crude and simple rhythm. I thought of its influence in displacing planets, and of the almost infinite musical variations that were set in motion, and then I compared my crude thrumming with the majestic thunders of the sea, and realized the insupportable beauty of absolute music. A dog talks by smell. There are vibrations of smell, as well as of sound or of heat or of light. And the blind reveal vibration of touch, the holiest of the senses. We talk now by sound, but are learning to talk by heat and light. When shall we learn to talk by smell and touch? Flowers, too, talk by smell. There is nothing but vibration in the image of God, for LIFE IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE TREMBLING OF HIS BEAUTY. The awful