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

And the man whose part—
Unmark'd by each—made answer to her own
Thus closely in a common mystery:
What of his outer ways? He kept, I know,
Some glimpse of dream-beginnings, or at least
His soul-state pass'd into the waking life,
A sudden dawn of knowledge, on a day
Remember'd well. Behind it spread the time
When conscious life no beacon cast thereon.
But that which fix'd the sovereign fact in mind
Mark'd not an origin in pregnant dream:
As yesterday therein led on to-day
And spoke of morrows, so the past might be
Drawn out unbroken. Leaving clear in thought
No hint of limitation at one end
Or other, possibly pre-natal states

Held that same theme, and life past earth perchance
No other: so did his experience
Repeat BEATA'S. But this blank of blanks
Reacted ever in the outward ways
Diversely on an eager, restless heart,
Quick with desire, as sudden in resolve,
All ready to rebel but not to wait—
Saving the soul in patience. Hence his name
Of QUÆSTOR DEI, for his life in verse
As fitting symbol chosen. Not to hide
That which counts nothing, poor identity
On earth, it reaches over to express
A sacramental nature, up and down
Strange ways of thought and effort urging fast
And moiling. There turn'd back, it broke up here
Whatever barr'd; or at an alley's end
Finding no better than a wall's sheer height—
Past scaling—yet unconquer'd, once again
It veer'd and so restarted. Labour wins
Result at last; the crown descends thereto,
And high desire—upleaping and aflame—
Soars to attain it.

Now, the sleepless heart
Of QUÆSTOR DEI toil'd after truth and God.
Resolve was ever towards the end; misease
At let and hindrance was the chafe at self
And its preventing chain. Rebellion too

Withstood no idle postulate of doom
Or God's opposing will, but failing worth
To follow on a call so high, but weak
And errant nature, all within the man
Which miss'd the goal conceived. These, in his thoughts,
Kept back, these made the warfare of his world
Faint-hearted tactics, he so prone to yield,
Call truce, so tempted towards a shameful peace.
Perchance misdoubt and such reproach made up
The bar erected. In his heart he knew
The quest was follow'd, being part of growth,
And to forestall was foolish in the hope,
Nor came to aught, save new impediment.

So also moods befell, when unawares
The contest ceased: a little while the soul
Reposed as on the open hand of God,
Resign'd and temper'd. Then the strange dreamlife
Display'd its miracle of guidance; then
Expectant mind foresaw what lay beyond—
Not in clear vision, yet from doubt set free—
As some fair end in knowledge and in light.
Then also QUÆSTOR DEI felt and knew
What place apart he held. He did not need
To sift acquaintance, so to stand assured

That no man slept himself into a world
Like his. That it must take him in good time
To some unwitted term—here faith came in;
The high sincerity and truth of God
Involved this and assured. But more than all
He knew dream-life into the waking life
Had brought salvation, brought the note of quest,
Made known that something somewhere in the world
Was waiting, not beyond a strenuous search
And not so much desirable or fair
As very need, meaning and life of being.
For the rest, QUÆSTOR DEI stood unyoked,
Without possessions or prosperity,
Without adversity, or pinch of want,
In a middle and moderate way, some daily bread
Earn'd, nor too hardly—how shall matter not.
Poet he was by virtue of the gift,
Not quite unheeded. A young, earnest man
And student, clean of thought and in his life
Clean, he resolved on God and his own soul's
Unfoldment, rather as a work in God
Than as demanding guerdon, not in fear
Of loss, yet anxious lest he miss the term
And go in darkness who should walk in light.
His past knew other searchings, but the dream

Had saved him, dawning into consciousness;
Had once conceived unutterable loss
And found it dwell within him. In his verse
He pictured one who took such loss to heart
As pre-elected to its nameless charge—
For the whole world's salvation. When this theme
Grew first within him, when from more to more
He shaped it, zealous and absorb'd therein,
The thing possess'd him, the thing lived in him—
Subject and self inwoven and inbound.
The more he dwelt upon that darksome tale,
Touch'd and retouch'd the record, not to gild,
Not to adorn with picture-light of words,
But there and here to give the guise of truth
And very seeming, the more it work'd in him,
On him laid hold. A sickness of the mind
Came over him: the imaged life became
His own. In stresses of a final draft,
A last sad conquest in reality,
It seem'd that something which was more than self
Empower'd him to accept the part of doom.
That which his mind had fashion'd and evolved
Cross'd the dim threshold between art and life,
Lodged after as a madness in the brain,
And haunted. Exorcizing power of will
Was baffled. Panic follow'd, then the time

Of a still frenzy, as he took the dread
Into his heart and nursed it, help'd the growth
Within, consented and was crucified.
The grand climacteric of a single night
Wrote itself—a red fire—in heart and head.
He rent the poem and its fragments knew
Another flame. His witness was himself,
All else flash'd back false seeming, having cast
Self beyond hope apart. To satisfy
Such woe with record were some weak attempt
To comfort that which neither man nor God
Would rest henceforth. But then, another mood:
So great a tragedy of all the worlds
Might well be burnt into a few brief lines,
That man at least might know. And so he wrote,
As one whose stylus in the darkness halts,
Whose hand shakes, shaping an uncertain word,
Or misspells half his message in the night:
Night all, both word and thought, most dreadful night;
And in the soul that dark on which no dawn
Was look'd to break, world without end prolong'd.

I know that life is Thine and life is Thou,
That life is life, O Lord, for evermore:
Thou the beginning and Thou the end and Thou
The after and before—
That which abides betwixt the here and now,
And there and then.
But death is that which stands from Thee apart
In empty nothingness eternally;
For Thou art all. Amen.
A Life in life, where'er I move Thou art,
And growth is mine in Thee from more to more:
Shall aught of soul to naught of death respond?
I am alive in Thee and cannot die,
But pass from star to star, from shore to shore,
In vast of this world and more vast beyond,
Imploring knowledge of my soul in Thee,
Its deeps to penetrate, its heights endow:
Knowledge of Thee in me,
Till Thine in Thee is Thou.