The Brother Ambrose was ever a saintly man approved of God and beloved by the Brethren. To him one night, as he lay abed in the dormitory, came the word of the Lord, saying, "Come,and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's wife." And Brother Ambrose arose and was carried to a great and high mountain, even as in the Vision of Blessed John. 'Twas a still night of many stars, and Brother Ambrose, looking up, saw a radiant path in the heavens; and lo! the stars gathered themselves together on either side until they stood as walls of light, and the four winds lapped him about as in a mantle and bore him towards the wondrous gleaming roadway. Then between the stars came the Holy City with roof and pinnacle aflame, and walls aglow with such colours as no earthly limner dreams of, and much gold. Brother Ambrose beheld the Gates of Pearl, and by every gate an angel with wings of snow and fire, and a face no man dare look on because of its exceeding radiance.Then as Brother Ambrose stretched out his arms because of his great longing, a little grey cloud came out of the north and hung between the walls of light, so that he no longer beheld the Vision, but only heard a sound as of a great multitude crying 'Alleluia'; and suddenly the winds came about him again, and lo! he found himself in his bed in the dormitory, and it was midnight, for the bell was ringing to Matins; and he rose and went down with the rest. But when the Brethren left the choir Brother Ambrose stayed fast in his place, hearing and seeing nothing because of the Vision of God; and at Lauds they found him and told the Prior.He questioned Brother Ambrose of the matter, and when he heard the Vision bade him limn the Holy City even as he had seen it; and the Precentor gave him uterine vellum and much fine gold and what colours he asked for the work. Then Brother Ambrose limned a wondrous fair city of gold with turrets and spires; and he inlaid blue for the sapphire, and green for the emerald, and vermilion where the city seemed aflame with the glory of God; but the angels he could not limn, nor could he set the rest of the colours as he saw them, nor the wall of stars oneither hand; and Brother Ambrose fell sick because of the exceeding great longing he had to limn the Holy City, and was very sad; but the Prior bade him thank God, and remember the infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little grey cloud, veiled Jerusalem to his sight.
The Brother Ambrose was ever a saintly man approved of God and beloved by the Brethren. To him one night, as he lay abed in the dormitory, came the word of the Lord, saying, "Come,and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's wife." And Brother Ambrose arose and was carried to a great and high mountain, even as in the Vision of Blessed John. 'Twas a still night of many stars, and Brother Ambrose, looking up, saw a radiant path in the heavens; and lo! the stars gathered themselves together on either side until they stood as walls of light, and the four winds lapped him about as in a mantle and bore him towards the wondrous gleaming roadway. Then between the stars came the Holy City with roof and pinnacle aflame, and walls aglow with such colours as no earthly limner dreams of, and much gold. Brother Ambrose beheld the Gates of Pearl, and by every gate an angel with wings of snow and fire, and a face no man dare look on because of its exceeding radiance.
Then as Brother Ambrose stretched out his arms because of his great longing, a little grey cloud came out of the north and hung between the walls of light, so that he no longer beheld the Vision, but only heard a sound as of a great multitude crying 'Alleluia'; and suddenly the winds came about him again, and lo! he found himself in his bed in the dormitory, and it was midnight, for the bell was ringing to Matins; and he rose and went down with the rest. But when the Brethren left the choir Brother Ambrose stayed fast in his place, hearing and seeing nothing because of the Vision of God; and at Lauds they found him and told the Prior.
He questioned Brother Ambrose of the matter, and when he heard the Vision bade him limn the Holy City even as he had seen it; and the Precentor gave him uterine vellum and much fine gold and what colours he asked for the work. Then Brother Ambrose limned a wondrous fair city of gold with turrets and spires; and he inlaid blue for the sapphire, and green for the emerald, and vermilion where the city seemed aflame with the glory of God; but the angels he could not limn, nor could he set the rest of the colours as he saw them, nor the wall of stars oneither hand; and Brother Ambrose fell sick because of the exceeding great longing he had to limn the Holy City, and was very sad; but the Prior bade him thank God, and remember the infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little grey cloud, veiled Jerusalem to his sight.
