KEYS (10k)
1 Eliphas Levi
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
9 Anonymous
5 Brian Godawa
3 Rumi
3 Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 Kerry Lonsdale
3 Derek Landy
3 Dan Eaton
3 Cassandra Clare
2 William Shakespeare
2 Sherrilyn Kenyon
2 Saint Therese of Lisieux
2 Karen Armstrong
2 Jonathan Franzen
2 John Calvin
2 Fulton J Sheen
2 Eugene H Peterson
2 Donald Trump
2 Beth Moore
2 Angie Thomas
2 Alfred Austin
1:The key one and threefold, even as universal science. The division of the work is sevenfold, and through these sections are distributed the seven degrees of initiation into is transcendental philosophy.
The text is a mystical commentary on the oracles of Solomon, ^ and the work ends with a series of synoptic schedules which are the synthesis of Magic and the occult Kabalah so far as concerns that which can be made public in writing. The rest, being the esoteric and inexpressible part of the science, is formulated in magnificent pantacles carefully designed and engraved. These are nine in number, as follows
(1) The dogma of Hermes;
(2) Magical realisation;
(3) The path of wisdom and the initial procedure in the work
(4) The Gate of the Sanctuary enlightened by seven mystic rays;
(5) A Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human figure is extending its arms in the form of a cross;
(6) The magical laboratory of Khunrath, demonstrating the necessary union of prayer and work
(7) The absolute synthesis of science;
(8) Universal equilibrium ;
(9) A summary of Khunrath's personal embodying an energetic protest against all his detractors. ~ Eliphas Levi, The History Of Magic,#KEYS
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1:Silence is the sanctuary of prudence. ~ Baltasar Gracian
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2:Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you. ~ Rumi
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3:I will never forgive you for what you did in the sanctuary. ~ Terah Edun
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4:Let's go into the sanctuary or the adult Sunday school room, ~ Carolyn Brown
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5:Remember,
the entrance door
to the sanctuary
is inside you. ~ Rumi
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6:Our thoughts are the decorations inside the sanctuary where we live. ~ A W Tozer
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7:Sex is the sacred song of the soul; Sex is the sanctuary of Self. ~ Aleister Crowley
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8:There may be idols in the heart, where there are none in the sanctuary. ~ Matthew Henry
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9:Civilizations fall because the people inside the Sanctuary throw open the gates. ~ Bill Whittle
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10:but the effort of tying his Oxford shoes nearly drove him to the sanctuary of his bed. ~ Daniel Silva
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11:To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God. ~ Thomas Merton
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12:her mother is asking her a question and she is forced to resurface from the sanctuary of daydream. ~ Nick Bantock
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13:the Sanctuary was reserved for the rich and elite--those with fortunes, not soldiers of fortune. ~ Drew Karpyshyn
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14:Make Your way to the everlasting ruins, to all that the enemy has destroyed in the sanctuary. Psalm 74:3 ~ Beth Moore
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15:What would killing the Elders result in?"
"Panic? Fear? Three empty parking spaces in the Sanctuary? ~ Derek Landy
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16:Jesus is the sanctuary every time we gather with other believers. We need that truth to soak into our hearts. ~ Lysa TerKeurst
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17:suspended between the carefree child of the Sanctuary I had once been and the confident adult I wished to become. ~ Jacqueline Carey
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18:May Thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion, and may I be able to awaken Thy love inall hearts. ~ Paramhansa Yogananda
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19:May Thy Love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion. And may I be able to awaken Thy love in all hearts. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
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20:May Thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion & may I be able 2awaken Thy love inall hearts ~ Paramahansa YoganandaBlessedDay
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21:The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. ~ Anonymous
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22:A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub and the toastmasters. ~ Helmut Thielicke
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23:Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. The entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you. ~ Rumi
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24:Nothing drives home a win more absolutely for the Sanctuary than a severed head delivered in a Hello Kitty box, topped with a big gingham bow. ~ Jane Cousins
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25:When the Mass is being celebrated, the sanctuary is filled with countless angels, who adore the Divine Victim immolated on the altar. ~ Saint John Chrysostom
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26:So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. ~ Baruch Spinoza
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27:Momma had told me, “See, she looks asleep,” but when I squeezed her hand, her eyes never opened. Daddy carried me out the sanctuary as I screamed for her to wake up. ~ Angie Thomas
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28:God’s passion to be glorified and our passion to be satisfied are one experience in the Christ-exalting act of worship—singing in the sanctuary and suffering in the streets. ~ John Piper
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29:Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary And pitch our evils there? ~ William Shakespeare
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30:God created us with an urge for the infinite. We need to embrace it and never surrender to the seditious and spurious summons of contentment cowering in the sanctuary of security. ~ Daniel Lapin
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31:But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? ~ Jonathan Franzen
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32:As I sat in the sanctuary surrounded by thousands of empty seats, here’s what became clear to me: it wasn’t the size of the crowd Jesus cared about; it was their level of commitment. ~ Kyle Idleman
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33:Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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34:She leaned in to kiss him, tender and slow. “You’re a good man, Hunter.”
He rolled her underneath him, his body already aching for the sanctuary of hers. “You make me want to be. ~ Lisa Kessler
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35:Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat. ~ George Bernard Shaw
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36:In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary. ~ Thomas Huxley
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37:No child could remain in the sanctuary unless they opened themselves to God. If they resisted, refused to believe, they were expelled. There was no shortage of street children to choose from. ~ Tom Rob Smith
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38:A man must go on a quest / to discover the sacred fire / in the sanctuary of his own belly / to ignite the flame in his heart / to fuel the blaze in the hearth / to rekindle his ardor for the earth ~ Sam Keen
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39:The Sanctuary was empty and the Holy of Holies untenanted. —BOOK V OF THE HISTORIES BY TACITUS, COMMENTING ON THE DISCOVERY OF GNAEUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS UPON ENTERING THE HOLY OF HOLIES IN 63 BCE ~ Peter Rollins
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40:But if God has set his seat in the sanctuary of the heavens in order to rule the universe, it follows that he by no means ignores earthly affairs, but controls them with the highest reason and wisdom. ~ John Calvin
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41:You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water. b 2 So I gaze on You in the sanctuary to see Your strength and Your glory. ~ Anonymous
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42:I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art. ~ Louis Kahn
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43:R. Elazar says it is enough if the bottom crust is formed. The Passover sacrifice may be turned around in the oven (on Friday) when it is getting dark. In the heating-house of (the sanctuary) the fire was fed at eventide. ~ Anonymous
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44:Marriage is the sanctuary of the heart. You have been entrusted with the heart of another human being. Whatever else your life's great mission will entail, loving and defending this heart next to you is part of your great quest. ~ John Eldredge
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45:When we stay close to the wisdom of our knowing, seeking solutions to our problems in the sanctuary of the heart and not in the vanity of the mind, then we can pretty much trust in the unfolding, mysterious wisdom of life. ~ Marianne Williamson
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46:The little girl’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut and she bore the angry expression unique to babies who had just been wrenched from the sanctuary of warmth and nourishment where they had spent the previous nine blissful months. ~ Kathryn Hughes
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47:I sat beside my parents in the sanctuary filled with friends and relatives. They should have been our wedding guests. Instead, they’d come to pay their respects to a man who’d died too young and too soon. He’d just turned twenty-nine. ~ Kerry Lonsdale
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48:I sat beside my parents in the sanctuary filled with friends and relatives. They should have been our wedding guests. Instead, they’d come to pay their respects to a man who’d died too young and too soon. He’d just turned twenty-nine. Now ~ Kerry Lonsdale
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49:O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.” (Psalms 63: 1-2) ~ Chris Oyakhilome
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50:To be cursed by a god is to be touched by a god. To be touched by any god is to share divinity in some small measure. When the high priest leaves the sanctuary he strips off his clothing and bathes. Did you know that? His clothing is burned.” I ~ Gene Wolfe
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51:I think that one must approach the Logos Savior, not induced by the fear of punishment and not in the expectation of some kind of a reward, but primarily for the sake of the good in itself. Such will stand on the right in the sanctuary. ~ Clement of Alexandria
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52:To a black man, his woman was the sanctuary where he could retreat from the rest of the world. Her love could either make him or break him; he needed her more than she knew. She was responsible for the man he was and for the man he had yet to become. ~ Ashley Antoinette
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53:Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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54:1 ‡ Now the main point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest,† who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,† 2 ‡ and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle† set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being. ~ Anonymous
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55:I follow Grandma toward the front of the sanctuary. She and Granddaddy have a spot on the second row that’s theirs. See, the first row is for folks who wanna show off. The second row is for folks who wanna show off but wanna act like they’re subtler about it. ~ Angie Thomas
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56:We know we are a species obsessed with itself and its own past and origins. We know we are capable of removing from the sanctuary of the earth shards and fragments, and gently placing them in museums. Great museums in great cities—the hallmarks of civilisation. ~ Kathleen Jamie
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57:the sanctuary of St. Sergius, this space had itself once been the sanctuary of a much smaller and older church. It measured about six meters long by five meters wide, and had a low ceiling supported by two rows of slender pillars, dividing the room into a nave with two aisles. ~ Dan Eaton
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58:We will end the sanctuary cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths. Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars, and we will work with Congress to pass legislation to protect those jurisdictions that do assist federal authorities. ~ Donald Trump
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59:If Jesus made the sanctuary free and available for all, we should too. If the savior of the world decided that demarkations and hierarchies and power players were no longer necessary to the health of his church, then who are we to reinstate a ranking system after Jesus rendered it obsolete? ~ Jen Hatmaker
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60:I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All men, all things, the state, the church, yea the friends of the heart are phantasms and unreal beside the sanctuary of the heart. With so much awe, with so much fear, let it be respected. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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61:My administration will end the sanctuary cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths. Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars, and we will work with Congress to pass legislation to protect those jurisdictions that do assist federal authorities. ~ Donald Trump
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62:6So Moses gave a commandment, and they caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp, saying, “Let neither man nor woman do any more work for the offering of the sanctuary.” And the people were restrained from bringing, 7for the material they had was sufficient for all the work to be done—indeed too †much. ~ Anonymous
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63:Never try to live on the old manna, nor seek to find help in Egypt. All must come from Jesus or thou art undone forever. Old anointings will not suffice to impart unction to thy spirit; thine head must have fresh oil poured upon it from the golden horn of the sanctuary, or it will cease from its glory. ~ Charles Spurgeon
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64:For a few moments we ate in silence. Visions of what the all-church meeting would be like raced through my mind. The night before, I’d dreamed that the fourth-grade Sunday school class had morphed into a lynch mob and were chasing me around the sanctuary while the rest of the congregation sang “Blessed Assurance. ~ Ian Morgan Cron
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65:Not bad for a ‘common soldier,’ hmm?” I quietly asked, then resheathed my katana and headed back toward the chapel. I could feel his gaze on my back as I walked away, so I decided to play it up. I paused at the sanctuary door, then looked back over my shoulder and smiled vampishly through hooded eyes.
“Coming? ~ Chloe Neill
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66:Skulduggery: What do you get if you kill the Elders?
Stephanie: This sounds like a joke
Skulduggery: Valkyrie --
Stephanie: I don't know
Skulduggery: Yes, yes you do.. not think what would killing the Elders result in?
Stephanie: Panic, fear? Three empty spaces in the Sanctuary - Skulduggery Pleasant ~ Derek Landy
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67:We're here on Sanctuary business," Skulduggery tried.
The man on Deadfall's right bristled, and Deadfall grinned. "Hear that, Pete? They're with that Sanctuary."
Hokum Pete snarled. "I hate the Sanctuary."
"Oh," Skulduggery said.
"We all hate the Sanctuary."
"Ah. Then we're not here on Sanctuary business. I was just joking. ~ Derek Landy
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68:How often you are irresistibly drawn to a plain, unassuming woman, whose soft silvery tones render her positively attractive! In the social circle, how pleasant it is to hear a woman talk in that low key which always characterizes the true lady. In the sanctuary of home, how such a voice soothes the fretful child and cheers the weary husband! ~ Charles Lamb
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69:Even the West has known the architecture of empty space, whose object, for thousands of years, has been less to construct divine houses, than to create sacred places, to seize upon mystery and to immerse man in it-whether by raising the cyclopean pedestal that surrounds him with stars, or by hollowing out the sanctuary that wraps him in haunted night. ~ Andre Malraux
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70:HEAVEN knows the difference between SUNDAY morning and WEDNESDAY afternoon. God longs to speak as CLEARLY in the workplace as He does in the sanctuary. He longs to be WORSHIPED when we sit at the dinner table and not just when we come to His communion table. You may go days without THINKING of Him, but there's never a moment when He's not thinking of YOU. ~ Max Lucado
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71:As soon as he was free from the library, he raced away from the Sanctuary, returning his faithless body to his bedroom at the mansion. He was still erect when he got there. Duh. Staring down at his button fly, he tried to find another explanation. Maybe he’d thrown a clot? A cock clot … or maybe … shit… There was no way he could be attracted to another female. ~ J R Ward
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72:make my insides flip. But instead of walking down the aisle toward my best friend, my first and only love, I was at his funeral. I sat beside my parents in the sanctuary filled with friends and relatives. They should have been our wedding guests. Instead, they’d come to pay their respects to a man who’d died too young and too soon. He’d just turned twenty-nine. ~ Kerry Lonsdale
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73:This is the secret of holiness: to be led by the Holy Spirit in all things. Seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit actively. Call upon Him, for He is, at every moment, available to you. He dwells with Me and with My Father in the sanctuary of your soul. He is your Advocate against the world, the flesh, and the Evil One, the accuser. He is your Advocate with My Father. ~ Anonymous
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74:Inui’s insane laughter filled the sanctuary. The ceiling peeled off and shards of stained glass danced through the air. They turned into dead rats, German dictionaries, wineglasses, fountain pens, scorpions, cats’ heads, syringes, and a motley jumble of other objects that filled the space, flying around madly, swirling like a whirlwind, surging like a raging sea. ~ Yasutaka Tsutsui
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75:Sunlight speared into the Sanctuary as Diana opened the doors. Emma felt a flash of gratitude for her tutor as Diana and the two faeries vanished outside. Gratitude for sparing Arthur--and for sparing Julian one more second of pretending her was alright. For Jules was looking at his brother--finally, really looking at him, with no one to see or judge his weakness. ~ Cassandra Clare
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76:Suppliant
Grant me, dear Lord, the alchemy of toil,
Clean days of labour, dreamless nights of rest,
And that which shall my weariness assoil
The sanctuary of one beloved breast:
Laughter of children, hope and thankful tears,
Knowledge to yield, with valour to defend,
A faith immutable, and stedfast years
That move unvexed to their mysterious end.
~ Alan Sullivan
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77:Steps led up to the sanctuary, its two side chapels obscured by wooden screens elaborately adorned with carvings in wood and ivory. He could barely discern the canopied high altar or the apse with worn steps on which the priests of ancient times used to sit. Somewhere below his feet, beneath the cool flagstones, was the flooded crypt where it was believed the infant Jesus had taken shelter. ~ Dan Eaton
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78:The Sanctuary and its deities were the main source of the city’s income. Visitors paid to enter the city. They had to buy the correct apparel to perform rituals in the Sanctuary. They had to pay again to acquire offerings for the gods. Mecca was not just one of the world’s oldest shrines, it was a citadel for capitalism. The people who oiled the wheels of Meccan religious life were known as Hums. ~ Ziauddin Sardar
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79:The Torah, then, was compact, transferable history, law, wisdom, poetic chant, prophecy, consolation and self-strengthening counsel. Just as the sanctuary could be erected in safety and dismantled in crisis, the speaking scroll was designed to survive even incineration, because the scribes who had composed and edited it had memorised its oral traditions and its texts as part of their basic education. ~ Simon Schama
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80:you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotionw and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heartx and understands every desire and every thought. If you seek him,y he will be found by you; but if you forsakez him, he will rejecta you forever. 10Consider now, for the LORD has chosen you to build a house as the sanctuary. Be strong and do the work. ~ Anonymous
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81:Under the sanctuary are the catacombs where the dead wait for resurrection. The living do not venture there. The caverns here underneath the Sanctuary are illuminated only by dim shafts of light from the sanctuary. The walls are etched with flowers of frost, but at least I am out of the wind. Dark bays line the hall in front of me, a vast rabbit warren, each hold filled to the brim with the scent of the past. ~ Ned Hayes
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82:The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent. ~ H L Mencken
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83:Back in the sanctuary, the Reb concluded his taped message by saying, “Please love one another, talk to one another, don’t let trivialities dissolve friendships…” Then he sang a simple tune, which translated to: “Good-bye friends, good-bye friends, good-bye, good-bye, see you again, see you again, good-bye.” The congregation, one last time, joined in. You could say it was the loudest prayer of his career. But I always knew he’d go out with a song. ~ Mitch Albom
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84:Lovely,wonderful Isabelle.Could you please go away?Now is a really bad time." Isabelle looked from Magnus to her brother,and back again. "Then,you dont want me to tell you that Camille's just escaped from the Sanctuary and my mother is demanding that you come back to the Institute right now to help them find her?" "No,"Magnus said."I dont want you to tell me that" "Well,to bad"Isabelle said"Because it's true .I mean,I guess you dont have to go,but- ~ Cassandra Clare
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85:O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. ~ Francis Chan
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86:Agoraphobia is about being afraid of fear itself in a way Franklin Roosevelt probably never comprehended. It’s the all-consuming dread of having a full-fledged panic attack in any location where there’s no escape route, no shelter, no protection. For someone with this preoccupation, the very logical, rational thing to do is to stay in the sanctuary where he knows he can survive, without the risk of public embarrassment, should fear catch him off guard. Our ~ Erin Healy
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87:Lovely,wonderful Isabelle.Could you please go away?Now is a really bad time."
Isabelle looked from Magnus to her brother,and back again.
"Then,you dont want me to tell you that Camille's just escaped from the Sanctuary and my mother is demanding that you come back to the Institute right now to help them find her?"
"No,"Magnus said."I dont want you to tell me that"
"Well,to bad"Isabelle said"Because it's true .I mean,I guess you dont have to go,but- ~ Cassandra Clare
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88:...only the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies, and on only one day a year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when all sins of Israel are wiped clean. On this day, the high priest comes into presence of God to atone for the whole nation. If he is worthy of God's blessing, Israel's sins are forgiven. If he is not, a rope tied to his waist ensures that when God strikes him dead, he can be dragged out of the Holy of Holies without anyone else defiling the sanctuary. ~ Reza Aslan
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89:What are you working on?" Elizabeth asked. Nate could hear her tapping a pencil on her desk. She took notes during their conversations. He didn't know what she did with the notes, but it bothered him.
"I have a lecture at the sanctuary in four days." Why, why had he told her? Why? Now she'd rattle down the mountain in her ancient Mercedes that looked like a Nazi staff car, sit in the audience, and ask all the questions that she knew in advance he couldn't answer. ~ Christopher Moore
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90:Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul. ~ Jeremy Bentham
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91:were preparing to moor a visiting dirigible. With such fantastic zoom, she could see that there were OPA guards in black suits waiting to receive the airship. A lot of them. Whoever was on the dirigible must have been important. She focused on the airship. The sanctuary logo marked the side. Rylie Gresham was arriving for her meeting, just as Stark had said she would. The Godslayer was right there. She’d have all the answers that Deirdre wanted. “Having trouble?” the old tourist asked kindly. ~ S M Reine
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92:It is not the sanctuary that is in danger; it is civilization. It is not infallibility that may go down; it is personal rights. It is not the Eucharist that may pass away; it is freedom of conscience. It is not divine justice that may evaporate; it is the courts of human justice. It is not that God may be driven from His throne; it is that men may lose the meaning of home; For peace on earth will come only to those who give glory to God! It is not the Church that is in danger, it is the world! ~ Fulton J Sheen
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93:Far Away From Here
This is the sanctuary
where the prettified young lady,
calm, and always ready,
fans her breasts, aglow,
elbow on the pillow,
hears the fountain’s flow:
it’s the room of Dorothea.
