The forests, too, are ready with story hid in the fastness of their solitude, and it is a joy to think that those great pines, pointing ever upwards, go for the most part to carry the sails of great ships seeking afar under open sky.The forest holds other wonders still.It seems but last night that I wandered down the road which led to the little unheeded village where I had made my temporary home.The warm-scented breath of the pines and the stillness of the night wrapped me in great content; the summer lightning leapt in a lambent arch across the east, and the stars, seen dimly through the sombre tree crests, were outrivalled by the glow-worms which shone in countless points of light from bank and hedge; even two charcoal-burners, who passed with friendly greeting, had wreathed their hats with the living flame.The tiny shifting lamps were everywhere; pale yellow, purely white, or green as the underside of a northern wave.By day but an ugly, repellent worm;but darkness comes, and lo, a star alight.Nature is full for us of seeming inconsistencies and glad surprises.The world's asleep, say you; on your ear falls the nightingale's song and the stir of living creatures in bush and brake.The mantle of night falls, and all unattended the wind leaps up and scatters the clouds which veil the constant stars; or in the hour of the great dark, dawn parts the curtain with the long foregleam of the coming day.It is hard to turn one's back on night with her kiss of peace for tired eye-lids, the kiss which is not sleep but its neglected forerunner.Imade my way at last down to the vine-girt bridge asleep under the stars and up the winding stairs of the old grey tower; and a stone's-throw away the Rhine slipped quietly past in the midsummer moonlight.Switzerland came in its turn, unearthly in its white loveliness and glory of lake and sky.But perhaps the landmark which stands out most clearly is the solitary blue gentian which Ifound in the short slippery grass of the Rigi, gazing up at the sky whose blue could not hope to excel it.It was my first; and what need of another, for finding one I had gazed into the mystery of all.This side the Pass, snow and the blue of heaven; later Ientered Italy through fields of many-hued lilies, her past glories blazoned in the flowers of the field.
Now it is a strangely uneventful road that leads to my White Gate.
Each day questions me as it passes; each day makes answer for me "not yet." There is no material preparation to be made for this journey of mine into a far country - a simple fact which adds to the 'unknowableness' of the other side.Do I travel alone, or am Ione of a great company, swift yet unhurried in their passage? The voices of Penelope's suitors shrilled on the ears of Ulysses, as they journeyed to the nether-world, like nocturnal birds and bats in the inarticulateness of their speech.They had abused the gift, and fled self-condemned.Maybe silence commends itself as most suitable for the wayfarers towards the sunrise - silence because they seek the Word - but for those hastening towards the confusion they have wrought there falls already the sharp oncoming of the curse.
While we are still here the language of worship seems far, and yet lies very nigh; for what better note can our frail tongues lisp than the voice of wind and sea, river and stream, those grateful servants giving all and asking nothing, the soft whisper of snow and rain eager to replenish, or the thunder proclaiming a majesty too great for utterance? Here, too, stands the angel with the censer gathering up the fragrance of teeming earth and forest-tree, of flower and fruit, and sweetly pungent herb distilled by sun and rain for joyful use.Here, too, come acolytes lighting the dark with tapers - sun, moon, and stars - gifts of the Lord that His sanctuary may stand ever served.
It lies here ready to our hand, this life of adoration which we needs must live hand in hand with earth, for has she not borne the curse with us? But beyond the white gate and the trail of woodbine falls the silence greater than speech, darkness greater than light, a pause of "a little while"; and then the touch of that healing garment as we pass to the King in His beauty, in a land from which there is no return.
At the gateway then I cry you farewell.
The End
