The Forgotten Threshold | Page 6

speed of Truth hardens into fact. Words must not say more.
A dog taught me this,--Prince, the companion of the silent man. One should be a priest when he marries two ideas. In any one of the planets within the singing tissue of my flesh are Dantes and St. Francises. Creation requires of us infinite crucifixions which we shall never be able to consummate alone. When I lie on my breasts on the sand and bury my face in my hands, all Nature receives me as a human bridegroom, and I sink through time to eternity creating space around me, that widens and narrows to the reaches of immortality. It is always on the sands that I find the friendliest depths, or in the snow drift of cold planets upon a winter day or else within in the terrible energy of my body, as my heart beats time to the universal spheral rhythm. Think of the literal meaning of "universal!" Tonight in the silence I read Prometheus Bound. I love the grace of the boy's eyes. I pray to be guarded from the pride of humility.
July 27.
[Illustration: Circle with a cross through it.]
... It was a day of silences. I traced this figure idly on the sand today, and suddenly understood the symbolism of the scarab. But did the Egyptians anticipate the Redemption? As men are impressed by the face of the world, so is the world impressed by their faces. The face, as mirror of the soul, shines forth with electricity and makes an impression on life, altering the song of those it acts upon as the violin sound alters the formation of sands resting on a tightened drum. By what ancient intuition does the Latin word "malum" mean both "apple" and "evil"? Music creates substance through the speed of gaiety, and God in His Creation is a cosmic humorist. (Cosmic means beautiful.) To distinguish between fascination and sympathy is a counsel of perfection for critics which has its spiritual analogies. ... Angels ran in hosts through the grasses.
July 28.
"His soul's most secret thought,?Eternal Light declares."
I read Lionel's poems on the cliffs, and almost discovered the secret of the blue. Today for the first time I realized the remoteness of these islands, and it was a great joy. It was a golden day of sunshine on the cliffs with blue cloudless sky over quiet waters. Life is turning inward to the heart of silence, and out of it will come the beauty of my dream if life is willing.
July 29.
... I met a man today who knew beauty. He was a French country lawyer. ... The sunset tonight revealed all the sadness of the Burning Babe. I failed today.
July 30.
Another sadder failure of the will. Yet beauty came in the evening. The love of man, far more the love of God, is God in heaven descended upon earth, eternity made time in beauty, "majestic instancy," the Word made Flesh. The soul is the pool wherein God and we see our images, and Heaven will be the mutual contemplation of our souls. So that human love is the adoration of God in human flesh, and therein may the beloved be seen as the image of God in time. The praise of Our Lady should then be the praise of God. Was this Patmore's secret? Or Dante's and Petrarch's? "My lady was desired in the high heaven." ... I see now how in Heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage. Far flowing ramparts of a starry world! The flammantia moenia mundi of Lucretius. To contemplate Beauty FACE TO FACE! What a wonderful proof of the beauty of our souls. Twin mirrors of a single singing thought, the face of man looking into the Face of God, soul mingling with Soul in immortal music, bathed in the cool wind of Our Lady's eyes. Today I lost a nation in the cycle of my soul. What is the blood but the history of my planets as engraved upon the constellations of my flesh? It is the book of the angel of judgment for the first syllable of my song, as the emotions, the intellect, and, alas, the will, for the second, third, and fourth. The flesh is the ebb tide from God, as the emotions are the flood. The intellect is the second ebb, and in the will pray God that it may be flood! The other is Hell....
July 31.
... A victory for the will this morning. ... Tomorrow is the first of August, and I shall enter upon my forty days. The ringing in my ears is the ringing of my fleshly stars "toned all in Time." I have commenced an anthology of high imaginings more worthy than a book of essays of that title I have loved and desired to