- The breeze and water distantly
sing their song, mingled here
with sobs to soothe the spoiled child’s fear.
From tip to toe, most thoroughly,
her delicate surfaces appear,
oiled with sweet perfumery.
- the flowers nearby swoon gracefully.
~ Charles Baudelaire
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94:The Blessing
Heads are covered by the Tallit, or prayer shawl; hands are extended out with the fingers splayed to form the shape of the letter Shin, the first letter in the word Shaddai, a name for the Almighty. The chant, in Hebrew, is loud and ecstatic: "May the Lord bless and keep you."
The Shekhina is summoned; the feminine essence of God. She enters the sanctuary to bless the congregation. The very sight of her, the awesome light emanating from the Shekhina, is dangerous to behold. ~ Leonard Nimoy
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95:The Ragamuffin rabble are the unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on His mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth. Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary. ~ Brennan Manning
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96:there was a time when this home was her domain. Sometimes she felt proud of it, sometimes she felt tied to it, but whether it was a burden or a blessing, it was hers to keep. She’d known better than anyone what this house needed; lately it’d become one of the few aspects of her life she could control. there is no corner, no ridge along the steps or crack along the wall, that she doesn’t know like her own body. the house may never have been the sanctuary she’d always dreamed of, but at least it carried no surprises. It was comfortable. ~ Anonymous
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97:there was a time when this home was her domain. Sometimes she felt proud of it, sometimes she felt tied to it, but whether it was a burden or a blessing, it was hers to keep. She’d known better than anyone what this house needed; lately it’d become one of the few aspects of her life she could control. there is no corner, no ridge along the steps or crack along the wall, that she doesn’t know like her own body. the house may never have been the sanctuary she’d always dreamed of, but at least it carried no surprises. It was comfortable. ~ Natalia Sylvester
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98:Honey, there’s not a single woman in this town who doesn’t know about Sanctuary, Land of the Bodacious Gods. Heck, me and my girlfriends want to get together and vote Mama Lo an award for her policy against hiring any man not seriously buff…Not that you’re not buff. You can certainly hold your own against the Sanctuary Hotties. But face it, haven’t you ever noticed that this place is like Hooters for women? (Sunshine) No, I can honestly say that I’ve never noticed how good-looking the men at Sanctuary are. Nor have I ever cared. (Talon) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon
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99:Honey, there’s not a single woman in this town who doesn’t know about Sanctuary, Land of the Bodacious Gods. Heck, me and my girlfriends want to get together and vote Mama Lo an award for her policy against hiring any man not seriously buff…Not that you’re not buff. You can certainly hold your own against the Sanctuary Hotties. But face it, haven’t you ever noticed that this place is like Hooters for women? (Sunshine)
No, I can honestly say that I’ve never noticed how good-looking the men at Sanctuary are. Nor have I ever cared. (Talon) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon
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100:Rows of burnished wooden pews gleamed dully against ornate, almost gaudy walls. Exposed roof beams led toward a raised transept. A couple of tourists examined a fresco, while another, seated in a pew near the front, appeared to be deep in prayer. Two rows of pillars, one above the other, stretched out on either side toward the sanctuary. The marble columns, he knew from earlier discussions with his friend, Father Emil Boutros, whom he had come to visit, were pilfered from more ancient buildings and used without regard to their diameter or architectural form. ~ Dan Eaton
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101:Stop!” Noah shouted from the side doorway into the sanctuary. “Don’t take another step. Back away from her. I mean it!” Arnie stopped. He grinned at Noah. “You again?” Ellie skittered to stand beside Noah and Lucy. Noah slipped his arm around her waist, pulled her against him and said, “Ellie gave you excellent advice. Find a lawyer to help you. Get some help for yourself. You’re done here.” “This is about me and Ellie,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you.” “Nothing there anymore, Arnie,” Noah said. “Move on. Before this gets any more complicated for you.” The ~ Robyn Carr
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102:As a moral and social institution, a weekly rest is invaluable. It is a quiet domestic reunion for the bustling sons of toil. It ensures the necessary vacation in those earthly and turbulent anxieties and affections, which would otherwise become inordinate and morbid. It brings around a season of periodical neatness and decency, when the soil of weekly labour is laid aside, and men meet each other amidst the decencies of the sanctuary, and renew their social affections. But above all, a Sabbath (one day of rest in seven) is necessary for man's moral and religious interests. ~ Robert Dabney
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103:The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus.
Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation. ~ Eugene H Peterson
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104:But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life? I can’t help asking, because there’s a distressing little fact about the discomfort of vulnerability, which is that it’s pretty much a daily experience in the world, and every sentient being has to learn how to somehow negotiate the consequences and fallout, or go through life flummoxed at every turn. ~ Jonathan Franzen
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105:His gaze slid toward the back of the sanctuary and collided with Joanna, standing silently in the doorway. You...Crockett's voice tapered off.
For a moment, all he could do was stare. Her rapt attention, the tiny smile that brought into relief the freckles dusting her cheekbones, the way the light passed through the doorway behind her to see her hair ablaze beneath the prim straw bonnet she wore. Yet it was her inner light that captured him the most. The serenity of her features. The glow in her blue eyes. This was a woman of authentic spirituality. No wonder the Master Weaver had chosen her to be the central thread to anchor his new tapestry. ~ Karen Witemeyer
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106:Madison looked from Jason, who jerked his head toward the gate, signaling her to get moving, to Longbranch, whose cold, direct gaze said Jason would pay in blood for any kind of double-cross.
One thing was clear: Jason Haley had been lying to her since the moment he set foot on her porch. Was he really plotting with the Roses? Or had he decided to sacrifice himself to get her into the sanctuary?
Madison threw her arms around Jason's neck as if she couldn't face being parted from him and whispered fiercely in his ear, "You lying lunatic bastard. They're going to kill you."
"I love you too," he murmured. "Go find Seph. Help him. ~ Cinda Williams Chima
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107:Psalm 63 A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah. 1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. 6 On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. 7 Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. ~ Beth Moore
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108:The Godfather amounts to a visual parable of a challenge and critique that dogs the Cultural Liturgies project: while I extol the formative power of historic Christian worship practices, it would seem that there can be—and are—people who have spent entire lifetimes immersed in the rites of historic Christian worship who nonetheless emerge from them not only unformed but perhaps even malformed.2 Or, to put it otherwise: clearly, regular participation in the church’s “orthodox” liturgy is not enough to prevent such “worshipers” from leaving the sanctuary to become (sometimes enthusiastic) participants in all sorts of unjust systems, structures, and behaviors. ~ James K A Smith
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109:Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer. Laughter must be heard in the outer courts of religion, and the echoes of it should resound in the sanctuary; but there is no laughter in the holy of holies. There laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.
The intimate relation between humour and faith is derived from the fact that both deal with the incongruities of our existence. ... Laughter is our reaction to immediate incongruities and those which do not affect us essentially. Faith is the only possible response to the ultimate incongruities of existence, which threaten the very meaning of our life. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr
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110:About novel Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott.
Q: What does the title "Imperfect Birds" mean?
It's a line from a poem by Rumi. The line is "Each must enter the nest made by the other imperfect birds", and it's really about how these kind of scraggly, raggedy nests that are our lives are the sanctuary for other people to step into, and that if you want to see the divine, you really step into the absolute ordinary. When you're at your absolutely most lost and dejected ... where do you go? You go to the nests left by other imperfect birds, you find other people who've gone through it. You find the few people you can talk to about it.
from Writer's Digest May/June 2010 ~ Anne Lamott
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111:The satyrs held her hand and guided her. They could see even in near total darkness. After some walking, they stopped. Her heart raced. Her breathing turned shallow. She saw torchlight come out of nowhere and approach them. It was held by a hierodule, one of the holy women of the sanctuary. And then another torch held by another hierodule. Arisha began to get glimpses of beings around her. They were satyrs and hierodules. She could sense their presence more than see them. But what she could see before her in the firelight of the torches was a large golden statue twenty feet tall. It was the statue of a god. “Azazel, the ancient one, god of the desert lands and lord of satyrs,” said Izbaxl. ~ Brian Godawa
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112:Go back to that night when Divine Light, in order to illumine the darkness of men, tabernacled Himself in the world He had made… The angels and a star caught up in the reflection of that Light, as a torch lighted by a torch, and passed it on to the watchers of sheep and the searchers of skies. And lo! As the shepherds watched their flocks about the hills of Bethlehem, they were shaken by the light of the angels And lo! As wise men from beyond the land of Media and Persia searched the heavens, the brilliance of a star, like a tabernacle lamp in the sanctuary of God’s creation, beckoned them on to the stable where the star seemed to lose its light in the unearthly brilliance of the Light of the Word. ~ Fulton J Sheen
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113:The ruined island contains special markers around the borders, to trick the radiation detectors the Silvers use to survey the old battlefields. This is how they protect it, the home of the Scarlet Guard. In Norta, at least. That’s what Farley said, hinting at more bases across the country. And soon, it will be the sanctuary of every Red refugee fleeing the king’s new punishments. Every building we pass looks decrepit, coated in ash and weeds, but upon closer inspection, there’s something much more. Footprints in the dust, a light in a window, the smell of cooking wafting up from a drain. People, Reds, have a city of their own right here, hiding in plain sight. Electricity is scarce but smiles are not. ~ Victoria Aveyard
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114:Trade and religion were thus inextricably combined in Mecca. The pilgrimage to Mecca was the climax of the suq cycle, and the Quraysh reconstructed the cult and architecture of the sanctuary so that it became a spiritual center for all the Arab tribes. Even though the Bedouin were not much interested in the gods, each tribe had its own presiding deity, usually represented by a stone effigy. The Quraysh collected the totems of the tribes that belonged to their confederacy and installed them in the Haram so that the tribesmen could only worship their patronal deities when they visited Mecca. The sanctity of the Kabah was thus essential to the success and survival of the Quraysh, and their competitors understood this. ~ Karen Armstrong
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115:Dagon met with Ba’alzebul, Asherah and Molech in the sanctuary of his temple. They had come to discuss the latest intelligence delivered to them by Asherah’s spies. Dagon said incredulously, “Nimrod? King Saul is in the hands of the spirit of Nimrod?” “So we think,” said Asherah. Ba’alzebul added, “That means he cannot be the Chosen Seed of Yahweh.” Molech said, “That means Israel’s fall is at hand. I will have them passing their children through my fires in no time. We will not need war. Israel will be conquered through inner corruption.” “Do not count your bastards before they are birthed, mole god,” said Asherah. “If he is not the Chosen Seed, then someone else is. When the kingdom of Saul falls, that Seed will rise. ~ Brian Godawa
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116:The Muslim has suffered successive stages of defeat. The first was his loss of domination in the world, to the advancing power of Russia and the West. The second was the undermining of his authority in his own country, through an invasion of foreign ideas and laws and ways of life and sometimes even foreign rulers or settlers, and the enfranchisement of native non-Muslim elements. The third—the last straw—was the challenge to his mastery in his own house, from emancipated women and rebellious children. It was too much to endure, and the outbreak of rage against these alien, infidel, and incomprehensible forces that had subverted his dominance, disrupted his society, and finally violated the sanctuary of his home was inevitable. ~ Anonymous
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117:If this was the world as the god-or gods-had made it, then mortal man, this mortal man, could acknowledge that and honour the power and infinite majesty that lay within it, but he would not say it was right, or bow down as if he were only dust or a brittle leaf blown from an autumn tree, helpless in the wind.
He might be, all men and women might be as helpless as that leaf, but he would not admit it, and he would do something here on the dome that said-or aspired to say-these things, and more.
He had journeyed here to do this. Had done his sailing and was still sailing, perhaps, and would put into mosaics of the Sanctuary as much of the living journey and what lay within it and behind is as his craft and desire could encompass. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay
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118:Atonement is fundamental to the Torah, but much of the modern world has either forgotten its importance or deliberately rejected it. The message of the sanctuary was we are all guilty to varying degrees, and have all committed offenses for which we must atone, but the message today—in part due to the widespread substitution of the therapeutic for the moral—is we should not burden ourselves with feelings of guilt. In addition, personal guilt is often rejected in favor of societal guilt—the argument being that people who commit violent crimes, for example, do so because of social inequality, racism, poverty, or other forces outside the criminal. But a society that raises people to think they are not responsible for the evil they do will, quite simply, raise many people who do evil acts. ~ Dennis Prager
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119:Jesus looked back at the cave, then up at the mountain and recited a Psalm of David. “O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan; O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan! Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that Elohim desired for his abode, yes, where Yahweh will dwell forever? The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that Yahweh Elohim may dwell there. But God will strike the heads of his enemies, the hairy Seirim crown of him who walks in his guilty ways. Yahweh said, “I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea. ~ Brian Godawa
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120:For a moment after his voice faltered and fell, the sanctuary was silent, and the voice throbbed like weeping, as if in his words the people recognized themselves, recognized the failure he described as their own. But then a new voice arose. Saltheart Foamfollower said boldly, "My Lord, we have not reached our end. True, the work of our lifetime has been to comprehend and consolidate the gains of our forebearers. But our labour will open the doors of the future. Our children and their children will gain because we have not lost heart, for faith and courage are the greatest gift that we can give to our descendants. And the Land holds mysteries of which we know nothing -- mysteries of hope as well as of peril. Be of good heart, Rockbrothers. Your faith is precious above all things." ~ Stephen R Donaldson
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121:Later that night, when we left the prayer room, we felt something in Upper Room shift. Couldn't explain it, something just felt different. We knew the walls of Upper Room like the walls of our own homes. We'd soft-stepped down hallways as the choir practiced, noticing that corner in front of the instrument closet where the paint had chipped, or the tile in the ladies' room that had been laid crooked. We'd spend decades studying the splotch that looked like an elephant's ear on the ceiling above the water fountain. And we knew the exact spot on the sanctuary carpet where Elise Turner had knelt the night before she killed herself. (The more spiritual of us even swore they could still see the indented curve from her knees.) Sometimes we joked that when we died, we'd all become part of these walls, pressed down flat like wallpaper. ~ Brit Bennett
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122:Hundreds showed up, including every able-bodied Methodist in the county and many from other churches, and friends of the family, with a lot of children far too young for such mourning but drawn to the wake out of friendship with the Bells. Also paying respects were many outright strangers who simply didn’t want to miss the opportunity to wedge themselves into the story. The pews were filled with people who waited patiently to proceed past the casket and say something banal to the family, and as they waited they prayed, and whispered softly, passing along the latest news. The sanctuary suffered under the weight of inconsolable loss, which was made even worse by the pipe organ. Miss Emma Faye Riddle churned away, playing one sorrowful dirge after another. Hop watched from a corner of the balcony, vexed again at the strange ways of white folks. ~ John Grisham
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123:The proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it. Not only does that pollute the sanctuary itself, not only must those who sin still be guilty against the Most Holy, but in addition, the misuse of the Holy must turn against the community itself. The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them. For its own sake, for the sake of the sinner, and for the sake of the community, the Holy is to be protected from cheap surrender. The Gospel is protected by the preaching of repentance which calls sin sin and declares the sinner guilty. The key to loose is protected by the key to bind. The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance. ~ Eric Metaxas
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124:I feel it urgent to state that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being. The family protects human life in all its stages, including its last. Consequently, “those who work in healthcare facilities are reminded of the moral duty of conscientious objection. Similarly, the Church not only feels the urgency to assert the right to a natural death, without aggressive treatment and euthanasia”, but likewise firmly rejects the death penalty. ~ Pope Francis
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125:You were blasted out of the sanctuary. The force of the explosion caused the first avalanche that buried the Qayom Malak, but the fig and olive trees remained exposed, a beacon for the other sanctuaries that were built in the coming years. The Christians were here, the Greeks, the Jews, the Moors. Their sanctuaries fell, too, to avalanche, fire, to scandal or fear, creating a nearly impenetrable wall around the Qayom Malak. You needed me to help you find it again. And you couldn’t find me until you really needed me.”
“What happens now?” Cam asked. “Don’t tell me we have to pray.”
Dee’s eyes never left the Qayom Malak, even as she tossed cam the towel draped over her shoulder. “Oh, it’s far worse, Cam. Now you’ve got to clean. Polish the angels, especially their wings. Polish them until they shine. We are going to need the moonlight to shine on them in precisely the right way. ~ Lauren Kate
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126:Shaving
In the mirror, the hand hacks at my skin
It belongs to the child who used his father's
blades for sharpening pencils, playing murder.
Full of cuts, I have the blood-effacing
instruments: water, water, and survival
tricks : I'm as clean
as glass, my brown face glistens
with oil, turns a fine olive green.
There's no return
to the sanctuary
of ripped paper-boat-journeys
This is morning, I must
scrub myself. A college lecturer, I smell of talcum
Old Spice and unwritten poems.
The mirror smiles back like a forgotten student:
The hairs die like ants in the basin.
My reflection gathers the night's dust,
I wipe it with the morning towels.
The girls drape their muslin shawls,
their necks turn on Isadora's wheels:
In the classroom I shuffle like unrhymed poetry
The blade, wet with Essenin's wrist,
waits with the unwritten poem.