As I write the monastery bell hard by rings out across the lark's song. They still have time for visions behind those guarding walls, but for most of us it is not so. We let slip the ideal for what we call the real, and the golden dreams vanish while we clutch at phantoms: we speed along life's pathway, counting to the full the sixty minutes of every hour, yet the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Lying here in this quiet backwater it is hard to believe that the world without is turbulent with storm and stress and the ebb and flow of uncertain tides. The little yellow cat rolling on its back among the daisies, the staid tortoise making a stately meal off the buttercups near me, these are great events in this haven of peace. And yet, looking back to the working days, I know how much goodness and loving kindness there is under the froth and foam. If we do not know ourselves we most certainly do not know our brethren: that revelation awaits us, it may be, first in Heaven. To have faith is to create; to have hope is to call down blessing; to have love is to work miracles. Above alllet us see visions, visions of colour and light, of green fields and broad rivers, of palaces laid with fair colours, and gardens where a place is found for rosemary and rue.
It is our prerogative to be dreamers, but there will always be men ready to offer us death for our dreams. And if it must be so let us choose death; it is gain, not loss, and the gloomy portal when we reach it is but a white gate, the white gate maybe we have known all our lives barred by the tendrils of the woodbine.
Rain, rain, rain: the little flagged path outside my window is a streaming way, where the coming raindrops meet again the grey clouds whose storehouse they have but just now left. The grass grows greener as I watch it, the burnt patches fade, a thousand thirsty heads are uplifted for the cooling draught.
The great thrush that robs the raspberry canes is busy; yesterday he had little but dust for his guerdon, but now fresh, juicy fruit repays him as he swings to and fro on the pliant branches. The blackbirds and starlings find the worms an easy prey—poor brother worm ever ready for sacrifice. I can hear the soft expectant chatter of the family of martins under the roof; there will be good hunting, and they know it, for the flies are out when the rain is over, and there are clamorous mouths awaiting. My little brown brothers, the sparrows, remain my chief delight. Of all the birds these nestle closest to my heart, be they grimy little cockneys or their trim and dainty country cousins. They come day by day for their meed of crumbs spread for them outside my window, and atthis season they eat leisurely and with good appetite, for there are no hungry babies pestering to be fed. Very early in the morning I hear the whirr and rustle of eager wings, and the tap, tap, of little beaks upon the stone. The sound carries me back, for it was the first to greet me when I rose to draw water and gather kindling in my roadmender days; and if I slip back another decade they survey me, reproving my laziness, from the foot of the narrow bed in my little attic overseas.
Looking along the roadway that we have travelled we see the landmarks, great and small, which have determined the direction of our feet. For some those of childhood stand out above all the rest; but I remember few notable ones, and those few the emphatic chord of the universe, rather than any commerce with my fellows. There was the night of my great disappointment, when I was borne from my comfortable bed to see the wonders of the moon's eclipse. Disappointment was so great that it sealed my lips; but, once back on my pillow, I sobbed for grief that I had seen a wonder so far below my expectation. Then there was a night at Whitby, when the wind made speech impossible, and the seas rushed up and over the great lighthouse like the hungry spirits of the deep. I like better to remember the scent of the first cowslipfield under the warm side of the hedge, when I sang to myself for pure joy of their colour and fragrance. Again, there were the bluebells in the deserted quarry like the backwash of a southern sea, and below them the miniature forest of sheltering bracken with its quaint conceits; and, crowned above all, the day I stood on Watcombe Down, and looked across a stretch of golden gorse and new-turned blood-red field, the green of the headland, and beyond, the sapphire sea.
Time sped, and there came a day when I first set foot on German soil and felt the throb of its paternity, the beat of our common life. England is my mother, and most dearly do I love her swelling breasts and wind-swept, salt-strewn hair. Scotland gave me my name, with its haunting derivation handed down by brave men; but Germany has always been to me the Fatherlandpar excellence. True, my love is limited to the southern provinces, with their mediæval memories; for the progressive guttural north I have little sympathy, but the Rhine claimed me from the first, calling, calling, with that wonderful voice which speaks of death and life, of chivalry and greed of gold. If you would have the river's company you should wander, a happy solitary, along its banks, watching its gleaming current in the early morning, its golden glory as it answers the farewell of parting day. Then, in the silence ofthe night, you can hear the wash and eddy calling one to another, count the heart-beats of the great bearer of burdens, and watch in the moonlight the sisters of the mist as they lament with wringing hands the days that are gone.
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'sasleep, 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. I made 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 I found 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 I entered 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 I one 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 withtapers—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.
Transcriber's Note:Page 79, "Sphœphera" changed to "Sphæra" (Sphæra cujus centrum)
Transcriber's Note:Page 79, "Sphœphera" changed to "Sphæra" (Sphæra cujus centrum)