The Forgotten Threshold | Page 7

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 use for
years,--Flame and Dew.
If rightly done, it may do poetry one of the greatest of services by
assisting it to praise Beauty on many lips in naked Light. I wish to
consecrate my work on it to that end. Today I have been influenced by
Frederick Tennyson, Traherne, and Patmore. In agony lies the highest
music. The key is struck by circumstance, Time's organist, and the stars
tremble with music. For the full thundering silence of Absolute Beauty
a Divine Agony was necessary, so that all Heaven and its choirs and
Hell trembled in the majesty of this stricken Doom. Death is the final
chord, the passage of our full song from time to the silence of eternity.
Sleep next to death is the most terrible life that soul and body knows. It
is the center of the wheel radiating high powers to the circumference.
The speed there is terrific, so fast that it hardens, again that "majestic
instancy." The tiniest flame is the friction of conflicting "universes."
Beauty is alike the center and circumference of infinity, the silent
wheel of omnipresent omnipotence, wherein all thoughts are not timed
but eternal. From eternity we were nothing: to eternity we are Beauty's
image. Is it strange that in sleep we are often given sight?
August 1.
Art is the exhibition of life in the light of eternity. I can conceive of no
other adequate critical formula. This applies to painting, sculpture,

literature and music. Such too is the art of life,--the exhibition to God
and man of life in the light of eternity. I have been startled to find a
kinship between Wordsworth and Millet. I found it today in a stooped
old man who was traveling the roads with a walking stick and a heavy
bundle of driftwood. He was worthy of a great painter or a great poet.
By the sign of the cross one draws a magic circle round the soul which
evil may not penetrate. It places one "in the name." On the seashore one
should lie parallel with the waves facing inland. Then only may one
advance onward with their prayer.
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 passion 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