~ Agha Shahid Ali
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127:Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture. I want to use the word 'liturgy' to refer to this intent and practice of the church insofar as it pulls everything in and out of the sanctuary into a life of worship, situates everything past and present coherently as participation in the revelation written for us in Scripture. Instead of limiting liturgy to the ordering of the community in discrete acts of worship, I want to use it in this large and comprehensive way, the centuries-deep and continents-wide community, spread out in space and time, as Christians participate in actions initiated and formed by the words in this book - our entire existence understood liturgically, that is connectedly in the context of the three personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and furnished with the text of the Holy Scripture. ~ Eugene H Peterson
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128:ISIS Like Osiris, Isis was privy to the mysteries of perpetual birth. We know her image: a mother goddess breastfeeding her son Horus, as the Virgin Mary suckled Jesus much later on. But Isis was never what we might call a virgin. She began making love to Osiris when they were growing together inside their mother’s womb. And she practiced the world’s oldest profession for ten years in the city of Tyre. In the thousands of years that followed, Isis traveled the world resuscitating whores, slaves, and others among the damned. In Rome, she founded temples for the poor alongside bordellos. The temples were razed by imperial order, their priests crucified, but like stubborn mules they came back to life again and again. And when Emperor Justinian’s soldiers demolished the sanctuary of Isis on the island of Philae in the Nile, and built the very Catholic church of Saint Stephen on the ruins, Isis’s pilgrims continued paying homage to their errant goddess at the Christian altar. ~ Eduardo Galeano
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129:The promise of grace is not to be squandered; it needs to be protected from the godless. There are those who are not worthy of the sanctuary. The proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it. Not only does that pollute the sanctuary itself, not only must those who sin still be guilty against the Most Holy, but in addition, the misuse of the Holy must turn against the community itself. The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them. For its own sake, for the sake of the sinner, and for the sake of the community, the Holy is to be protected from cheap surrender. The Gospel is protected by the preaching of repentance which calls sin sin and declares the sinner guilty. The key to loose is protected by the key to bind. The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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130:the falcon approached nearer to him, lose his nerve and plummet down in a vain effort to reach mother earth and the sanctuary of his burrow? Field glasses were now out for those who needed them, and up and down the line excited exclamations—in two languages—were running. ‘Oh! He can’t make it.’ ‘Yes he can, he can.’ ‘Only a little way to go now.’ ‘But look, look, the falcon is gaining on him.’ And then, suddenly, only one bird was to be seen against the cloud. ‘Well done! Well done! Shahbash! Shahbash!’ The owl had made it, and while hats were being waved and hands were being clapped, the falcon in a long graceful glide came back to the semul tree from which he had started. The reactions of human beings to any particular event are unpredictable. Fifty-four birds and four animals had been shot that morning—and many more missed—without a qualm or the batting of an eyelid. And now, guns, spectators, and mahouts were unreservedly rejoicing that a ground owl had escaped the talons of a peregrine falcon. ~ Jim Corbett
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131:At the age of twenty, I obtained my first copy of The Eye in the Triangle at an Occult Bookstore in Los Angeles called The Psychic Eye and, naturally, I read it with the greatest enthusiasm and interest, and I excitedly extracted the essentials from its pages. It subsequently left a deep impression upon my mind, and it has continued to influence my life in ways invaluable to my growth as both a man and a magician. Since that first reading, I have read the book a few more times, including recently, and every time it has illumined my understanding of Crowley, his magick and his mysticism in some manner or another useful to my life and magical progress. I have read most published and unpublished works by Israel Regardie, but this book is the one he wrote that moved me the most, finding the greatest meaning and place in the sanctuary of my soul. I feel that The Eye in the Triangle is essential reading material for anyone who is seriously interested in learning about the life, magick and mysticism of Aleister Crowley. ~ David Cherubim
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132:But the Lord often leaves his servants, not only to be annoyed by the violence of the wicked, but to be lacerated and destroyed; allows the good to languish in obscurity and squalid poverty, while the ungodly shine forth, as it were, among the stars; and even by withdrawing the light of his countenance does not leave them lasting joy. Wherefore, David by no means disguises the fact, that if believers fix their eyes on the present condition of the world, they will be grievously tempted to believe that with God integrity has neither favour nor reward; so much does impiety prosper and flourish, while the godly are oppressed with ignominy, poverty, contempt, and every kind of cross. The Psalmist says, "But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious of the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." At length, after a statement of the case, he concludes, "When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me: until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end," (Ps. 73:2, 3, 16, 17). ~ John Calvin
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133:In the very earliest passages of the Talmud, God was experienced in mysterious physical phenomena. The Rabbis spoke about the Holy Spirit, which had brooded over creation and the building of the sanctuary, making its presence felt in a rushing wind or a blazing fire. Others heard it in the clanging of a bell or a sharp knocking sound. One day, for example, Rabbi Yohannan had been sitting discussing Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot, when a fire descended from heaven and angels stood nearby: a voice from heaven confirmed that the Rabbi had a special mission from God.80 So strong was their sense of presence that any official, objective doctrines would have been quite out of place. The Rabbis frequently suggested that on Mount Sinai, each one of the Israelites who had been standing at the foot of the mountain had experienced God in a different way. God had, as it were, adapted himself to each person “according to the comprehension of each.”81 As one Rabbi put it, “God does not come to man oppressively but commensurately with a man’s power of receiving him. ~ Karen Armstrong
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134:Dagon brushed a couple flies away from his face angrily. “These flies are truly annoying. If their presence persists, I may have to call you, Ba’alzebub.” Ba’alzebub meant “Lord of the Flies.” Dagon said, “Now let us call upon the Sons of Rapha.” • • • • • Goliath and Ishbi came alone to the sanctuary later that night. Dagon limited his presence to the highest officials of the warrior cult. And Dagon alone of the gods was present. He felt that including the other deities would only dilute his authority in the eyes of his devotees. Goliath and Ishbi knelt before Dagon, eager for duty. He had told them of Israel’s new institution of monarchy, and their first king, Saul of Benjamin. Goliath said, “A king would unite their tribes and make their military formidable.” “Indeed,” pondered Dagon. “What is your command, my god?” “Continue organizing and training the Sons of Rapha. But begin gathering intelligence on this Saul. He is a mighty warrior king and you will be fighting battles against him. You will need to know how he thinks, his weaknesses, his strengths. ~ Brian Godawa
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135:I want to see Milo,” I replied. “He’s going to come with me while I look around Delphi.”
“Milo?” the other soldier echoed as we left the sanctuary grounds.
“You know, the little Calydonian,” his comrade said. “How stupid are you? It’s not like he blends in with the rest of us. A good lad, but fretful. He was up half the night worrying about how he’d ever know whether Lady Helen would need him to run errands for her while we’re at Delphi.”
“Is that right?” I asked.
The soldier nodded. “Yes, Lady Helen. It was a great kindness you did, freeing him from slavery, but now gratitude’s made him enslave himself to you. You’ve got a fine servant in that boy.”
“Not forever,” I said. “Right now there’s no choice about it--he’s got no family, no way to feed himself--but once we get home I’ll apprentice him to one of the palace craftsmen. Then he can live his own life.”
“A jug of wine says he’ll only be happy if he can live it close to her,” the first soldier muttered to the other, but when I demanded he repeat his words to my face, he claimed he’d said nothing at all. ~ Esther M Friesner
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136:Lieutenant Jackson, I presume?” “I, uh, how, um, yes.” Impressive elocution there, Taylor. She cleared her throat. “How did you know?” “I saw the news,” Thalia said simply, nonjudgmental. “Lovely.” “I wouldn’t worry about it. No one in their right mind will believe that you killed someone without reason. It’s in your eyes. You’re a guardian, not an avenger.” Oddly pleased, Taylor smiled at the girl. “Some would disagree with you. You’re Thalia Abbott, I presume?” “And you aren’t Catholic, I’d presume.” “You’re right. I was raised Episcopal. My dad was Catholic, though. How did you know?” “You don’t have that guilty look on your face. Though you crossed and blessed yourself, you walked right past the confessional without a second glance. Most nonpracticing Catholics couldn’t do that.” She smiled, and Taylor felt herself smiling back. This was not what she’d expected from her morning. Grace from a seventeen-year-old ex-porn star. “Let’s walk,” Thalia said. She guided Taylor out of the sanctuary, into the sacristy. She held a cloth in her hands, Taylor realized she was dusting as they went. ~ J T Ellison
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137:Within moments, they were through the sanctuary tunnel way and headed down into the cavern below the altar. But the gods were gone. “Deplorable,” said Uriel, gazing upon the dismembered body parts of his brother archangel on the wall. They carefully took down the arms, legs, torso and head of Mikael and reattached them like a human anatomy puzzle. Uriel said, “Why would they have left all of him here for us to find and heal?” Uriel remembered all too terribly when he had been decapitated by Anu in the primeval city of Uruk. Anu had kept Uriel’s head separated from his body so that the angel could not heal and fight them. Gabriel said, “They must have wanted us to find him.” Raphael said, “But they did not want us to follow them, as we would have, had they taken part of his body.” The angels had done so in the past when Ishtar had cut Gabriel in half and threw his legs into the Abyss. “Which means we should follow them,” said Uriel. “But where?” It would take some time for his organic tissue to reconnect, including his voice box. But Mikael could not wait for that healing. His hand wrote out on the sandy floor, “Ashkelon. ~ Brian Godawa
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138:The True Foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church What then is our foundation? Here’s the answer: The scripture which above all others had been both the foundation and central pillar of the Advent faith was the declaration, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed” (GC, 409). Thus “the foundation” of our “Advent faith” is Daniel 8:14, not Leviticus 26. What about “the platform”? God is leading out a people and establishing them upon the one great platform of faith, the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus (3T, 447). These “people” are Seventh-day Adventists, and based on the above quote, that “one great platform of faith” is the message of the third angel. Ultimately, “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:11. “Upon this rock,” said Jesus, “I will build My church.” ... That Rock is Himself,—His own body, for us broken and bruised. Against the church built upon this foundation, the gates of hell shall not prevail (DA, 413). Thus the primary foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Himself, not a chart. ~ Steve Wohlberg
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139:You and he were never ...you know. You were our best fighters. You bickered all the time, but you brought out the best in each other as warriors. Going into battle to you turned him on more than any woman could.'
I give her a dubious look and she laughs.'Maybe a slight exaggeration, but he really did love it.' Her smiles fades.'And you and Jude were inseparable. That's why it made no sense that you would take the opposite side to either one of them - let alone both...It got worse after you and Jude disappeared last year. We thought he'd gone back to the Sanctuary to be with you. And when we heard you'd both dies...Honestly, I though Rafa was going to harm himself. He wouldn't talk to anyone for weeks. He drifted in and out of our operations, and then a few months ago he lost interest completely and stopped answering calls. We only know he was still alive because he's send Zak an occasional text. We he told Zak about the possibility you'd resurfaced there was no doubt he's come looking for you-'
A fist bangs on the door. 'Gabe' Rafa barks. 'Your boyfriend's here. Get your arse into gear.'
'Yeah' I get to my feet. 'I'm the wind beneath his wings. ~ Paula Weston
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140:The key one and threefold, even as universal science. The division of the work is sevenfold, and through these sections are distributed the seven degrees of initiation into is transcendental philosophy.
The text is a mystical commentary on the oracles of Solomon, ^ and the work ends with a series of synoptic schedules which are the synthesis of Magic and the occult Kabalah so far as concerns that which can be made public in writing. The rest, being the esoteric and inexpressible part of the science, is formulated in magnificent pantacles carefully designed and engraved. These are nine in number, as follows
(1) The dogma of Hermes;
(2) Magical realisation;
(3) The path of wisdom and the initial procedure in the work
(4) The Gate of the Sanctuary enlightened by seven mystic rays;
(5) A Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human figure is extending its arms in the form of a cross;
(6) The magical laboratory of Khunrath, demonstrating the necessary union of prayer and work
(7) The absolute synthesis of science;
(8) Universal equilibrium ;
(9) A summary of Khunrath's personal embodying an energetic protest against all his detractors. ~ Eliphas Levi, The History Of Magic,
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141:ANGELO
From thee, even from thy virtue!
What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!
Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live!
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Even till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.
-- Measure for Measure, II, ii ~ William Shakespeare
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142:But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of it’s kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as our Sovereign Lord the King, and his faithful subjects, the Lords and Commons of this realm, the triple cord, which no man can break; the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this nation; the firm guarantees of each others being, and each others rights; the joint and several securities, each in it’s place and order, for every kind and every quality, of property and of dignity—As long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe: and we are all safe together—the high from the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity; the low from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. ~ Edmund Burke
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143:Plighted
Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty!
Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty:
Love given willingly, full and free,
Love for love's sake, - as mine to thee.
Duty's a slave that keeps the keys,
But Love, the master, goes in and out
Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
Just as he please, - just as he please.
Mine, from the dear head's crown, brown-golden,
To the silken foot that's scarce beholden;
Give to a few friends hand or smile,
Like a generous lady, now and awhile,
But the sanctuary heart, that none dare win,
Keep holiest of holiest evermore;
The crowd in the aisles may watch the door,
The high-priest only enters in.
Mine, my own, without doubts or terrors,
With all thy goodnesses, all thy errors,
Unto me and to me alone revealed,
'A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.'
Many may praise thee, - praise mine as thine,
Many may love thee, - I'll love them too;
But thy heart of hearts, pure, faithful, and true,
Must be mine, mine wholly, and only mine.
Mine! - God, I thank Thee that Thou hast given
Something all mine on this side heaven:
Something as much myself to be
As this my soul which I lift to Thee:
Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,
Life of my life, whom Thou dost make
Two to the world for the world's work's sake, But each unto each, as in Thy sight, one.
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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144:I am just a speck of dust, But I want to make my dwelling In the shadow of the sanctuary With the Prisoner of Love. Ah! my soul longs for the host, I love him and want nothing more. It is the hidden God who attracts me. I am the atom of Jesus.... I want to stay not knowing, In forgetfulness of all created things, And by my silence console The Host of the sacred ciborium. Oh! I would like to save souls, And make elect from sinners. Give the flames of an apostle To your atom, sweet Jesus!.... If I am despised by the world, If it considers me as nothing, A divine peace floods me. For I have the host as my support. When I draw near the ciborium, All my sighs are heard... To be nothing is my glory. I am the atom of Jesus.... Sometimes when Heaven is overcast And this atom cannot take flight, It loves to hide in the shadow And attach itself to the golden door. The the Divine light, Which makes all the elect rejoice, Comes to earth to warm up This poor atom of Jesus... Under the warm rays of grace, The atom sparkles. When the light breeze passes by, It gently sways... Oh! what ineffable delight! What favors has it not received?... Right next tot he host slips The poor atom of Jesus.... Pining away near the host In the tabernacle of love, Thus my life will be spent While waiting for the last day. When our trials will be over, Flying to the dwelling of the elect, The atom of the Eucharist Will shine near her Jesus!... [2320.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, by St. Therese of Lisieux / Translated by Donald Kinney, OCD
~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, The Atom of Jesus-Host
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145:The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore. The laws by which the winds blow, and the tides of the ocean, like a vast clepsydra, measure, with inimitable exactness, the hours of ever-flowing time; the laws by which the planets roll, and the sun vivifies and paints; the laws which preside over the subtle combinations of chemistry, and the amazing velocities of electricity; the laws of germination and production in the vegetable and animal worlds, — all these, radiant with eternal beauty as they are, and exalted above all the objects of sense, still wane and pale before the Moral Glories that apparel the universe in their celestial light. The heart can put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagination of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl, or diamond, or prism, can reflect. Arabian gardens in their bloom can exhale no such sweetness as charity diffuses. Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him, a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies. ~ Horace Mann
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146:Before she could don her wide-brimmed hat and leave the sanctuary of their willow bower, Val did wrap his arms around her again, this time positioning his body behind hers. “I will come back after dark,” he whispered, “if you’ll allow it.” She went still, and he knew a moment’s panic. “Talk to me, Ellen.” He kissed her cheek. “Just be honest.” “My… tonight might not be a good time.” “Sweetheart…” Val let her go and turned her to face him. “I will not force myself on you, I just want… I want to see you.” To make sure she was all right, whatever that meant in the odd, new context in which he was trying to define the term. She must have sensed his bewilderment, because she turned away and spoke to him from over her shoulder. “My courses are due.” Val cocked his head. “So you become unfit company? Do you have the megrims and cramps and melancholy? Eat chocolates by the tin? Take to your bed?” “Sometimes.” Ellen peered at him, her expression guarded. “Then I will comfort you. I’ll cuddle you up and bring you tisanes and rub your back and your feet. I’ll read to you and beat you at cards and bring you hot-water bottles for your aches.” Ellen’s brows knit. “I truly am poor company at such times and usually before such times, as well.” “You are poor company for people who expect you to play on without missing a note, perhaps,” Val replied, holding her gaze. “May we sit a moment?” She nodded but had gone too shy even to meet his eyes. “My Uncle Tony’s wife,” Val said, wrapping an arm around Ellen’s shoulders, “is blunt to a fault. She told me relations with Tony were the best way to ease her cramps.” “Valentine! ~ Grace Burrowes
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147:O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. (Psalm 63:1–3) These words might not speak on your behalf, but they can—they must. If you think they can’t, that is not shame talking. It is hopelessness, indifference, and a heart that is getting hard. These are completely understandable, but they are also a whopper of a lie. A warning about “a heart that is getting hard” is not the nicest comment to slip into a book’s final chapter. But please understand why I give it. There is a paralytic quality to shame that leaves you powerless, unable to put up the least resistance. It leads you to believe the lie that Christ’s words to you are mere words, which they are not. They are words of power that heal the sick and raise the dead. When people encounter the gospel, limbs suddenly begin to move and death gives way to life. So, when you hear these deep truths and still think you are paralyzed, understand why. You have been motionless for a while and your muscle memory says you can’t move. But your memory is lying. You can move; you can hear, believe, and declare. If you are passive and hopeless, take a more radical approach. Adopt the topsy-turvy, surprising culture of the kingdom of God. In that kingdom we aren’t shy about looking at our hearts and identifying resistance where we once found only powerlessness. The warning about being hard-hearted can be a reason to hope. ~ Edward T Welch
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148:No matter how many times I read the novel, I am always moved by the scene in which the pastor empties the offering can in front of the congregation, begins to count the money, and tells them it is not enough. He reminds them that one of their own, Helen Robinson, needs help while her husband is in jail. He then closes the church doors and announces that no one will leave until they’ve collected ten dollars. I can honestly say I have never witnessed this in a church service, have never heard of it happening, and can’t even imagine it taking place in real life, but there is something so moving about the pastoral determination of the reverend. In the silence that follows, he begins to call out by name the churchgoers who have not contributed enough. Scout tells us that after several long and uncomfortable moments, the ten dollars are finally collected and the church doors are unlocked. How could you read this scene and not think that we need more pastors like Reverend Sykes of First Purchase Church? You can almost feel the discomfort of the closed door, the sweating, the heat of the room, the smell of perfume, the rhythm of people fanning themselves to stay cool, and Reverend Sykes’s eyes raking over each parishioner as he scans the sanctuary, determined to make sure that Helen Robinson can feed her family that week. Isn’t this the way church should work? Not a soul openly questions the reverend’s authority in this scene. They are set on caring for one another. This was the way the early church operated in caring for its own community: “And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need” (Acts 4:34–35 MSG). ~ Matt Litton
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149:My Sweet Jesus, You appear to me On your Mother's breast, all radiant with love. Love is the ineffable mystery That exiled you from your Heavenly Home... Ah! let me hide myself under the veil Concealing you from all mortal eyes, And near you, O Morning Star! I shall find a foretaste of Heaven. From the moment a new dawn awakens, When we see the first lights of the sun, The young flower beginning to open Awaits a precious balm from on high. It is the good-giving morning dew, Which, producing an abundant sap, Makes the flower of the new bud open a little. Jesus, you are that Flower just open. I gaze on you at your first awakening. Jesus, you are the ravishing Rose, The new bud, gracious and scarlet red. The ever-so-pure arms of your dear Mother For for you a cradle, a royal throne, Your sweet sun is Mary's breast, And your Dew is Virginal Milk!... My Beloved, my divine little Brother, In your gaze I see all the future. Soon, for me, you will leave your Mother. Already Love impels you to suffer. But on the cross, O Full-blossomed Flower! I recognize your morning fragrance. I recognize Mary's Dew. Your divine blood is Virginal Milk!... This Dew hides in the sanctuary. The angels of Heaven, enraptured, contemplate it, Offering to God their sublime prayer. Like Saint John, they repeat: "Behold." Yes, behold, this Word made Host. Eternal Priest, sacerdotal Lamb, The Son of God is the Son of Mary. The bread of Angels is Virginal Milk. The seraphim feeds on glory. In Paradise his joy is full. Weak child that I am, I only see in the ciborium The color and figure of Milk. But that is the Milk a child needs, And Jesus' Love is beyond compare. O tender Love! Unfathomable power, My white Host is Virginal Milk!... [2320.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, by St. Therese of Lisieux / Translated by Donald Kinney, OCD
~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, The Divine Dew
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150:Paul declares the “invisible things of him from the creation of the world” can help us understand “his eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20). The truth that God is a “tri-unity” of two invisible persons (Father and Spirit) and one visible person (Jesus) is evident even in creation. The universe is composed of three structures: space, matter, and time. Of these three, only matter is visible. Space requires length, height, and width to constitute space. Each dimension is separate and distinct in itself, yet the three form space—if you remove height, you no longer have space. Time is also a tri-unity of past, present, and future. Two are invisible (past and future), and one visible (present). Each is separate and distinct, as well as essential for time to exist. Man is also a “tri-unity,” having physical, mental, and spiritual components. Again, two are invisible (mental and spiritual) and one visible (physical). Cells compose the fundamental structural unit of all living organisms. All organic life is made up from cells that consist of three primary parts: the outer wall, the cytoplasm, and the nucleus (like the shell, white, and yoke of an egg). If any one is removed, the cell dies. In each of these examples, the removal of any one component results in the demise of the whole. In like manner, the Godhead contains three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is God (Ephesians 4:6; Titus 2:13; Acts 5:3, 4), yet there is one God. The removal of one person destroys the unity of the whole. Even the gospel story illustrates the interdependency of threes. The sanctuary had three places: the Courtyard, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place. There are three stages of salvation: justification, sanctification, and glorification. In Isaiah 6:3, the angels around God’s throne cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” three times—once for the Father, once for the Son, and once for the Holy Spirit. ~ Doug Batchelor
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151:O May I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirr’d to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, fail’d, and agoniz’d
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolv’d;
Its discords, quench’d by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobb’d religiously in yearning song,
That watch’d to ease the burthen of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better,—saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shap’d it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mix’d with love,—
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gather’d like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever.
