The Book of the Holy Graal :: :: University of Virginia Library

Beata mea, in the world of men
Was Eva, shorten'd from Evangeline,
As if she bore unspell'd—in hidden life—
Some gospel-message, on a day beyond,
Predestined to awaken in the heart
And well to lips. The maid meanwhile was fair:
Her beauty brought good tidings to a few.
What else I know not, in the morn of youth,
She gave, except an inward shining sense
And virtue of her clean simplicity.
A little, none too plainly, set apart
By orchid-whiteness of her womanhood
Or one great longing—of the soul to learn
And the soul's end—she went about her ways,
The tasks allotted in her father's house.
Still ways, light tasks, made little call at best
On sources seal'd, capacities within,

To whose own hidden wants that house held none
For ministry—no mother to discern
The roots of need. Her father—kind in heart
Of meaning—dwelt absorb'd, a learned man,
Maker of learned books and known to fame.
By indecisive movements, passing through
His ring-fenced province of material mind,
He felt her famine, but the soul was dream
And the soul's hope for him. Of that and this
He spoke, as one who takes within his thought
A bare, remote hypothesis and turns
One fact about another, to survey
With reason's eye. Detach'd, no light he found,
No life of true concern to that domain
He brought, but wish'd the daughter whom he prized
In his abstracted way might find ere long
Something of life's realities, perhaps
In wedlock, motherhood, the natural cares
Which cast out vague imaginings. What help
Here for a hungry heart, no stir in his
Towards ghostly aims? Distresses and regrets,
Love even, for his one and lonely girl—
If duly weigh'd—were of a kindly heart,
A little puzzled, and far down amused
A little, but live heart—the letter'd man
Had none to prompt within him. It was well

And pleasant when in too brief hours of ease
She sat, low-stool'd, beside him, shaded light
Casting its lustre, gold among the red
Of the rich auburn hair; while glowing hearth
Flush'd the fair face with more than normal warmth
Of changing colour. And though no strict sense
Of definite possession, outside his range—
Second to none—of keen, unfruitful thought,
Kept him in actual touch with things without,
There was a mode, quite tacitly implied,
Wherein the notion of her daughterhood,
Of him as father, interlinking both,
Was counted good, however unexpress'd.

So with this slight, yet serviceable bond
They dwelt together and no burden knew
Therein. The void beneath it and the sad
Awareness that she look'd for help in vain
To him, so quietly assumed by her,
So held as granted, these—in mildness kept—
Took on no deep complexion of distress.
Indeed the want and waiting were themselves
As much her natural, foregranted state
As that strange mission in the place of dream,
Accounted always in the waking ways
A something sacred, haunted and remote,
Not to be shared with any.

The clouded term—
By which suspended purpose left the heart
Emptied therein—gave answer from afar
To the world-ways of her, for us who see
That twofold state of life, but not for her,
Or scarcely. There was lonely doom in both,
An arrestation and a formless blank,
The task of doing and of going on,
Truly a task imposed she knew not why.
Poor patience proved in each her main support:
And expectation also, whether more
In sleep or waking she could hardly tell,
Nor I convey. That something, near or far,
Upheld a torch of knowledge in the path
She felt, and so kept on. All these things shaped
Her moods and harbour'd certitude—in both
Her inward states—of being kept apart.
Reflected ever in the waking ways,
That undetermined mission of her dreams
Shut off, she knowing there was none like her
In all her circle. She had talk'd of sleep,
Its mystery, of things that came therein,
And with a certain sacred subtlety
Had sought in others for a whisper'd hint
Of kindred happenings, of work and quest,
But follow'd vainly. There were dreamers round
About her, but of strange continuance

In vision, meaningful or dark like her,
None; and the baffled essay, coupled too
With disconcerting questions in return
On why and what, her own experience—
If any—stifled an experiment
Which jeopardized the secret still her own
And not another's, to be shared at will.

So as in all things else, herein she took
The waiting counsel, spelling to herself
Patience. The word was written in her heart:
Patience, not only for the end of quest,
For hidden purpose shaping things within,
For higher knowledge in the normal mind,
But more for that which wore no certain form,
Though all bespoke its presence—need of love.
So 'twixt desire of light and that profound
Necessity of nature which engulfs
Our being—in possession and absence both—
She stood suspended. Now the viewless term
Shaped itself vaguely as of Things Divine
Encompass'd, now as love uplifting life
And glorifying outward things, in truth
A shining towards her from the shrouded end.

But since self-knowledge, not indeed explored,
Though vistas open'd, shew'd her human love

Asleep within her, stirring in the sleep
And moaning, as if this also dream'd and wept
Frustrated, these twin aspects of the one
Great good, which is all life and earth and heaven,
Work'd in and out and round upon themselves,
Until—reversed in dealings of the mind—
She seem'd to seek the one as if in terms
And symbols of the other, yet attain'd
Neither, so close and yet so far was man,
Though yearn'd for only in the sense of God
Encompassing, indwelling, while how past
All seeing, utterly remote of all
Was all of God.

There is but one thing more
To close these plain memorials of a maid
In outward ways, before her change began.
The Churches drew her and the Mass therein;
But records in the hand have fail'd to show
When and how often, if indeed at all—
Except in spirit—she received the Food
Of Souls at earthly Altars. It is known
That something mostly hinder'd—as in dream
She who fed others never broke the bread
She bore in Pyx, because her office served
Not to herself but others. Here on earth,
I think, her unfill'd multitudes of sleep
Spelt a regarded lesson, or some fear

Restrain'd her, lest the indrawn thought of Christ—
The Mystical—should suffer from a rite
Perform'd with partial knowledge, the Bread here
Want life beyond the element and Wine
Reserve the spirit in its shining veil,
A cover'd mystery. But she made at will,
And often, spiritual communions, cast
In spirit—worshipping—on altar steps,
While kneeling bodily in nave or aisle,
Or reservation chapels seal'd with peace
And still'd with sanctity. From far away—
Distance and greatest distance—to the soul
That long'd—she almost saw the end of quest
And almost tasted spiritual food
Of sweetness, while the palpitating chant
Of great invoking litanies inwrapt
Her psychic nature. So at times she lost
The lame unmeaningness of days and dreams,
And on the threshold of a living land
Paused love-inspired. O Bona Domini,
Terra viventium. Then the waste itself
Of ill-spell'd dreams and days changed over, took
The grade of life, uplifted in the Breath
Of Life and Spirit—Terra Exilii,
Yet also Bona Domini.

So much
The blessed spirit of the quest on earth,
Uplifted to the holy path of heaven,
Gives me to certify of thy life-steps,
BEATA MEA.

A little while, a little while,
Thou hast placed me—a pilgrim here—
But at first I knew not why,
Because of the heart's idolatry,
Its making of idols, its worshipping.
And yet in the hush of the heart I heard,
Low breathed for ever, one secret word.

A little while, a little while—
Is it long from cloud to clear?—
Then out of the dark and its deeps indrawn
A glimmer, a gleam and a golden dawn
High promise of beauty bring.
From idols fallen and altar broken
I turn'd because of Thy secret token.

A little while, a little while,
Thou wilt gather me hence and steer
Through ways more open, through ways more fair,
Ways that are Thine in the otherwhere,
When the soul its flight shall wing.
But that which is secret, that which is mine,
In the heart of the soul carry I.
It is Thine, it is mine;
It is mine because it is Thine:
O mystery, meaning and reason why.