The Forgotten Threshold | Page 9

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 God'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 passion 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 God. Joy is for those of good will.
August 8.

I met one of Wordsworth's old men today gathering faggots on the
shore. "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 passionately for nothing
but the beauty of souls, seeing therein God's image and refusing to
perceive the clouds of evil. Circles lead to Heaven, but straight lines to
Hell. 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 God'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
God through me to carry them humbly into the most secret circle of the
Sacred Breast. We must do the labor of God with human hands, yet the
Labor of God 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