This is life to come,
Which martyr’d men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffus’d,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world. ~ George Eliot
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152:Voldemort caught up with you?” said Lupin sharply. “What happened? How did you escape?”
Harry explained briefly how the Death Eaters pursuing them had seemed to recognize him as the true Harry, how they had abandoned the chase, how they must have summoned Voldemort, who had appeared just before he and Hagrid had reached the sanctuary of Tonks’s parents.
“They recognized you? But how? What had you done?”
“I . . .” Harry tried to remember; the whole journey seemed like a blur of panic and confusion. “I saw Stan Shunpike . . . . You know, the bloke who was the conductor on the Knight Bus? And I tried to Disarm him instead of—well, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, does he? He must be Imperiused!”
Lupin looked aghast.
“Harry, the time for Disarming is past! These people are trying to capture and kill you! At least Stun if you aren’t prepared to kill!”
“We were hundreds of feet up! Stan’s not himself, and if I Stunned him and he’d fallen, he’d have died the same as if I’d used Avada Kedavra! Expelliarmus saved me from Voldemort two years ago,” Harry added defiantly. Lupin was reminding him of the sneering Hufflepuff Zacharius Smith, who had jeered at Harry for wanting to teach Dumbledore’s Army how to Disarm.
“Yes, Harry,” said Lupin with painful restraint, “and a great number of Death Eaters witnessed that happening! Forgive me, but it was a very unusual move then, under imminent threat of death. Repeating it tonight in front of Death Eaters who either witnessed or heard about the first occasion was close to suicidal!”
“So you think I should have killed Stan Shunpike?” said Harry angrily.
“Of course not,” said Lupin, “but the Death Eaters—frankly, most people!—would have expected you to attack back! Expelliarmus is a useful spell, Harry, but the Death Eaters seem to think it is your signature move, and I urge you not to let it become so!”
Lupin was making Harry feel idiotic, and yet there was still a grain of defiance inside him.
“I won’t blast people out of my way just because they’re there,” said Harry. “That’s Voldemort’s job. ~ J K Rowling
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153:The modern mind is like the eye of a man who is too tired to see the difference between blue and green. It fails in the quality that is truly called distinction; and,being incapable of distinction, it falls back on generalisation. The man, instead of having the sense to say he is tired, says he is emancipated and enlightened and liberal and universal....
...we find it less trouble to let in a jungle of generalisations than to keep watch upon a logical frontier. But this shapeless assimilation is not only found in accepting things in the lump; it is also found in condemning them in the lump. When the same modern mind does begin to be intolerant, it is just as universally intolerant as it was universally tolerant. It sends things in batches to the gallows just as it admitted them in mobs to the sanctuary. It cannot limit its limitations any more than its license....There are...lunatics now having power to lay down the law, who have somehow got it into their heads that any artistic representation of anything wicked must be forbidden as encouraging wickedness. This would obviously be a veto on any tragedy and practically on any tale. But a moment's thought...would show them that this is simply an illogical generalisation from the particular problem of sex. All dignified civilisations conceal sexual things, for the perfectly sensible reason that their mere exhibition does affect the passions. But seeing another man forge a cheque does not make me want to forge a cheque. Seeing the tools for burgling a safe does not arouse an appetite for being a burglar. But the intelligence in question cannot stop itself from stopping anything. It is automatically autocratic; and its very prohibition proceeds in a sort of absence of mind. Indeed, that is the most exact word for it; it is emphatically absence of mind. For the mind exists to make those very distinctions and definitions which these people refuse. They refuse to draw the line anywhere; and drawing a line is the beginning of all philosophy, as it is the beginning of all art. They are the people who are content to say that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and are condemned to pass their lives in looking for eggs from the cock as well as the hen. ~ G K Chesterton
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154:Wondering if Westcliff was going to reprimand the boys for allowing her and Daisy to play, Lillian said uneasily, “Arthur and the others—it wasn’t their fault—I made them let us into the game—”
“I don’t doubt it,” the earl said over her shoulder. “You probably gave them no chance to refuse.”
“You’re not going to punish them?”
“For playing rounders on their off-time? Hardly.” Removing his coat, Westcliff tossed it to the ground. He turned to the catcher, who was hovering nearby, and said, “Jim, be a good lad and help field a few balls.”
“Yes, milord!” The boy ran in a flash to the empty space on the west side of the green beyond the sanctuary posts.
“What are you doing?” Lillian asked as Westcliff stood behind her.
“I’m correcting your swing,” came his even reply. “Lift the bat, Miss Bowman.”
She turned to look at him skeptically, and he smiled, his eyes gleaming with challenge.
“This should be interesting,” Lillian muttered. Taking up a batter’s stance, she glanced across the field at Daisy, whose face was flushed and eyes over-bright in the effort to suppress a burst of laughter. “My swing is perfectly fine,” Lillian grumbled, uncomfortably aware of the earl’s body just behind hers. Her eyes widened as she felt his hands slide to her elbows, pushing them into a more compact position. As his husky murmur brushed her ears, her excited nerves seemed to catch fire, and she felt a flush spreading over her face and neck, as well as other body parts that, as far as she knew, there were no names for.
“Spread your feet wider,” Westcliff said, “and distribute your weight evenly. Good. Now bring your hands closer to your body. Since the bat is a few inches too long for you, you’ll have to choke up on it—”
“I like holding it at the base.”
“It’s too long for you,” he insisted, “which is why you pull your swing just before you hit the ball—”
“I like a long bat,” Lillian argued, even as he adjusted her hands on the willow handle. “The longer the better, as a matter of fact.”
A distant snicker from one of the stable boys caught her attention, and she glanced at him suspiciously before turning to face Westcliff. His face was expressionless, but there was a glitter of laughter in his eyes. “Why is that amusing?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Westcliff said blandly, and turned her toward the pitcher again. ~ Lisa Kleypas
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155:Oedipa spent the next several days in and out of libraries and earnest discussions with Emory Bortz and Genghis Cohen. She feared a little for their security in view of what was happening to everyone else she knew. The day after reading Blobb's Peregrinations she, with Bortz, Grace, and the graduate students, attended Randolph Driblette's burial, listened to a younger brother's helpless, stricken eulogy, watched the mother, spectral in afternoon smog, cry, and came back at night to sit on the grave and drink Napa Valley muscatel, which Driblette in his time had put away barrels of. There was no moon, smog covered the stars, all black as a Tristero rider. Oedipa sat on the earth, ass getting cold, wondering whether, as Driblette had suggested that night from the shower, some version of herself hadn't vanished with him. Perhaps her mind would go on flexing psychic muscles that no longer existed; would be betrayed and mocked by a phantom self as the amputee is by a phantom limb. Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a ' letter, another lover. She tried to reach out, to whatever coded tenacity of protein might improbably have held on six feet below, still resisting decay-any stubborn quiescence perhaps gathering itself for some last burst, some last scramble up through earth, just-glimmering, holding together with its final strength a transient, winged shape, needing to settle at once in the warm host, or dissipate forever into the dark. If you come to me, prayed Oedipa, bring your memories of the last night. Or if you have to keep down your payload, the last five minutes-that may be enough. But so I'll know if your walk into the sea had anything to do with Tristero. If they got rid of you for the reason they got rid of Hilarius and Mucho and Metzger-maybe because they thought I no longer needed you. They were wrong. I needed you. Only bring me that memory, and you can live with me for whatever time I've got. She remembered his head, floating in the shower, saying, you could fall in love with me. But could she have saved him? She looked over at the girl who'd given her the news of his death. Had they been in love? Did she know why Driblette had put in those two extra lines that night? Had he even known why? No one could begin to trace it. A hundred hangups, permuted, combined-sex, money, illness, despair with the history of his time and place, who knew. Changing the script had no clearer motive than his suicide. There was the same whimsy to both. Perhaps-she felt briefly penetrated, as if the bright winged thing had actually made it to the sanctuary of her heart-perhaps, springing from the same slick labyrinth, adding those two lines had even, in a way never to be explained, served him as a rehearsal for his night's walk away into that vast sink of the primal blood the Pacific. She waited for the winged brightness to announce its safe arrival. But there was silence. Driblette, she called. The signal echoing down twisted miles of brain circuitry. Driblette!
But as with Maxwell's Demon, so now. Either she could not communicate, or he did not exist. ~ Thomas Pynchon
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156:Poet’s Corner
I stand within the Abbey walls,
Where soft the slanting sunlight falls
In gleams of mellow grace:
The organ swells, the anthem soars,
And waves of prayerful music pours
Throughout the solemn space.
Slowly the chanted yearning dies:
Then spoken supplications rise,
Upfloating to the sky;
The organ peals anew, again
Is silent, and there linger then
Only my soul and I.
But what are these mute busts that gaze
On me from out the vanished days,
And bid me pause and scan
Tablet, inscription, title, date,
All that records the vain estate
Of transitory man?
Read I aright? And can it be,
Old Abbey, that dead bards in thee
A resting-place have found?
Is not this consecrated air?
This is the house, the home, of prayer,
This, this is sacred ground.
And who were they? Their fretful life
With heavenly precept was at strife;
No pious peace they knew:
Like thunderstorms, against the wind
They pressed, and from their lurid mind
Alarming lightnings flew.
Creeds were to them but chains to break;
No formulas their thirst could slake,
No faith their hunger feed;
Their prayers were breathed to unscaled crags,
374
They worshipped where the eagle flags,
And the snow-streams flash and speed.
Their temple was the earth, the air,
The stars that in night's silence share;
Unto the plunging brine
Listening, they heard a sacred hymn,
And deep within the woodlands dim
Found transept, aisle, and shrine.
All shapes of sensuous beauty stole
A pathway to the poet's soul;
An unresisting slave
To smiles that win, to tears that melt,
Whatever hearts can feel, he felt,
Whatever ask for, gave.
His heart to love as quick he lent,
As flower to wandering wind its scent,
Or lark to sun its song;
He spent himself in gusts of joy,
Chased the fair phantoms that decoy
And youth's brief reign prolong.
Yet it was wise as well as just
Not upon his rebellious dust
The Abbey gates to close,
But bid him hither wend, and find,
What life refused his eager mind,
Glory and yet repose.
For should there come that threatened day,
When creeds shall fade, when faith decay,
And worship shall have ceased,
Then, when all formal guides shall fail,
Mankind will in the Poet hail
A prophet and a priest.
He will instruct us still to strain
Towards something to redress our pain,
To elevate our joy;
Something responding to that sense
375
Of restlessness that calls us hence,
And makes existence cloy.
What though commandment, dogma, rite,
One after one, shall perish quite,
The Poet still will keep
The Sanctuary's lamp alight,
And, in the body's deepest night,
Forbid the soul to sleep.
Then, apprehended right, his lays
Shall seem a hymn of prayer and praise
To purify from stain;
Shall bridge with love the severed years,
Instil the sacredness of tears,
The piety of pain.
Devotion at his touch shall wake,
The fountains of emotion quake
With tenderness divine;
His melody our cravings lift
Upward, and have the saving gift
Of sacramental wine.
Let him then rest where now he lies,
So that if narrower ritual dies,
Devout feet still may come,
Confessing, what his strains impart,
The deep religion of the heart,
That never will be dumb.
~ Alfred Austin
#NFDB
157: ON FREE
DEATH
Many die too late, and a few die too early. The
doctrine still sounds strange: "Die at the right timely"
Die at the right time-thus teaches Zarathustra. Of
course, how could those who never live at the right time
die at the right time? Would that they had never been
born Thus I counsel the superfluous. But even the
superfluous still make a fuss about their dying; and
even the hollowest nut still wants to be cracked. Everybody considers dying important; but as yet death is no
festival. As yet men have not learned how one hallows
the most beautiful festivals.
I show you the death that consummates-a spur and
a promise to the survivors. He that consummates his
life dies his death victoriously, surrounded by those
who hope and promise. Thus should one learn to die;
and there should be no festival where one dying thus
does not hallow the oaths of the living.
To die thus is best; second to this, however, is to die
fighting and to squander a great soul. But equally hateful to the fighter and the victor is your grinning death,
which creeps up like a thief-and yet comes as the
master.
My death I praise to you, the free death which
comes to me because I want it. And when shall I want
it? He who has a goal and an heir will want death at
the right time for his goal and heir. And from reverence
for his goal and heir he will hang no more dry wreaths
in the sanctuary of life. Verily, I do not want to be like
the ropemakers: they drag out their threads and always
walk backwards.
Some become too old even for their truths and victories: a toothless mouth no longer has the right to
every truth. And everybody who wants fame must take
leave of honor betimes and practice the difficult art of
leaving at the right time.
One must cease letting oneself be eaten when one
tastes best: that is known to those who want to be
loved long. There are sour apples, to be sure, whose lot
requires that they wait till the last day of autumn: and
they become ripe, yellow, and wrinkled all at once. In
some, the heart grows old first; in others, the spirit.
And some are old in their youth. but late youth preserves long youth.
For some, life turns out badly: a poisonous worm eats
its way to their heart. Let them see to it that their dying turns out that much better. Some never become
sweet; they rot already in the summer. It is cowardice
that keeps them on their branch.
All-too-many live, and all-too-long they hang on their
73
branches. Would that a storm came to shake all this
worm-eaten Tot from the tree
Would that there came preachers of quick death! I
would like them as the true storms and shakers of the
trees of life. But I hear only slow death preached, and
patience with everything "earthly."
Alas, do you preach patience with the earthly? It is
the earthly that has too much patience with you, blasphemersl
Verily, that Hebrew died too early whom the preachers of slow death honor; and for many it has become a
calamity that he died too early. As yet he knew only
tears and the melancholy of the Hebrew, and hatred of
the good and the just-the Hebrew Jesus: then the
longing for death overcame him. Would that he had
remained in the wilderness and far from the good and
the just Perhaps he would have learned to live and to
love the earth-and laughter too.
Believe me, my brothers! He died too early; he himself would have recanted his teaching, had he reached
my age. Noble enough was he to recant. But he was not
yet mature. Immature is the love of the youth, and immature his hatred of man and earth. His mind and the
wings of his spirit are still tied down and heavy.
But in the man there is more of the child than in the
youth, and less melancholy: he knows better how to die
and to live. Free to die and free in death, able to say a
holy No when the time for Yes has' passed: thus he
knows how to die and to live.
That your dying be no blasphemy against man and
earth, my friends, that I ask of the honey of your soul.
In your dying, your spirit and virtue should still glow
like a sunset around the earth: else your dying has
turned out badly.
Thus I want to die myself that you, my friends, may
love the earth more for my sake; and to earth I want
to return that I may find rest in her who gave birth to
me.
Verily, Zarathustra had a goal; he threw his ball:
now you, my friends, are the heirs of my goal; to you I
throw my golden ball. More than anything, I like to see
you, my friends, throwing the golden ball. And so I still
linger a little on the earth: forgive me for that.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON FREE DEATH
#NFDB
158:A Dialogue At Fiesole
HE.
Halt here awhile. That mossy-cushioned seat
Is for your queenliness a natural throne;
As I am fitly couched on this low sward,
Here at your feet.
SHE.
And I, in thought, at yours:
My adoration, deepest.
HE.
Deep, so deep,
I have no thought wherewith to fathom it;
Or, shall I say, no flight of song so high,
To reach the Heaven whence you look down on me,
My star, my far-off star!
SHE.
If far, yet fixed:
No shifting planet leaving you to seek
Where now it shines.
HE.
A little light, if near,
Glows livelier than the largest orb in Heaven.
SHE.
But little lights burn quickly out, and then,
Another must be kindled. Stars gleam on,
Unreached, but unextinguished. . . . Now, the song.
HE.
Yes, yes, the song: your music to my verse.
SHE.
In this sequestered dimple of the hill,
Forgotten by the furrow, none will hear:
Only the nightingales, that misconceive
The mid-day darkness of the cypresses
29
For curtained night.
HE.
And they will hush to hear
A sudden singing sweeter than their own.
Delay not the enchantment, but begin.
SHE
(singing).
If you were here, if you were here,
The cattle-bells would sound more clear;
The cataracts would flash and leap
More silvery from steep to steep;
The farewell of a rosier glow
Soften the summit of the snow;
The valley take a tenderer green;
In dewy gorge and dim ravine
The loving bramble-flowers embrace
The rough thorn with a gentler grace;
The gentian open bluer eyes,
In bluer air, to bluer skies:
The frail anemone delay,
The jonquil hasten on its way,
The primrose linger past its time,
The violet prolong its prime;
And every flower that seeks the light,
On Alpine lowland, Alpine height,
Wear April's smile without its tear,
If you were here; if you were here!
If you were here, the Spring would wake
A fuller music in the brake.
The mottled misselthrush would pipe
A note more ringing, rich, and ripe;
The whitethroat peer above its nest
With brighter eye and downier breast;
The cuckoo greet the amorous year,
Chanting its joy without its jeer;
The lark betroth the earth and sky
With peals of heavenlier minstrelsy;
And every wildwood bird rejoice
On fleeter wing, with sweeter voice,
30
If you were here!
If you were here, I too should feel
The moisture of the Springtide steal
Along my veins, and rise and roll
Through every fibre of my soul.
In my live breast would melt the snow,
And all its channels flush and flow
With waves of life and streams of song,
Frozen and silent all too long.
A something in each wilding flower,
Something in every scented shower,
Something in flitting voice and wing,
Would drench my heart and bid me sing:
Not in this feeble halting note,
But, like the merle's exulting throat,
With carol full and carol clear,
If you were here, if you were here.
HE.
Hark! How the hills have caught the strain, and seem
Loth to surrender it, and now enclose
Its cadence in the silence of their folds.
Still as you sang, the verses had the wing
Of that which buoyed them, and your aery voice
Lifted my drooping music from the ground.
Now that you cease, there is an empty nest,
From which the full-fledged melody hath flown.
SHE.
Dare I with you contend in metaphor,
It might not be so fanciful to show
That nest, and eggs, and music, all are yours.
But modesty in poets is too rare,
To be reproved for error. Let me then
Be crowned full queen of song, albeit in sooth
I am but consort, owing my degree
To the real sceptred Sovereign at my side.
But now repay my music, and in kind.
Unfolding to my ear the youngest flower
Of song that seems to blossom all the year;
``Delay not the enchantment, but begin.''
31
HE
(reciting). Yet, you are here; yes, you are here.
There's not a voice that wakes the year,
In vale frequented, upland lone,
But steals some sweetness from your own.
When dream and darkness have withdrawn,
I feel you in the freshening dawn:
You fill the noonday's hushed repose;
You scent the dew of daylight's close.
The twilight whispers you are nigh;
The stars announce you in the sky.
The moon, when most alone in space,
Fills all the heavens with your face.
In darkest hour of deepest night,
I see you with the spirit's sight;
And slumber murmurs in my ear,
``Hush! she is here. Sleep! she is here.''
SHE.
Hark how you bare your secret when you sing!
Imagination's universal scope
Can swift endue this gray and shapeless world
With the designs and colour of the sky.
What want you with our fixed and lumpish forms,
You, unconditioned arbiter of air?
``Yet, you are here; yes, you are here.'' The span
Of nimble fancy leaps the interval,
And brings the distant nearer than the near.
HE.
Distance is nearer than proximity,
When distance longs, proximity doth not.
SHE.
The near is always distant to the mind
That craves for satisfaction of its end;
Nor doth the distance ever feel so far
As when the end is touched. Retard that goal,
Prolonging appetite beyond the feast
That feeds anticipation.
32
HE.
Specious foil!
That parries every stroke before 'tis made.
Yet surfeit's self doth not more surely cloy
Than endless fasting.
