The Forgotten Threshold | Page 6

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 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....