The Forgotten Threshold | Page 9

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 Son of God tonight glorified in the joy of a living Smile. And all the angels bowed laughing toward Him and clapped and danced before His Name, though the sum of their song was silence. And then every living star was scourged by the sins of men, and died into the darkness, saying "Thy Will be done," and it was morning with the Eucharist in the sky. Only Redemption trembled through the air. The stars are the