SHE.
Still a swifter cure
Waits on too little than attends too much.
While disappointment merely woundeth Hope,
The deadly blow by disenchantment dealt
Strikes at the heart of Faith. O happy you,
The favourites of Fancy, who replace
Illusion with illusion, and conceive
Fresh cradles in the dark womb of the grave.
While we, prosaic victims, prove that time
Kills love while leaving loveless life alive,
You still, divinely duped, sing deathless love,
And with your wizard music, once again,
Make Winter Spring. Yet surely you forgive
That I have too much pity for the flowers
Children and poets cull to fling away,
To be an April nosegay.
HE.
How you swell
The common chorus! Women, who are wronged
So roughly by men's undiscerning word,
As though one pattern served to show them all,
Should be more just to poets. These, in truth,
Diverge from one another nowise less
Than ``women,'' vaguely labelled: children some,
With childish voice and nature, lyric bards,
Weaklings that on life's threshold sweetly wail,
But never from that silvery treble pass
Into the note and chant of manliness.
Their love is like their verse, a frail desire,
A fluttering fountain falling feebly back
Into its shallow origin. Next there are
The poets of contention, wrestlers born,
Who challenge iron Circumstance, and fail:
Generous and strong, withal not strong enough,
33
Since lacking sinewy wisdom, hard as life.
The love of these is like the lightning spear,
And shrivels whom it touches. They consume
All things within their reach, and, last of all,
Their lonely selves; and then through time they tower,
Sublime but charred, and wear on their high fronts
The gloomy glory of the sunlit pine.
But the great gods of Song, in clear white light,
The radiance of their godhead, calmly dwell,
And with immutable cold starlike gaze
Scan both the upper and the under world,
As it revolves, themselves serenely fixed.
Their bias is the bias of the sphere,
That turns all ways, but turns away from none,
Save to return to it. They have no feud
With gods or men, the living or the dead,
The past or present, and their words complete
Life's incompleteness with a healing note.
For they are not more sensitive than strong,
More wise than tender; understanding all,
At peace with all, at peace with life and death,
And love that gives a meaning unto life
And takes from death the meaning and the sting:
At peace with hate, and every opposite.
Were I but one of these-presumptuous thought!Even you, the live fulfilment of such dreams
As these secrete, would hazard well your love
On my more largely loving. 'Twould be you,
Yes, even you, that first would flag and fail
In either of my choosing; you, whose wing
Would droop on mine and pray to be upborne.
And when my pinions did no more suffice
For that their double load, then softly down,
Softly and smoothly as descending lark
That hath fulfilled its rhapsody in Heaven,
And with diminished music must decline
To earthy sounds and concepts, I should curb
Illimitable longings to the range
Of lower aspiration. Were I such!But, since I am notSHE.
34
Am not? Who shall say,
Save she who tests, and haply to her loss?
'Tis better left untested. Strange that you,
Who can imagine whatso thing you will,
Should lack imagination to appraise
Imagination at its topmost worth.
Now wield your native sceptre and extend
Your fancy forth where Florence overbrims
In eddies fairer even than herself.
Look how the landscape smiles complacently
At its own beauty, as indeed it may;
Villa and vineyard each a separate home,
Containing possibilities unseen,
Materials for your pleasure. Now disport!
Which homestead may it please my lord of song
To chalk for his, as those rough Frenchmen did
Who came with bow-legged Charles to justify
Savonarola's scourgeful prophecies?
Shall it be that one gazing in our face,
Not jealous of its beauty, but exposed
To all the wantonness of sun and air,
With roses girt, with roses garlanded,
And balustraded terrace topped with jars
Of clove carnations; unambitious roof,
Italian equivalent to house
Love in a cottage? Why, the very place
For her you once described! Wait! Let me see,
Can I recall the lines? Yes, thus they ran.
Do you remember them? Or are they now
A chronicle forgotten and erased
From that convenient palimpsest, the heart?
In dewy covert of her eyes
The secret of the violet lies;
The sun and wind caress and pair
In the lithe wavelets of her hair;
The fragrance of the warm soft south
Hovers about her honeyed mouth;
And, when she moves, she floats through air
Like zephyr-wafted gossamer.
Hers is no lore of dumb dead books;
Her learning liveth in her looks;
35
And still she shows, in meek replies,
Wisdom enough to deem you wise.
Her voice as soothing is and sweet
As whispers of the waving wheat,
And in the moisture of her kiss
Is April-like deliciousness.
Like gloaming-hour, she doth inspire
A vague, an infinite desire;
And, like the stars, though out of sight,
Filleth the loneliness of night.
Come how she may, or slow or fleet,
She brings the morning on her feet;
Gone, leaves behind a nameless pain,
Like the sadness of a silenced strain.
HE.
A youthful dream.
SHE.
Yet memory can surmise
That young dream fruited to reality,
Then, like reality, was dream no more.
All dreams are youthful; you are dreaming still.
What lovely visions denizen your sleep!
Let me recall another; for I know
All you have written, thought, and felt, and much
You neither thought nor felt, but only sang.
A wondrous gift, a godlike gift, that breathes
Into our exiled clay unexiled lives,
Manlier than Adam, comelier than Eve.
That massive villa, we both know so well,
With one face set toward Settignano, one
Gazing at Bellosguardo, and its rear
Locked from the north by clustered cypresses,
That seem like fixed colossal sentinels,
And tower above its tower, but look not in,
Might be abode for her whom you conceived
In tropes so mystical, you must forgive
If recollection trips.
To dwell with her is calmly to abide
Through every change of time and every flux of tide.
36
In her the Present, Past, and Future meet,
The Father, and the Son, and dovelike Paraclete.
She holdeth silent intercourse with Night,
Still journeying with the stars, and shining with their light.
Her love, illumination; her embrace,
The sweep of angels' wings across a mortal's face.
Her lap is piled with autumn fruits, her brow
Crowned with the blossoming trails that smile from April's bough.
Like wintry stars that shine with frosty fire,
Her loftiness excites to elevate desire.
To love her is to burn with such a flame
As lights the lamp which bears the Sanctuary's name.
That lamp burns on for ever, day and night,
Before her mystic shrine. I am its acolyte.
HE.
The merest foam of fancy; foam and spray.
SHE.
Foam-drift of fancy that hath ebbed away.
See how the very simile rebukes
Man's all unsealike longings! For confess,
While ocean still returns, the puny waves
Of mortal love are sucked into the sand,
Their motion felt, their music heard, no more.
Look when the vines are linking hands, and seem
As pausing from the dance of Spring, or just
Preparing to renew it, round and round,
On the green carpet of the bladed corn,
That spreads about their feet: corn, vine, and fig,
Almond and mulberry, cherry, and pear, and peach,
Not taught to know their place, but left to range
Up to the villa's walls, windows, and doors,
And peep into its life and smile good-day,
A portion of its homeliness and joy:
37
A poet's villa once, a poet's again,
If you but dream it such; a roof for her,
To whom you wrote-I wonder who she wasThis saucy sonnet; saucy, withal sweet,
And O, how true of the reflected love
You poets render to your worshippers.
TRUE AS THE DIAL TO THE SUN.
You are the sun, and I the dial, sweet,
So you can mark on me what time you will.
If you move slowly, how can I move fleet?
And when you halt, I too must fain be still.
Chide not the cloudy humours of my brow,
If you behold no settled sunshine there:
Rather upbraid your own, sweet, and allow,
My looks cannot be foul if yours be fair.
Then from the heaven of your high witchery shine,
And I with smiles shall watch the hours glide by;
You have no mood that is not straightway mine;
My cheek but takes complexion from your eye.
All that I am dependeth so on you,
What clouds the sun must cloud the dial too.
HE.
No man should quarrel with his Past, and I
Maintain no feud with mine. Do we not ripen,
Ripen and mellow in love, unto the close,
Thanks no more to the present than the past?
First love is fresh but fugitive as Spring,
A wilding flower no sooner plucked than faded;
And summer's sultry fervour ends in storm,
Recriminating thunder, wasteful tears,
And angry gleam of lightning menaces.
Give me October's meditative haze,
Its gossamer mornings, dewy-wimpled eves,
Dewy and fragrant, fragrant and secure,
The long slow sound of farmward-wending wains,
When homely Love sups quiet 'mong its sheaves,
Sups 'mong its sheaves, its sickle at its side,
And all is peace, peace and plump fruitfulness.
SHE.
38
Picture of all we dream and we desire:
Autumn's grave cheerfulness and sober bliss,
Rich resignation, humble constancy.
For, prone to bear the load piled up by life,
We, once youth's pasture season at an end,
Submit to crawl. Unbroken to the last,
You spurn the goad of stern taskmaster Time.
Even 'mid autumn harvest you demand
Returning hope and blossom of the Spring,
All seasons and sensations, and at once,
Or in too quick succession. Do we blame?
We envy rather the eternal youth
We cannot share. But youth is pitiless,
And, marching onward, neither asks nor seeks
Who falls behind. Thus women who are wise,
Beside their thresholds knitting homely gear,
Wave wistful salutation as you pass,
And think of you regretfully, when gone:
A soft regret, a sweet regret, that is
Only the mellow fruit of unplucked joy.
Now improvise some other simple strain,
That with harmonious cadence may attune
The vain and hazard discords of discourse.
HE.
When Love was young, it asked for wings,
That it might still be roaming;
And away it sped, by fancy led,
Through dawn, and noon, and gloaming.
Each daintiness that blooms and blows
It wooed in honeyed metre,
And when it won the sweetest sweet,
It flew off to a sweeter:
When Love was young.
When Love was old, it craved for rest,
For home, and hearth, and haven;
For quiet talks round sheltered walks,
And long lawns smoothly shaven.
And what Love sought, at last it found,
A roof, a porch, a garden,
And from a fond unquestioning heart
39
Peace, sympathy, and pardon,
When Love was old.
SHE.
Simple, in sooth, and haply true: withal,
Too, too autumnal even for my heart.
I never weary of your vernal note.
Carol again, and sing me back my youth
With the redundant melodies of Spring.
HE.
I breathe my heart in the heart of the rose,
The rose that I pluck and send you,
With a prayer that the perfume its leaves enclose
May kiss, and caress, and tend you:
Caress and tend you till I can come,
To the garden where first I found you,
And the thought that as yet in the rose is dumb
Can ripple in music round you.
O rose, that will shortly be her guest,
You may well look happy, at leaving:
Will you lie in the cradle her snowy breast
Doth rock with its gentle heaving?
Will you mount the throne of her hazel hair,
That waves like a summer billow,
Or be hidden and hushed, at nightfall prayer,
In the folds of her dimpled pillow?
And when she awakes at dawn to feel
If you have been dreaming with her,
Then the whole of your secret, sweet rose, reveal,
And say I am coming thither:
And that when there is silence in earth and sky,
And peace from the cares that cumber,
She must not ask if your leaves or I
Be clasped in her perfumed slumber.
SHE.
Give me your hand; and, if you will, keep mine
Engraffed in yours, as slowly thus we skirt
La Doccia's dark declivity, and make
40
Athwart Majano's pathless pines a path
To lead us onward haply where it may.
Lo! the Carrara mountains flush to view,
That in the noonday were not visible.
Shall we not fold this comfort to our hearts,
Humbly rejoiced to think as there are heights
Seen only in the sunset, so our lives,
If that they lack not loftiness, may wear
A glow of glory on their furrowed fronts,
Until they faint and fade into the night!
~ Alfred Austin
#NFDB
159:Tannhauser
The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering
Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours,
At Wartburg in his palace, and the knight,
Sir Tannhauser of France, the greatest bard,
Inspired with heavenly visions, and endowed
With apprehension and rare utterance
Of noble music, fared in thoughtful wise
Across the Horsel meadows. Full of light,
And large repose, the peaceful valley lay,
In the late splendor of the afternoon,
And level sunbeams lit the serious face
Of the young knight, who journeyed to the west,
Towards the precipitous and rugged cliffs,
Scarred, grim, and torn with savage rifts and chasms,
That in the distance loomed as soft and fair
And purple as their shadows on the grass.
The tinkling chimes ran out athwart the air,
Proclaiming sunset, ushering evening in,
Although the sky yet glowed with yellow light.
The ploughboy, ere he led his cattle home,
In the near meadow, reverently knelt,
And doffed his cap, and duly crossed his breast,
Whispering his 'Ave Mary,' as he heard
The pealing vesper-bell. But still the knight,
Unmindful of the sacred hour announced,
Disdainful or unconscious, held his course.
'Would that I also, like yon stupid wight,
Could kneel and hail the Virgin and believe!'
He murmured bitterly beneath his breath.
'Were I a pagan, riding to contend
For the Olympic wreath, O with what zeal,
What fire of inspiration, would I sing
The praises of the gods! How may my lyre
Glorify these whose very life I doubt?
The world is governed by one cruel God,
Who brings a sword, not peace. A pallid Christ,
Unnatural, perfect, and a virgin cold,
They give us for a heaven of living gods,
Beautiful, loving, whose mere names were song;
207
A creed of suffering and despair, walled in
On every side by brazen boundaries,
That limit the soul's vision and her hope
To a red hell or and unpeopled heaven.
Yea, I am lost already,-even now
Am doomed to flaming torture for my thoughts.
O gods! O gods! where shall my soul find peace?'
He raised his wan face to the faded skies,
Now shadowing into twilight; no response
Came from their sunless heights; no miracle,
As in the ancient days of answering gods.
With a long, shuddering sigh he glanced to earth,
Finding himself among the Horsel cliffs.
Gray, sullen, gaunt, they towered on either side;
Scant shrubs sucked meagre life between the rifts
Of their huge crags, and made small darker spots
Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse
Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones,
Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared
Through the weird, perilous pass. As darkness waxed,
And an oppressive mystery enwrapped
The roadstead and the rocks, Sir Tannhauser
Fancied he saw upon the mountain-side
The fluttering of white raiment. With a sense
Of wild joy and horror, he gave pause,
For his sagacious horse that reeked of sweat,
Trembling in every limb, confirmed his thought,
That nothing human scaled that haunted cliff.
The white thing seemed descending,-now a cloud
It looked, and now a rag of drifted mist,
Torn in the jagged gorge precipitous,
And now an apparition clad in white,
Shapely and real,-then he lost it quite,
Gazing on nothing with blank, foolish face.
As with wide eyes he stood, he was aware
Of a strange splendor at his very side,
A presence and a majesty so great,
That ere he saw, he felt it was divine.
He turned, and, leaping from his horse, fell prone,
In speechless adoration, on the earth,
Before the matchless goddess, who appeared
With no less freshness of immortal youth
208
Than when first risen from foam of Paphian seas.
He heard delicious strains of melody,
Such as his highest muse had ne'er attained,
Float in the air, while in the distance rang,
Harsh and discordant, jarring with those tones,
The gallop of his frightened horse's hoofs,
Clattering in sudden freedom down the pass.
A voice that made all music dissonance
Then thrilled through heart and flesh of that prone knight,
Triumphantly: 'The gods need but appear,
And their usurped thrones are theirs again!'
Then tenderly: 'Sweet knight, I pray thee, rise;
Worship me not, for I desire thy love.
Look on me, follow me, for I am fain
Of thy fair, human face.' He rose and looked,
Stirred by that heavenly flattery to the soul.
Her hair, unbraided and unfilleted,
Rained in a glittering shower to the ground,
And cast forth lustre. Round her zone was clasped
The scintillant cestus, stiff with flaming gold,
Thicker with restless gems than heaven with stars.
She might have flung the enchanted wonder forth;
Her eyes, her slightest gesture would suffice
To bind all men in blissful slavery.
She sprang upon the mountain's dangerous side,
With feet that left their print in flowers divine,Flushed amaryllis and blue hyacinth,
Impurpled amaranth and asphodel,
Dewy with nectar, and exhaling scents
Richer than all the roses of mid-June.
The knight sped after her, with wild eyes fixed
Upon her brightness, as she lightly leapt
From crag to crag, with flying auburn hair,
Like a gold cloud, that lured him ever on,
Higher and higher up the haunted cliff.
At last amidst a grove of pines she paused,
Until he reached her, breathing hard with haste,
Delight, and wonder. Then upon his hand
She placed her own, and all his blood at once
Tingled and hotly rushed to brow and cheek,
At the supreme caress; but the mere touch
Infused fresh life, and when she looked at him
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With gracious tenderness, he felt himself
Strong suddenly to bear the blinding light
Of those great eyes. 'Dear knight,' she murmured low,
'For love of me, wilt thou accord this boon,To grace my weary home in banishment?'
His hungry eyes gave answer ere he spoke,
In tones abrupt that startled his own ears
With their strange harshness; but with thanks profuse
She guided him, still holding his cold hand
In her warm, dainty palm, unto a cave,
Whence a rare glory issued, and a smell
Of spice and roses, frankincense and balm.
They entering stood within a marble hall,
With straight, slim pillars, at whose farther end
The goddess led him to a spiral flight
Of stairs, descending always 'midst black gloom
Into the very bowels of the earth.
Down these, with fearful swiftness, they made way,
The knight's feet touching not the solid stair,
But sliding down as in a vexing dream,
Blind, feeling but that hand divine that still
Empowered him to walk on empty air.
Then he was dazzled by a sudden blaze,
In vast palace filled with reveling folk.
Cunningly pictured on the ivory walls
Were rolling hills, cool lakes, and boscage green,
And all the summer landscape's various pomp.
The precious canopy aloft was carved
In semblance of the pleached forest trees,
Enameled with the liveliest green, wherethrough
A light pierced, more resplendent than the day.
O'er the pale, polished jasper of the floor
Of burnished metal, fretted and embossed
With all the marvelous story of her birth
Painted in prodigal splendor of rich tincts,
And carved by heavenly artists,-crystal seas,
And long-haired Nereids in their pearly shells,
And all the wonder of her lucent limbs
Sphered in a vermeil mist. Upon the throne
She took her seat, the knight beside her still,
Singing on couches of fresh asphodel,
And the dance ceased, and the flushed revelers came
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In glittering phalanx to adore their queen.
Beautiful girls, with shining delicate heads,
Crested with living jewels, fanned the air
With flickering wings from naked shoulders soft.
Then with preluding low, a thousand harps,
And citherns, and strange nameless instruments,
Sent through the fragrant air sweet symphonies,
And the winged dancers waved in mazy rounds,
With changing lustres like a summer sea.
Fair boys, with charming yellow hair crisp-curled,
And frail, effeminate beauty, the knight saw,
But of strong, stalwart men like him were none.
He gazed thereon bewitched, until the hand
Of Venus, erst withdrawn, now fell again
Upon his own, and roused him from his trance.
He looked on her, and as he looked, a cloud
Auroral, flaming as at sunrising,
Arose from nothing, floating over them
In luminous folds, like that vermilion mist
Penciled upon the throne, and as it waxed
In density and brightness, all the throng
Of festal dancers, less and less distinct,
Grew like pale spirits in a vague, dim dream,
And vanished altogether; and these twain,
Shut from the world in that ambrosial cloud,
Now with a glory inconceivable,
Vivid and conflagrant, looked each on each.
All hours came laden with their own delights
In that enchanted place, wherein Time
Knew no divisions harsh of night and day,
But light was always, and desire of sleep
Was satisfied at once with slumber soft,
Desire of food with magical repast,
By unseen hands on golden tables spread.
But these the knight accepted like a god,
All less was lost in that excess of joy,
The crowning marvel of her love for him,
Assuring him of his divinity.
Meanwhile remembrance of the earth appeared
Like the vague trouble of a transient dream,The doubt, the scruples, the remorse for thoughts
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Beyond his own control, the constant thirst
For something fairer than his life, more real
Than airy revelations of his Muse.
Here was his soul's desire satisfied.
All nobler passions died; his lyre he flung
Recklessly forth, with vows to dedicate
His being to herself. She knew and seized
The moment of her mastery, and conveyed
The lyre beyond his sight and memory.
With blandishment divine she changed for him,
Each hour, her mood; a very woman now,
Fantastic, voluble, affectionate,
And jealous of the vague, unbodied air,
Exacting, penitent, and pacified,
All in a breath. And often she appeared
Majestic with celestial wrath, with eyes
That shot forth fire, and a heavy brow,
Portentous as the lowering front of heaven,
When the reverberant, sullen thunder rolls
Among the echoing clouds. Thus she denounced
Her ancient, fickle worshippers, who left
Her altars desecrate, her fires unfed,
Her name forgotten. 'But I reign, I reign!'
She would shrill forth, triumphant; 'yea, I reign.
Men name me not, but worship me unnamed,
Beauty and Love within their heart of hearts;
Not with bent knees and empty breath of words,
But with devoted sacrifice of lives.'
Then melting in a moment, she would weep
Ambrosial tears, pathetic, full of guile,
Accusing her own base ingratitude,
In craving worship, when she had his heart,
Her priceless knight, her peerless paladin,
Her Tannhauser; then, with an artful glance
Of lovely helplessness, entreated him
Not to desert her, like the faithless world,
For these unbeautiful and barbarous gods,
Or she would never cease her prayers to Jove,
Until he took from her the heavy curse
Of immortality. With closer vows,
The knight then sealed his worship and forswore
All other aims and deeds to serve her cause.
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Thus passed unnoted seven barren years
Of reckless passion and voluptuous sloth,
Undignified by any lofty thought
In his degraded mind, that sometime was
Endowed with noble capability.
From revelry to revelry he passed,
Craving more pungent pleasure momently,
And new intoxications, and each hour
The siren goddess answered his desires.
Once when she left him with a weary sense
Of utter lassitude, he sat alone,
And, raising listless eyes, he saw himself
In a great burnished mirror, wrought about
With cunning imagery of twisted vines.
He scarcely knew those sunken, red-rimmed eyes,
For his who in the flush of manhood rode
Among the cliffs, and followed up the crags
The flying temptress; and there fell on him
A horror of her beauty, a disgust
For his degenerate and corrupted life,
With irresistible, intense desire,
To feel the breath of heaven on his face.
Then as Fate willed, who rules above the gods,
He saw, within the glass, behind him glide
The form of Venus. Certain of her power,
She had laid by, in fond security,
The enchanted cestus, and Sir Tannhauser,
With surfeited regard, beheld her now,
No fairer than the women of the earth,
Whom with serenity and health he left,
Duped by a lovely witch. Before he moved,
She knew her destiny; and when he turned,
He seemed to drop a mask, disclosing thus
An alien face, and eyes with vision true,
That for long time with glamour had been blind.
Hiding the hideous rage within her breast,
With girlish simpleness of folded hands,
Auroral blushes, and sweet, shamefast mien,
She spoke: 'Behold, my love, I have cast forth
All magic, blandishments and sorcery,
For I have dreamed a dream so terrible,
That I awoke to find my pillow stained
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With tears as of real woe. I thought my belt,
By Vulcan wrought with matchless skill and power,
Was the sole bond between us; this being doffed,
I seemed to thee an old, unlovely crone,
Wrinkled by every year that I have seen.
Thou turnedst from me with a brutal sneer,
So that I woke with weeping. Then I rose,
And drew the glittering girdle from my zone,
Jealous thereof, yet full of fears, and said,
'If it be this he loves, then let him go!
I have no solace as a mortal hath,
No hope of change or death to comfort me
Through all eternity; yet he is free,
Though I could hold him fast with heavy chains,
Bound in perpetual imprisonment.'
Tell me my vision was a baseless dream;
See, I am kneeling, and kiss thy hands,In pity, look on me, before thy word
Condemns me to immortal misery!'
As she looked down, the infernal influence
Worked on his soul again; for she was fair
Beyond imagination, and her brow
Seemed luminous with high self-sacrifice.
He bent and kissed her head, warm, shining, soft,
With its close-curling gold, and love revived.
But ere he spoke, he heard the distant sound
Of one sweet, smitten lyre, and a gleam
Of violent anger flashed across the face
Upraised to his in feigned simplicity
And singleness of purpose. Then he sprang,
Well-nigh a god himself, with sudden strength
to vanquish and resist, beyond her reach,
Crying, 'My old Muse calls me, and I hear!
Thy fateful vision is no baseless dream;
I will be gone from this accursed hall!'
Then she, too, rose, dilating over him,
And sullen clouds veiled all her rosy limbs,
Unto her girdle, and her head appeared
Refulgent, and her voice rang wrathfully:
'Have I cajoled and flattered thee till now,
To lose thee thus! How wilt thou make escape?
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ONCE BEING MINE THOU ART FOREVER MINE:
Yea, not my love, but my poor slave and fool.'
But he, with both hands pressed upon his eyes,
Against that blinding lustre, heeded not
Her thundered words, and cried in sharp despair,
'Help me, O Virgin Mary! and thereat,
The very bases of the hall gave way,
The roof was rived, the goddess disappeared,
And Tannhauser stood free upon the cliff,
Amidst the morning sunshine and fresh air.
Around him were the tumbled blocks and crags,
Huge ridges and sharp juts of flinty peaks,
Black caves, and masses of the grim, bald rock.
The ethereal, unfathomable sky,
Hung over him, the valley lay beneath,
Dotted with yellow hayricks, that exhaled
Sweet, healthy odors to the mountain-top.
He breathed intoxicate the infinite air,
And plucked the heather blossoms where they blew,
Reckless with light and dew, in crannies green,
And scarcely saw their darling bells for tears.
No sounds of labor reached him from the farms
And hamlets trim, nor from the furrowed glebe;
But a serene and sabbath stillness reigned,
Till broken by the faint, melodious chimes
Of the small village church that called to prayer.
He hurried down the rugged, scarped cliff,
And swung himself from shelving granite slopes
To narrow foot-holds, near wide-throated chasms,
Tearing against the sharp stones his bleeding hands,
With long hair flying from his dripping brow,
Uncovered head, and white, exalted face.
No memory had he of his smooth ascent,
No thought of fear upon those dreadful hills;
He only heard the bell, inviting him
To satisfy the craving of his heart,
For worship 'midst his fellow men. He reached
The beaten, dusty road, and passed thereon
The pious peasants faring towards the church,
And scarce refrained from greeting them like friends
Dearly beloved, after long absence met.
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How more than fair the sunburnt wenches looked,
In their rough, homespun gowns and coifs demure,
After the beauty of bare, rosy limbs,
And odorous, loose hair! He noted not
Suspicious glances on his garb uncouth,
His air extravagant and face distraught,
With bursts of laughter from the red-cheeked boys,
And prudent crossings of the women's breasts.
He passed the flowering close about the church,
And trod the well worn-path, with throbbing heart,
The little heather-bell between his lips,
And his eyes fastened on the good green grass.
Thus entered he the sanctuary, lit
With frequent tapers, and with sunbeams stained
Through painted glass. How pure and innocent
The waiting congregation seemed to him,
Kneeling, or seated with calm brows upraised!
With faltering strength, he cowered down alone,
And held sincere communion with the Lord,
For one brief moment, in a sudden gush
Of blessed tears. The minister of God
Rose to invoke a blessing on his flock,
And then began the service,-not in words
To raise the lowly, and to heal the sick,
But an alien tongue, with phrases formed,
And meaningless observances. The knight,
Unmoved, yet thirsting for the simple word
That might have moved him, held his bitter thoughts,
But when in his own speech a new priest spake,
Looked up with hope revived, and heard the text:
'Go, preach the Gospel unto all the world.
He that believes and is baptized, is saved.
He that believeth not, is damned in hell!'
He sat with neck thrust forth and staring eyes;
The crowded congregation disappeared;
He felt alone in some black sea of hell,
While a great light smote one exalted face,
Vivid already with prophetic fire,
Whose fatal mouth now thundered forth his doom.
He longed in that void circle to cry out,
With one clear shriek, but sense and voice seemed bound,
And his parched tongue clave useless to his mouth.
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As the last words resounded through the church,
And once again the pastor blessed his flock,
Who, serious and subdued, passed slowly down
The arrow aisle, none noted, near the wall,
A fallen man with face upon his knees,
A heap of huddled garments and loose hair,
Unconscious 'mid the rustling, murmurous stir,
'Midst light and rural smell of grass and flowers,
Let in athwart the doorway. One lone priest,
Darkening the altar lights, moved noiselessly,
Now with the yellow glow upon his face,
Now a black shadow gliding farther on,
Amidst the smooth, slim pillars of hewn ash.
But from the vacant aisles he heard at once
A hollow sigh, heaved from a depth profound.
Upholding his last light above his head,
And peering eagerly amidst the stalls,
He cried, 'Be blest who cometh in God's name.'
Then the gaunt form of Tannhauser arose.
'Father, I am a sinner, and I seek
Forgiveness and help, by whatso means
I can regain the joy of peace with God.'
'The Lord hath mercy on the penitent.
'Although thy sins be scarlet,' He hath said,
'Will I not make them white as wool?' Confess,
And I will shrive you.' Thus the good priest moved
Towards the remorseful knight and pressed his hand.
But shrinking down, he drew his fingers back
From the kind palm, and kissed the friar's feet.
'Thy pure hand is anointed, and can heal.
The cool, calm pressure brings back sanity,
And what serene, past joys! yet touch me not,
My contact is pollution,-hear, O hear,
While I disburden my charged soul.' He lay,
Casting about for words and strength to speak.
'O father, is there help for such a one,'
In tones of deep abasement he began,
'Who hath rebelled against the laws of God,
With pride no less presumptuous than his
Who lost thereby his rank in heaven?' 'My son,
There is atonement for all sins,-or slight
Or difficult, proportioned to the crime.
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Though this may be the staining of thy hands
With blood of kinsmen or of fellow-men.'
'My hands are white,-my crime hath found no name,
This side of hell; yet though my heart-strings snap
To live it over, let me make the attempt.
I was a knight and bard, with such a gift
Of revelation that no hour of life
Lacked beauty and adornment, in myself
The seat and centre of all happiness.
What inspiration could my lofty Muse
Draw from those common and familiar themes,
Painted upon the windows and the walls
Of every church,-the mother and her child,
The miracle and mystery of the birth,
The death, the resurrection? Fool and blind!
That saw not symbols of eternal truth
In that grand tragedy and victory,
Significant and infinite as life.
What tortures did my skeptic soul endure,
At war against herself and all mankind!
The restless nights of feverish sleeplessness,
With balancing of reasons nicely weighed;
The dawn that brought no hope nor energy,
The blasphemous arraignment of the Lord,
Taxing His glorious divinity
With all the grief and folly of the world.
Then came relapses into abject fear,
And hollow prayer and praise from craven heart.
Before a sculptured Venus I would kneel,
Crown her with flowers, worship her, and cry,
'O large and noble type of our ideal,
At least my heart and prayer return to thee,
Amidst a faithless world of proselytes.
Madonna Mary, with her virgin lips,
And eyes that look perpetual reproach,
Insults and is a blasphemy on youth.
Is she to claim the worship of a man
Hot with the first rich flush of ripened life?'
Realities, like phantoms, glided by,
Unnoted 'midst the torment and delights
Of my conflicting spirit, and I doffed
the modest Christian weeds of charity
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And fit humility, and steeled myself
In pagan panoply of stoicism
And self-sufficing pride. Yet constantly
I gained men's charmed attention and applause,
With the wild strains I smote from out my lyre,
To me the native language of my soul,
To them attractive and miraculous,
As all things whose solution and whose source
Remain a mystery. Then came suddenly
The summons to attend the gathering
Of minstrels at the Landgrave Hermann's court.
Resolved to publish there my pagan creed
In harmonies so high and beautiful
That all the world would share my zeal and faith,
I journeyed towards the haunted Horsel cliffs.
O God! how may I tell you how SHE came,
The temptress of a hundred centuries,
Yet fresh as April? She bewitched my sense,
Poisoned my judgment with sweet flatteries,
And for I may not guess how many years
Held me a captive in degrading bonds.
There is no sin of lust so lewd and foul,
Which I learned not in that alluring hell,
Until this morn, I snapped the ignoble tie,
By calling on the Mother of our Lord.
O for the power to stand again erect,
And look men in the eyes! What penitence,
What scourging of the flesh, what rigid fasts,
What terrible privations may suffice
To cleanse me in the sight of God and man?'
Ill-omened silence followed his appeal.
Patient and motionless he lay awhile,
Then sprang unto his feet with sudden force,
Confronting in his breathless vehemence,
With palpitating heart, the timid priest.
'Answer me, as you hope for a response,
One day, at the great judgment seat yourself.'
'I cannot answer,' said the timid priest,
'I have not understood.' 'Just God! is this
The curse Thou layest upon me? I outstrip
The sympathy and brotherhood of men,
So far removed is my experience
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From their clean innocence. Inspire me,
Prompt me to words that bring me near to them!
Father,' in gentler accents he resumed,
'Thank Heaven at your every orison
That sin like mine you cannot apprehend.
More than the truth perchance I have confessed,
But I have sinned, and darkly,-this is true;
And I have suffered, and am suffering now.
Is there no help in your great Christian creed
Of liberal charity, for such a one?'
'My son,' the priest replied, 'your speech distraught
Hath quite bewildered me. I fain would hope
That Christ's large charity can reach your sin,
But I know naught. I cannot but believe
That the enchantress who first tempted you
Must be the Evil one,-your early doubt
Was the possession of your soul by him.
Travel across the mountain to the town,
The first cathedral town upon the road
That leads to Rome,-a sage and reverend priest,
The Bishop Adrian, bides there. Say you have come
From his leal servant, Friar Lodovick;
He hath vast lore and great authority,
And may absolve you freely of your sin.'
Over the rolling hills, through summer fields,
By noisy villages and lonely lanes,
Through glowing days, when all the landscape stretched
Shimmering in the heat, a pilgrim fared
Towards the cathedral town. Sir Tannhauser
Had donned the mournful sackcloth, girt his loins
With a coarse rope that ate into his flesh,
Muffled a cowl about his shaven head,
Hung a great leaden cross around his neck;
And bearing in his hands a knotty staff,
With swollen, sandaled feet he held his course.
He snatched scant rest at twilight or at dawn,
When his forced travel was least difficult.
But most he journeyed when the sky, o'ercast,
Uprolled its threatening clouds of dusky blue,
And angry thunder grumbled through the hills,
And earth grew dark at noonday, till the flash
220
Of the thin lightning through the wide sky leapt.
And tumbling showers scoured along the plain.
Then folk who saw the pilgrim penitent,
Drenched, weird, and hastening as as to some strange doom,
Swore that the wandering Jew had crossed their land,
And the Lord Christ had sent the deadly bolt
Harmless upon his cursed, immortal head.
At length the hill-side city's spires and roofs,
With all its western windows smitten red
By a rich sunset, and with massive towers
Of its cathedral overtopping all,
greeted his sight. Some weary paces more,
And as the twilight deepened in the streets,
He stood within the minster. How serene,
In sculptured calm of centuries, it seemed!
How cool and spacious all the dim-lit aisles,
Still hazy with fumes of frankincense!
The vesper had been said, yet here and there
A wrinkled beldam, or mourner veiled,
Or burly burgher on the cold floor knelt,
And still the organist, with wandering hands,
Drew from the keys mysterious melodies,
And filled the church with flying waifs of song,
That with ethereal beauty moved the soul
To a more tender prayer and gentler faith
Than choral anthems and the solemn mass.
A thousand memories, sweet to bitterness,
Rushed on the knight and filled his eyes with tears;
Youth's blamelessness and faith forever lost,
The love of his neglected lyre, his art,
Revived by these aerial harmonies.
He was unworthy now to touch the strings,
Too base to stir men's soul to ecstasy
And high resolves, as in the days agone;
And yet, with all his spirit's earnestness,
He yearned to feel the lyre between his hands,
To utter all the trouble of his life
Unto the Muse who understands and helps.
Outworn with travel, soothed to drowsiness
By dying music and sweet-scented air,
His limbs relaxed, and sleep possessed his frame.
Auroral light the eastern oriels touched,
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When with delicious sense of rest he woke,
Amidst the cast and silent empty aisles.
'God's peace hath fallen upon me in this place;
This is my Bethel; here I feel again
A holy calm, if not of innocence,
Yet purest after that, the calm serene
Of expiation and forgiveness.'
He spake, and passed with staff and wallet forth
Through the tall portal to the open square,
And turning, paused to look upon the pile.
The northern front against the crystal sky
Loomed dark and heavy, full of sombre shade,
With each projecting buttress, carven cross,
Gable and mullion, tipped with laughing light
By the slant sunbeams of the risen morn.
The noisy swallows wheeled above their nests,
Builded in hidden nooks about the porch.
No human life was stirring in the square,
Save now and then a rumbling market-team,
Fresh from the fields and farms without the town.
He knelt upon the broad cathedral steps,
And kissed the moistened stone, while overhead
The circling swallows sang, and all around
The mighty city lay asleep and still.
To stranger's ears must yet again be made
The terrible confession; yet again
A deathly chill, with something worse than fear,
Seized the knight's heart, who knew his every word
Widened the gulf between his kind and him.
The Bishop sat with pomp of mitred head,
In pride of proven virtue, hearkening to all
With cold, official apathy, nor made
A sign of pity nor encouragement.
The friar understood the pilgrim's grief,
The language of his eyes; his speech alone
Was alien to these kind, untutored ears.
But this was truly to be misconstrued,
To tear each palpitating word alive
From out the depths of his remorseful soul,
And have it weighed with the precision cool
And the nice logic of a reasoning mind.
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This spiritual Father judged his crime
As the mad mischief of a reckless boy,
That call for strict, immediate punishment.
But Tannhauser, who felt himself a man,
Though base, yet fallen through passions and rare gifts
Of an exuberant nature rankly rich,
And knew his weary head was growing gray
With a life's terrible experience,
Found his old sense of proper worth revive;
But modestly he ended: 'Yet I felt,
O holy Father, in the church, this morn,
A strange security, a peace serene,
As though e'en yet the Lord regarded me
With merciful compassion; yea, as though
Even so vile a worm as I might work
Mine own salvation, through repentant prayers.'
'Presumptuous man, it is no easy task
To expiate such sin; a space of prayer
That deprecates the anger of the Lord,
A pilgrimage through pleasant summer lands,
May not atone for years of impious lust;
Thy heart hath lied to thee in offering hope.'
'Is there no hope on earth?' the pilgrim sighed.
'None through thy penance,' said the saintly man.
'Yet there may be through mediation, help.
There is a man who by a blameless life
Hath won the right to intercede with God.
No sins of his own flesh hath he to purge,The Cardinal Filippo,-he abides,
Within the Holy City. Seek him out;
This is my only counsel,-through thyself
Can be no help and no forgiveness.'
How different from the buoyant joy of morn
Was this discouraged sense of lassitude,
The Bishop's words were ringing in his ears,
Measured and pitiless, and blent with these,
The memory of the goddess' last wild cry,'ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE.'
Was it the truth, despite his penitence,
And the dedication of his thought to God,
That still some portion of himself was hers,
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Some lust survived, some criminal regret,
For her corrupted love? He searched his heart:
All was remorse, religious and sincere,
And yet her dreadful curse still haunted him;
For all men shunned him, and denied him help,
Knowing at once in looking on his face,
Ploughed with deep lines and prematurely old,
That he had struggled with some deadly fiend,
And that he was no longer kin to them.
Just past the outskirts of the town, he stopped,
To strengthen will and courage to proceed.
The storm had broken o'er the sultry streets,
But now the lessening clouds were flying east,
And though the gentle shower still wet his face,
The west was cloudless while the sun went down,
And the bright seven-colored arch stood forth,
Against the opposite dull gray. There was
A beauty in the mingled storm and peace,
Beyond clear sunshine, as the vast, green fields
Basked in soft light, though glistening yet with rain.
The roar of all the town was now a buzz
Less than the insects' drowsy murmuring
That whirred their gauzy wings around his head.
The breeze that follows on the sunsetting
Was blowing whiffs of bruised and dripping grass
Into the heated city. But he stood,
Disconsolate with thoughts of fate and sin,
Still wrestling with his soul to win it back
From her who claimed it to eternity.
Then on the delicate air there came to him
The intonation of the minster bells,
Chiming the vespers, musical and faint.
He knew not what of dear and beautiful
There was in those familiar peals, that spake
Of his first boyhood and his innocence,
Leading him back, with gracious influence,
To pleasant thoughts and tender memories,
And last, recalling the fair hour of hope
He passed that morning in the church. Again,
The glad assurance of God's boundless love
Filled all his being, and he rose serene,
And journeyed forward with a calm content.
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Southward he wended, and the landscape took
A warmer tone, the sky a richer light.
The gardens of the graceful, festooned with hops,
With their slight tendrils binding pole to pole,
Gave place to orchards and the trellised grape,
The hedges were enwreathed with trailing vines,
With clustering, shapely bunches, 'midst the growth
Of tangled greenery. The elm and ash
Less frequent grew than cactus, cypresses,
And golden-fruited or large-blossomed trees.
The far hills took the hue of the dove's breast,
Veiled in gray mist of olive groves. No more
He passed dark, moated strongholds of grim knights,
But terraces with marble-paven steps,
With fountains leaping in the sunny air,
And hanging gardens full of sumptuous bloom.
Then cloisters guarded by their dead gray walls,
Where now and then a golden globe of fruit
Or full-flushed flower peered out upon the road,
Nodding against the stone, and where he heard
Sometimes the voices of the chanting monks,
Sometimes the laugh of children at their play,
Amidst the quaint, old gardens. But these sights
Were in the suburbs of the wealthy towns.
For many a day through wildernesses rank,
Or marshy, feverous meadow-lands he fared,
The fierce sun smiting his close-muffled head;
Or 'midst the Alpine gorges faced the storm,
That drave adown the gullies melted snow
And clattering boulders from the mountain-tops.
At times, between the mountains and the sea
Fair prospects opened, with the boundless stretch
Of restless, tideless water by his side,
And their long wash upon the yellow sand.
Beneath this generous sky the country-folk
Could lead a freer life,-the fat, green fields
Offered rich pasturage, athwart the air
Rang tinkling cow-bells and the shepherds' pipes.
The knight met many a strolling troubadour,
Bearing his cithern, flute, or dulcimer;
And oft beneath some castle's balcony,
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At night, he heard their mellow voices rise,
Blent with stringed instruments or tambourines,
Chanting some lay as natural as a bird's.
Then Nature stole with healthy influence
Into his thoughts; his love of beauty woke,
His Muse inspired dreams as in the past.
But after this came crueler remorse,
And he would tighten round his loins the rope,
And lie for hours beside some wayside cross,
And feel himself unworthy to enjoy
The splendid gift and privilege of life.
Then forth he hurried, spurred by his desire
To reach the City of the Seven Hills,
And gain his absolution. Some leagues more
Would bring him to the vast Campagna land,
When by a roadside well he paused to rest.
'T was noon, and reapers in the field hard by
Lay neath the trees upon the sun-scorched grass.
But from their midst one came towards the well,
Not trudging like a man forespent with toil,
But frisking like a child at holiday,
With light steps. The pilgrim watched him come,
And found him scarcely older than a child,
A large-mouthed earthen pitcher in his hand,
And a guitar upon his shoulder slung.
A wide straw hat threw all his face in shade,
But doffing this, to catch whatever breeze
Might stir among the branches, he disclosed
A charming head of rippled, auburn hair,
A frank, fair face, as lovely as a girls,
With great, soft eyes, as mild and grave as kine's.
Above his head he slipped the instrument,
And laid it with his hat upon the turf,
Lowered his pitcher down the well-head cool,
And drew it dripping upward, ere he saw
The watchful pilgrim, craving (as he thought)
The precious draught. 'Your pardon, holy sir,
Drink first,' he cried, 'before I take the jar
Unto my father in the reaping-field.'
Touched by the cordial kindness of the lad,
The pilgrim answered,-'Thanks, my thirst is quenched
From mine own palm.' The stranger deftly poised
226
The brimming pitcher on his head, and turned
Back to the reaping-folk, while Tannhauser
Looked after him across the sunny fields,
Clasping each hand about his waist to bear
The balanced pitcher; then, down glancing, found
The lad's guitar near by, and fell at once
To striking its tuned string with wandering hands,
And pensive eyes filled full of tender dreams.
'Yea, holy sir, it is a worthless thing,
And yet I love it, for I make it speak.'
The boy again stood by him and dispelled
His train of fantasies half sweet, half sad.
'That was not in my thought,' the knight replied.
'Its worth is more than rubies; whoso hath
The art to make this speak is raised thereby
Above all loneliness or grief or fear.'
More to himself than to the lad he spake,
Who, understanding not, stood doubtfully
At a loss for answer; but the knight went on:
'How came it in your hands, and who hath tuned
your voice to follow it.' 'I am unskilled,
Good father, but my mother smote its strings
To music rare.' Diverted from one theme,
Pleased with the winsome candor of the boy,
The knight encouraged him to confidence;
Then his own gift of minstrelsy revealed,
And told bright tales of his first wanderings,
When in lords' castles and kings' palaces
Men still made place for him, for in his land
The gift was rare and valued at its worth,
And brought great victory and sounding fame.
Thus, in retracing all his pleasant youth,
His suffering passed as though it had not been.
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed the boy gave ear,
His fair face flushing with the sudden thoughts
That went and came,-then, as the pilgrim ceased,
Drew breath and spake: 'And where now is your lyre?'
The knight with both hands hid his changed, white face,
Crying aloud, 'Lost! lost! forever lost!'
Then, gathering strength, he bared his face again
Unto the frightened, wondering boy, and rose
With hasty fear. 'Ah, child, you bring me back
227
Unwitting to remembrance of my grief,
For which I donned eternal garb of woe;
And yet I owe you thanks for one sweet hour
Of healthy human intercourse and peace.
'T is not for me to tarry by the way.
Farewell!' The impetuous, remorseful boy,
Seeing sharp pain on that kind countenance,
Fell at his feet and cried, 'Forgive my words,
Witless but innocent, and leave me not
Without a blessing.' Moved unutterably,
The pilgrim kissed with trembling lips his head,
And muttered, 'At this moment would to God
That I were worthy!' Then waved wasted hands
Over the youth in act of blessing him,
But faltered, 'Cleanse me through his innocence,
O heavenly Father!' and with quickening steps
Hastened away upon the road to Rome.
The noon was past, the reapers drew broad swaths
With scythes sun-smitten 'midst the ripened crop.
Thin shadows of the afternoon slept soft
On the green meadows as the knight passed forth.
He trudged amidst the sea of poisonous flowers
On the Campagna's undulating plain,
With Rome, the many-steepled, many-towered,
Before him regnant on her throne of hills.
A thick blue cloud of haze o'erhung the town,
But the fast-sinking sun struck fiery light
From shining crosses, roofs, and flashing domes.
Across his path an arching bridge of stone
Was raised above a shrunken yellow stream,
Hurrying with the light on every wave
Towards the great town and outward to the sea.
Upon the bridge's crest he paused, and leaned
Against the barrier, throwing back his cowl,
And gazed upon the dull, unlovely flood
That was the Tiber. Quaggy banks lay bare,
Muddy and miry, glittering in the sun,
And myriad insects hovered o'er the reeds,
Whose lithe, moist tips by listless airs were stirred.
When the low sun had dropped behind the hills,
He found himself within the streets of Rome,
228
Walking as in a sleep, where naught seemed real.
The chattering hubbub of the market-place
Was over now; but voices smote his ear
Of garrulous citizens who jostled past.
Loud cries, gay laughter, snatches of sweet song,
The tinkling fountains set in gardens cool
About the pillared palaces, and blent
With trickling of the conduits in the squares,
The noisy teams within the narrow streets,All these the stranger heard and did not hear,
While ringing bells pealed out above the town,
And calm gray twilight skies stretched over it.
Wide open stood the doors of every church,
And through the porches pressed a streaming throng.
Vague wonderment perplexed him, at the sight
Of broken columns raised to Jupiter
Beside the cross, immense cathedrals reared
Upon a dead faith's ruins; all the whirl
And eager bustle of the living town
Filling the storied streets, whose very stones
Were solemn monuments, and spake of death.
Although he wrestled with himself, the thought
Of that poor, past religion smote his heart
With a huge pity and deep sympathy,
Beyond the fervor which the Church inspired.
Where was the noble race who ruled the world,
Moulded of purest elements, and stuffed
With sternest virtues, every man a king,
Wearing the purple native in his heart?
These lounging beggars, stealthy monks and priests,
And womanish patricians filled their place.
Thus Tannhauser, still half an infidel,
Pagan through mind and Christian through the heart,
Fared thoughtfully with wandering, aimless steps,
Till in the dying glimmer of the day
He raised his eyes and found himself alone
Amid the ruined arches, broken shafts,
And huge arena of the Coliseum.
He did not see it as it was, dim-lit
By something less than day and more than night,
With wan reflections of the rising moon
Rather divined than seen on ivied walls,
229
And crumbled battlements, and topless columnsBut by the light of all the ancient days,
Ringed with keen eager faces, living eyes,
Fixed on the circus with a savage joy,
Where brandished swords flashed white, and human blood
Streamed o'er the thirsty dust, and Death was king.
He started, shuddering, and drew breath to see
The foul pit choked with weeds and tumbled stones,
The cross raised midmost, and the peaceful moon
Shining o'er all; and fell upon his knees,
Restored to faith in one wise, loving God.
Day followed day, and still he bode in Rome,
Waiting his audience with the Cardinal,
And from the gates, on pretext frivolous,
Passed daily forth,-his Eminency slept,Again, his Eminency was fatigued
By tedious sessions of the Papal court,
And thus the patient pilgrim was referred
Unto a later hour. At last the page
Bore him a missive with Filippo's seal,
That in his name commended Tannhauser
Unto the Pope. The worn, discouraged knight
Read the brief scroll, then sadly forth again,
Along the bosky alleys of the park,
Passed to the glare and noise of summer streets.
'Good God!' he muttered, 'Thou hast ears for all,
And sendest help and comfort; yet these men,
Thy saintly ministers, must deck themselves
With arrogance, and from their large delight
In all the beauty of the beauteous earth,
And peace of indolent, untempted souls,
Deny the hungry outcast a bare word.'
Yet even as he nourished bitter thoughts,
He felt a depth of clear serenity,
Unruffled in his heart beneath it all.
No outward object now had farther power
To wound him there, for the brooding o'er those deeps
Of vast contrition was boundless hope.
Yet not to leave a human chance untried,
He sought the absolution of the Pope.
In a great hall with airy galleries,
230
Thronged with high dignitaries of the Church,
He took his seat amidst the humblest friars.
Through open windows came sweet garden smells,
Bright morning light, and twittered song of birds.
Around the hall flashed gold and sunlit gems,
And splendid wealth of color,-white-stoled priests,
And scarlet cardinals, and bishops clad
In violet vestments,-while beneath the shade
Of the high gallery huddled dusky shapes,
With faded, travel-tattered, sombre smocks,
And shaven heads, and girdles of coarse hemp;
Some, pilgrims penitent like Tannhauser;
Some, devotees to kiss the sacred feet.
The brassy blare of trumpets smote the air,
Shrill pipes and horns with swelling clamor came,
And through the doorway's wide-stretched tapestries
Passed the Pope's trumpeters and mace-bearers,
His vergers bearing slender silver wands,
Then mitred bishops, red-clad cardinals,
The stalwart Papal Guard with halberds raised,
And then, with white head crowned with gold ingemmed,
The vicar of the lowly Galilean,
Holding his pastoral rod of smooth-hewn wood,
With censer swung before and peacock fans
Waved constantly by pages, either side.
Attended thus, they bore him to his throne,
And priests and laymen fell upon their knees.
Then, after pause of brief and silent prayer,
The pilgrims singly through the hall defiled,
To kiss the borders of the papal skirts,
Smiting their foreheads on the paven stone;
Some silent, abject, some accusing them
Of venial sins in accents of remorse,
Craving his grace, and passing pardoned forth.
Sir Tannhauser came last, no need for him
To cry 'Peccavi,' and crook suppliant knees.
His gray head rather crushed than bowed, his face
Livid and wasted, his deep thoughtful eyes,
His tall gaunt form in those unseemly weeds,
Spake more than eloquence. His hollow voice
Brake silence, saying, 'I am Tannhauser.
For seven years I lived apart from men,
231
Within the Venusberg.' A horror seized
The assembled folk; some turbulently rose;
Some clamored, 'From the presence cast him forth!'
But the knight never ceased his steady gaze
Upon the Pope. At last,-'I have not spoken
To be condemned,' he said, 'by such as these.
Thou, spiritual Father, answer me.
Look thou upon me with the eyes of Christ.
Can I through expiation gain my shrift,
And work mine own redemption?' 'Insolent man!'
Thundered the outraged Pope, 'is this the tone
Wherewith thou dost parade thy loathsome sin?
Down on thy knees, and wallow on the earth!
Nay, rather go! there is no ray of hope,
No gleam, through cycles of eternity,
For the redemption of a soul like thine.
Yea, sooner shall my pastoral rod branch forth
In leaf and blossom, and green shoots of spring,
Than Christ will pardon thee.' And as he spoke,
He struck the rod upon the floor with force
That gave it entrance 'twixt two loosened tiles,
So that it stood, fast-rooted and alone.
The knight saw naught, he only heard his judge
Ring forth his curses, and the court cry out
'Anathema!' and loud, and blent therewith,
Derisive laughter in the very hall,
And a wild voice that thrilled through flesh and heart:
'ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE!'
Half-mad he clasped both hands upon his brow,
Amidst the storm of voices, till they died,
And all was silence, save the reckless song
Of a young bird upon a twig without.
Then a defiant, ghastly face he raised,
And shrieked, ''T is false! I am no longer thine!'
And through the windows open to the park,
Rushed forth, beyond the sight and sound of men.
By church nor palace paused he, till he passed
All squares and streets, and crossed the bridge of stone,
And stood alone amidst the broad expanse
Of the Campagna, twinkling in the heat.
He knelt upon a knoll of turf, and snapped
232
The cord that held the cross about his neck,
And far from him the leaden burden flung.
'O God! I thank Thee, that my faith in Thee
Subsists at last, through all discouragements.
Between us must no type nor symbol stand,
No mediator, were he more divine
Than the incarnate Christ. All forms, all priests,
I part aside, and hold communion free
Beneath the empty sky of noon, with naught
Between my nothingness and thy high heavensSpirit with spirit. O, have mercy, God!
Cleanse me from lust and bitterness and pride,
Have mercy in accordance with my faith.'
Long time he lay upon the scorching grass,
With his face buried in the tangled weeds.
Ah! who can tell the struggles of his soul
Against its demons in that sacred hour,
The solitude, the anguish, the remorse?
When shadows long and thin lay on the ground,
Shivering with fever, helpless he arose,
But with a face divine, ineffable,
Such as we dream the face of Israel,
When the Lord's wrestling angel, at gray dawn,
Blessed him, and disappeared.
Upon the marsh,
All night, he wandered, striving to emerge
From the wild, pathless plain,-now limitless
And colorless beneath the risen moon;
Outstretching like a sea, with landmarks none,
Save broken aqueducts and parapets,
And ruined columns glinting 'neath the moon.
His dress was dank and clinging with the dew;
A thousand insects fluttered o'er his head,
With buzz and drone; unseen cicadas chirped
Among the long, rank grass, and far and near
The fire-flies flickered through the summer air.
Vague thoughts and gleams prophetic filled his brain.
'Ah, fool!' he mused, 'to look for help from men.
Had they the will to aid, they lack the power.
In mine own flesh and soul the sin had birth,
Through mine own anguish it must be atoned.
Our saviours are not saints and ministers,
233
But tear-strung women, children soft of heart,
Or fellow-sufferers, who, by some chance word,
Some glance of comfort, save us from despair.
These I have found, thank heaven! to strengthen trust
In mine own kind, when all the world grew dark.
Make me not proud in spirit, O my God!
Yea, in thy sight I am one mass of sin,
One black and foul corruption, yet I know
My frailty is exceeded by thy love.
Neither is this the slender straw of hope,
Whereto I, drowning, cling, but firm belief,
That fills my inmost soul with vast content.
As surely as the hollow faiths of old
Shriveled to dust before one ray of Truth,
So will these modern temples pass away,
Piled upon rotten doctrines, baseless forms,
And man will look in his own breast for help,
Yea, search for comfort his own inward reins,
Revere himself, and find the God within.
Patience and patience!' Through the sleepless night
He held such thoughts; at times before his eyes
Flashed glimpses of the Church that was to be,
Sublimely simple in the light serene
Of future ages; then the vision changed
To the Pope's hall, thronged with high priests, who hurled
Their curses on him. Staggering, he awoke
Unto the truth, and found himself alone,
Beneath the awful stars. When dawn's first chill
Crept though the shivering grass and heavy leaves,
Giddy and overcome, he fell and slept
Upon the dripping weeds, nor dreamed nor stirred,
Until the wide plain basked in noon's broad light.
He dragged his weary frame some paces more,
Unto a solitary herdsman's hut,
Which, in the vagueness of the moonlit night,
Was touched with lines of beauty, till it grew
Fair as the ruined works of ancient art,
Now squat and hideous with its wattled roof,
Decaying timbers, and loose door wide oped,
Half-fallen from the hinge. A drowsy man,
Bearded and burnt, in shepherd habit lay,
Stretched on the floor, slow-munching, half asleep,
234
His frugal fare; for thus, at blaze of noon,
The shepherds sought a shelter from the sun,
Leaving their vigilant dogs beside their flock.
The knight craved drink and bread, and with respect
For pilgrim weeds, the Roman herdsman stirred
His lazy length, and shared with him his meal.
Refreshed and calm, Sir Tannhauser passed forth,
Yearning with morbid fancy once again
To see the kind face of the minstrel boy
He met beside the well. At set of sun
He reached the place; the reaping-folk were gone,
The day's toil over, yet he took his seat.
A milking-girl with laden buckets full,
Came slowly from the pasture, paused and drank.
From a near cottage ran a ragged boy,
And filled his wooden pail, and to his home
Returned across the fields. A herdsman came,
And drank and gave his dog to drink, and passed,
Greeting the holy man who sat there still,
Awaiting. But his feeble pulse beat high
When he descried at last a youthful form,
Crossing the field, a pitcher on his head,
Advancing towards the well. Yea, this was he,
The same grave eyes, and open, girlish face.
But he saw not, amidst the landscape brown,
The knight's brown figure, who, to win his ear,
Asked the lad's name. 'My name is Salvator,
To serve you, sir,' he carelessly replied,
With eyes and hands intent upon his jar,
Brimming and bubbling. Then he cast one glance
Upon his questioner, and left the well,
Crying with keen and sudden sympathy,
'Good Father, pardon me, I knew you not.
Ah! you have travelled overmuch: your feet
Are grimed with mud and wet, your face is changed,
Your hands are dry with fever.' But the knight:
'Nay, as I look on thee, I think the Lord
Wills not that I should suffer any more.'
'Then you have suffered much,' sighed Salvator,
With wondering pity. 'You must come with me;
My father knows of you, I told him all.
A knight and minstrel who cast by his lyre,
235
His health and fame, to give himself to God,Yours is a life indeed to be desired!
If you will lie with us this night, our home
Will verily be blessed.' By kindness crushed,
Wandering in sense and words, the broken knight
Resisted naught, and let himself be led
To the boy's home. The outcast and accursed
Was welcomed now by kindly human hands;
Once more his blighted spirit was revived
By contact with refreshing innocence.
There, when the morning broke upon the world,
The humble hosts no longer knew their guest.
His fleshly weeds of sin forever doffed,
Tannhauser lay and smiled, for in the night
The angel came who brings eternal peace.
__________
Far into Wartburg, through all Italy,
In every town the Pope sent messengers,
Riding in furious haste; among them, one
Who bore a branch of dry wood burst in bloom;
The pastoral rod had borne green shoots of spring,
And leaf and blossom. God is merciful.
~ Emma Lazarus
#NFDB
17 Occultism
10 Integral Yoga
6 Christianity
4 Poetry
4 Philosophy
3 Psychology
2 Mythology
1 Alchemy
10 James George Frazer
6 Sri Aurobindo
6 Aleister Crowley
4 The Mother
3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
3 Plotinus
3 Nolini Kanta Gupta
2 Satprem
2 Saint Therese of Lisieux
2 Joseph Campbell
2 Jorge Luis Borges
10 The Golden Bough
3 The Secret Doctrine
3 Magick Without Tears
3 Liber ABA
3 City of God
3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 The Life Divine
2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
2 The Bible
2 Prayers And Meditations
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
2 Labyrinths
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 01
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Concealed in life's hermetic envelope.
A burning Witness in the Sanctuary
Regards through Time and the blind walls of Form;
03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is this characteristic that struck the European mind in its first contact with the Indian artistic world and called forth the criticism that Indian culture lacks in humanism. It is true, a very sublimated humanism finds remarkable expression in Ajanta, and perhaps it is here that the Western eye began to learn and appreciate the Indian style of beauty; even in Ajanta, however, in the pieces where the art reaches its very height, mere humanism seems to be at its minimum. And if we go beyond these productions that reflect the mellowness and humaneness of the Buddhist Compassion, if we go into the Sanctuary of the Brahmanic art, we find that the experiences embodied there and the method of expression become more and more "anonymous"; they have not, that is to say, the local colour of humanity, which alone makes the European mind feel entirely at home. Europe's revulsion of feeling against Indian art came chiefly from her first meeting with the multiple-headed, multiple-armed, expressionless, strangely poised Hindu gods and goddesses, so different in every way from ordinary human types.
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
A contemporary School believed that Judaism of that day, taken from an exclusively philosophical standpoint, did not show the "right way to the Sanctuary", and endeavoured to combine philosophy and Qabalah, illustrating their various theorems by mathematical forms.
1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in
his stead. Such was the rule of the Sanctuary. A candidate for the
priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and
--
sacrificed on her altar. But transported to Italy, the rite assumed
a milder form. Within the Sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of
which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to
--
prayers had been heard by her came crowned with wreaths and bearing
lighted torches to the Sanctuary in fulfilment of their vows. Some
one unknown dedicated a perpetually burning lamp in a little shrine
--
Laurentum, Cora, Tibur, Pometia, and Ardea. This tradition indeed
speaks for the great age of the Sanctuary, since it seems to date
its foundation sometime before 495 B.C., the year in which Pometia
--
credit of the tradition is rather shaken than confirmed by another
story which ascribes the foundation of the Sanctuary to a certain
Manius Egerius, who gave rise to the saying, "There are many Manii
1.01 - The Unexpected, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
There was another unexpected visitor. Dr. Savoor, Principal of a College in the South, and an amateur homeopath. I do not know how he gained entry into the Sanctuary. Since homeopathy claimed to have some good remedies for hastening bony union, he was perhaps given a chance with the Mother's consent. But there was no way of ascertaining the effect of the treatment. It did no harm, I suppose. Satyendra reminded me that at Dr. Savoor's suggestion, a homeopathic drug Nux Vomica X had been tried for Sri Aurobindo's constipation at the beginning. That having failed a higher potency 200 of the same drug was given and it produced a good effect.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
The first sequence of this mythico-ritual scenario the kings humiliation and Marduks captivity
indicates the regression of the world to the precosmogonic chaos. In the Sanctuary of Marduk the high
priest stripped the king of his emblems (scepter, ring, scimitar and crown) and struck him in the face.
1.03 - Supernatural Aid, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is al
ways and ever present within the Sanctuary of the heart and
even immanent within, or just behind, the unfamiliar features of
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
In conference assembled within the Sanctuary of the
Gnosis, they began considering the subject in all its aspects.
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
4 Orthodox churches are divided into the narthex, the catholicon, and the Sanctuary. In ancient times the unbaptized were admitted to the narthex but not to the catholicon. The robber was already in the narthex. He was halted not at the outer door but at the doors of the catholicon.
--
Dumbfounded by the voice of the shepherd coming from the Sanctuary (for he thought, as he afterwards assured us with oaths, that he had heard not a human voice, but thunder), he instantly fell on his face, trembling and shaking all over with fear. As he lay on the ground and moistened the floor with his tears, this wonderful physician, using all means for his salvation, and wishing to give to all an example of saving and effectual humility, again exhorted him, in the presence of all, to tell in detail what he had done. And with terror he confessed one after another all his sins, which revolted every ear, not only sins of the flesh, natural and unnatural, with rational beings and with animals, but even
1.05 - The Belly of the Whale, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
past the temple guardians does not invalidate their significance;
for if the intruder is incapable of encompassing the Sanctuary,
then he has effectually remained without. Anyone unable to un
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
To write of the grades above 5 = 6 becomes increasingly difficult because, without being an Adeptus Minor himself, the reader has no means at all of understanding what the
Adept considers a necessary task, since his viewpoint differs enormously from that of the ordinary learned man. Never- theless, the little that has filtered out from the Sanctuary, and come down from tradition, may as well be stated here.
To become an Adeptus Major (in the Sphere of Geburah -
1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
his limbs. Proofs of the prevalence of tree-worship in ancient
Greece and Italy are abundant. In the Sanctuary of Aesculapius at
Cos, for example, it was forbidden to cut down the cypress-trees
1.13 - The Kings of Rome and Alba, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
world in the mysterious fashion characteristic of the old Latin
kings. the Sanctuary of the god on the top of the mountain was the
religious centre of the Latin League, as Alba was its political
1.15 - The Worship of the Oak, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
of the oak leaves and in the crash of thunder. Perhaps the bronze
gongs which kept up a humming in the wind round the Sanctuary were
meant to mimick the thunder that might so often be heard rolling and
1.16 - Dianus and Diana, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
of buildings and of votive offerings which have been found on the
site of the Sanctuary combine with the testimony of classical
writers to prove that in later times it was one of the greatest and
1.21 - ON FREE DEATH, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
for his goal and heir he will hang no more dry wreaths
in the Sanctuary of life. Verily, I do not want to be like
the ropemakers: they drag out their threads and always
1.26 - Sacrifice of the Kings Son, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
Spartans at Thermopylae, he came to the town of Alus. Here he was
shown the Sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus, about which his guides told
him a strange tale. It ran somewhat as follows. Once upon a time the
1.31 - Adonis in Cyprus, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
from the sea; the newer city sprang up at the harbour some ten miles
off. the Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos (the modern Kuklia)
was one of the most celebrated shrines in the ancient world.
1.34 - The Myth and Ritual of Attis, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
On the twenty-second day of March, a pine-tree was cut in the woods
and brought into the Sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a
great divinity. The duty of carrying the sacred tree was entrusted
--
greatest festival of the year at Hierapolis fell at the beginning of
spring, when multitudes thronged to the Sanctuary from Syria and the
regions round about. While the flutes played, the drums beat, and
--
new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of bull's blood
appear to have been carried out above all at the Sanctuary of the
Phrygian goddess on the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the
1.43 - Dionysus, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
vouchsafed by the diety; but if the crops were to fail that year,
the mystic light was not seen, darkness brooded over the Sanctuary
as at other times. Moreover, among the emblems of Dionysus was the
--
who had greased their bodies with oil for the occasion, used to pick
out a bull from the herd and carry it to the Sanctuary of the god.
Dionysus was supposed to inspire their choice of the particular
1.45 - Unserious Conduct of a Pupil, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Occultism
1. The Cloud on the Sanctuary. On reading this book, Mr. X.,[86] who was desperate from the conviction that no success in life was worth a tinker's dam, decided: "This is the answer to my problem; the members of the Secret Fraternity which this book describes have solved the riddle of life. I must discover them, and seek to be received amongst them."
1.49 - Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals, #The Golden Bough, #unset, #Kabbalah
the relation of the horse to Virbius, both animals being excluded
from the Sanctuary on the ground of injury done by them to the god.
But from Varro we learn that there was an exception to the rule
1.66 - Vampires, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Occultism
There is a mighty volume of theory and practice concerning this and cognate subjects which will be open to you when and if you attain the VIII of O.T.O. and become Pontiff and Epopt of the Illuminati. Further, when you enter the Sanctuary of the Gnosis oh boy! Or, more accurately, oh girl!
1.83 - Epistola Ultima, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Occultism
J'Accuse, Zola 203
Cloud on the Sanctuary, Equinox I, 1 205
Ministry of Fear, Grahame Greene 210
1914 04 20p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After having hoped so much, after having believed that my outer being was at last to become an instrument adapted to Thy purpose, after feeling hopeful that I would at last be delivered from this obscure and cumbersome self, I feel I am as far from the goal as before, as ignorant, as egoistic as I was before this great expectation. And the path stretches out once again, interminable across the fields of inconscience. The sublime door has closed again and I find myself still on the threshold of the Sanctuary without being able to enter within. But I have learnt to look at everything with a smile and a tranquil heart. I ask only this of Thee, O my divine Master, not to let me make any mistakes; even if the instrument is still condemned for a time to unconsciousness, grant that it may let itself be guided faithfully and docilely by Thy divine law.
1916 12 20p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As thou art contemplating me, I shall speak to thee this evening. I see in thy heart a diamond surrounded by a golden light. It is at once pure and warm, something which may manifest impersonal love; but why dost thou keep this treasure enclosed in that dark casket lined with deep purple? The outermost covering is of a deep lustreless blue, a real mantle of darkness. It would seem that thou art afraid of showing thy splendour. Learn to radiate and do not fear the storm: the wind carries us far from the shore but shows us over the world. Wouldst thou be thrifty of thy tenderness? But the source of love is infinite. Dost thou fear to be misunderstood? But where hast thou seen man capable of understanding the Divine? And if the eternal truth finds in thee a means of manifesting itself, what dost thou care for all the rest? Thou art like a pilgrim coming out of the Sanctuary; standing on the threshold in front of the crowd, he hesitates before revealing his precious secret, that of his supreme discovery. Listen, I too hesitated for days, for I could foresee both my preaching and its results: the imperfection of expression and the still greater imperfection of understanding. And yet I turned to the earth and men and brought them my message. Turn to the earth and menisnt this the comm and thou always hearest in thy heart?in thy heart, for it is that which carries a blessed message for those who are athirst for compassion. Henceforth nothing can attack the diamond. It is unassailable in its perfect constitution and the soft radiance that flashes from it can change many things in the hearts of men. Thou doubtest thy power and fearest thy ignorance? It is precisely this that wraps up thy strength in that dark mantle of starless night. Thou hesitatest and tremblest as on the threshold of a mystery, for now the mystery of the manifestation seems to thee more terrible and unfathomable than that of the Eternal Cause. But thou must take courage again and obey the injunction from the depths. It is I who am telling thee this, for I know thee and love thee as thou didst know and love me once. I have appeared clearly before thy sight so that thou mayst in no way doubt my word. And also to thy eyes I have shown thy heart so that thou canst thus see what the supreme Truth has willed for it, so that thou mayst discover in it the law of thy being. The thing still seems to thee quite difficult: a day will come when thou wilt wonder how for so long it could have been otherwise.
1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Kabbalah
At the new moon, when I felt very down, he gave me the first tantric mantraa mantra to Durga. For a period of 41 days, I must repeat it 125,000 times and go every morning to the Temple, stand before Parvati and recite this mantra within me for at least one hour. Then I must go to the Sanctuary of Shiva and recite another mantra for half an hour. Practically speaking, I have to repeat constantly within me the mantra to Durga in a silent concentration, whatever I may be doing on the outside. In these conditions, it is difficult to think of you and this has created a slight conflict in me, but I believe that your Grace is acting through Swami and through Durga, whom I am invoking all the time I remember what you told me about the necessity for intermediaries and I am obeying Swami unreservedly.
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the Sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the Sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Kabbalah
Your last letter was a great comfort to me. If you were not there, with me, everything would be so absurd and impossible. I am again disturbing you because Swami tells me that you are worried and that I should write to you. Not much has changed, except that I am holding on and am confident. Yesterday, I again suffered an agonizing wave, in the temple, and I found just enough strength to repeat your name with each beat of my heart, like someone drowning. I remained as motionless as a pillar of stone before the Sanctuary, with only your name (my mantra would not come out), then it cleared. It was brutal. I am confident that with each wave I am gaining in strength, and I know you are there. But I am aware that if the enemy is so violent it is because something in me responds, or has responded, something that has not made its surrender that is the critical point. Mother, may your grace help me to place everything in your hands, everything, without any shadow. I want so much to emerge into the Light, to be rid of all this once and for all.
1.stl - The Atom of Jesus-Host, #unset, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
English version by Donald Kinney, OCD Original Language French I am just a speck of dust, But I want to make my dwelling In the shadow of the Sanctuary With the Prisoner of Love. Ah! my soul longs for the host, I love him and want nothing more. It is the hidden God who attracts me. I am the atom of Jesus.... I want to stay not knowing, In forgetfulness of all created things, And by my silence console The Host of the sacred ciborium. Oh! I would like to save souls, And make elect from sinners. Give the flames of an apostle To your atom, sweet Jesus!.... If I am despised by the world, If it considers me as nothing, A divine peace floods me. For I have the host as my support. When I draw near the ciborium, All my sighs are heard... To be nothing is my glory. I am the atom of Jesus.... Sometimes when Heaven is overcast And this atom cannot take flight, It loves to hide in the shadow And attach itself to the golden door. The the Divine light, Which makes all the elect rejoice, Comes to earth to warm up This poor atom of Jesus... Under the warm rays of grace, The atom sparkles. When the light breeze passes by, It gently sways... Oh! what ineffable delight! What favors has it not received?... Right next tot he host slips The poor atom of Jesus.... Pining away near the host In the tabernacle of love, Thus my life will be spent While waiting for the last day. When our trials will be over, Flying to the dwelling of the elect, The atom of the Eucharist Will shine near her Jesus!... [2320.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, by St. Therese of Lisieux / Translated by Donald Kinney, OCD
1.stl - The Divine Dew, #unset, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
English version by Donald Kinney, OCD Original Language French My Sweet Jesus, You appear to me On your Mother's breast, all radiant with love. Love is the ineffable mystery That exiled you from your Heavenly Home... Ah! let me hide myself under the veil Concealing you from all mortal eyes, And near you, O Morning Star! I shall find a foretaste of Heaven. From the moment a new dawn awakens, When we see the first lights of the sun, The young flower beginning to open Awaits a precious balm from on high. It is the good-giving morning dew, Which, producing an abundant sap, Makes the flower of the new bud open a little. Jesus, you are that Flower just open. I gaze on you at your first awakening. Jesus, you are the ravishing Rose, The new bud, gracious and scarlet red. The ever-so-pure arms of your dear Mother For for you a cradle, a royal throne, Your sweet sun is Mary's breast, And your Dew is Virginal Milk!... My Beloved, my divine little Brother, In your gaze I see all the future. Soon, for me, you will leave your Mother. Already Love impels you to suffer. But on the cross, O Full-blossomed Flower! I recognize your morning fragrance. I recognize Mary's Dew. Your divine blood is Virginal Milk!... This Dew hides in the Sanctuary. The angels of Heaven, enraptured, contemplate it, Offering to God their sublime prayer. Like Saint John, they repeat: "Behold." Yes, behold, this Word made Host. Eternal Priest, sacerdotal Lamb, The Son of God is the Son of Mary. The bread of Angels is Virginal Milk. The seraphim feeds on glory. In Paradise his joy is full. Weak child that I am, I only see in the ciborium The color and figure of Milk. But that is the Milk a child needs, And Jesus' Love is beyond compare. O tender Love! Unfathomable power, My white Host is Virginal Milk!... [2320.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, by St. Therese of Lisieux / Translated by Donald Kinney, OCD <
Wikipedia - Category:Burials at the Sanctuary of St. Jadwiga, Trzebnica
Wikipedia - The Sanctuary -- Prehistoric site in Wiltshire, England
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Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season -- -- White Fox -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Psychological Drama Thriller Fantasy -- Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season -- A reunion that was supposed to spell the arrival of peaceful times is quickly shattered when Subaru Natsuki and Emilia return to Irlam village. Witnessing the devastation left behind by the calamities known as Sin Archbishops, Subaru sinks into the depths of despair as his ability to redo proves futile. -- -- As the group makes their way to the Sanctuary in search of answers, Subaru has an unexpected encounter with the Witch of Greed—Echidna. Subjected to her untamed rhythm, he is forced to dive into the spirals of the past and future. At the same time, several mysterious threats set their sights on the Sanctuary, heralding a horrific fate for the hapless people trapped within. -- -- Everlasting contracts, past sins, and unrequited love will clash and submerge into a river of blood in the second season of Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu. Pushed to the brink of hopelessness, how long will Subaru's resolve to save his loved ones last? -- -- 689,281 8.47
Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- In northern Europe, the reincarnation of Odin, Dolbar, rules supreme. One day, Hyoga rescues a man in Siberia so warns him about trouble in the Asgard. Athena goes out to investigate and sends Hyoga in advance but when she and the others arrive at the Asgard, Hyoga is nowhere to be found. When Dolbar captures Athena to take control of the sanctuary, the bronze saints try to help her but are attacked by the God Warriors. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Mar 12, 1988 -- 14,442 6.90
Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- In northern Europe, the reincarnation of Odin, Dolbar, rules supreme. One day, Hyoga rescues a man in Siberia so warns him about trouble in the Asgard. Athena goes out to investigate and sends Hyoga in advance but when she and the others arrive at the Asgard, Hyoga is nowhere to be found. When Dolbar captures Athena to take control of the sanctuary, the bronze saints try to help her but are attacked by the God Warriors. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Movie - Mar 12, 1988 -- 14,442 6.90
Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Fantasy Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary -- From the dawn of time, there have been warriors who protected the Goddess Athena. Once forces of evil appear, these warriors, called the Saints will present themselves. -- -- A young woman, Saori Kido, learns about this force known as "Cosmos" and that she is the reincarnation of Athena, protector of love and peace on Earth. However, the Pope of the Sanctuary, who is in the charge of all the Saints, does not take kindly to Saori, and targets her for usurping the identity of Athena. An assassin is sent out to kill her. Fortunately, one of the Bronze Saints, Seiya, manages to protect her. But will Seiya be able to protect Saori through to the end in the gripping saga of Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary? -- Movie - Jun 21, 2014 -- 22,689 6.24
Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Meikai-hen -- -- Toei Animation -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Demons Fantasy Sci-Fi Shounen Super Power -- Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Meikai-hen Saint Seiya: Meiou Hades Meikai-hen -- Seiya and the rest of the Bronze and Gold Saints who have survived the Sanctuary battle have entered the world of the Dead. They are fighting to get to Hades and defeat him. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- OVA - Dec 17, 2005 -- 40,812 7.76
Saint Seiya: Shinku no Shounen Densetsu -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Shinku no Shounen Densetsu Saint Seiya: Shinku no Shounen Densetsu -- Sun God Apollo the brother of Athena is here to take Athena back to heaven and taking over the sanctuary. He revived the deceased gold saints and use them and a few god saints as bodyguards. But Athena did not obey him, Apollo had no choice but send her to hell. On the otherhand, the bronze saints are on their way to save Athena. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Jul 23, 1988 -- 13,505 7.22
Guild of Servants of the Sanctuary
The Sanctuary
The Sanctuary (community)
The Sanctuary Lamp
The Sanctuary (recording studio)