Three Thoughts: The Gate of Heaven

For those of you new to this blog (hello!), 'Three Thoughts' is a series in which I collect, without comment, three texts or extracts linked by a single word or phrase. In this case it's the 'gate of heaven', which comes ultimately from the story in Genesis 28:10-17.

I

John Donne, from a sermon preached on 29th February, 1628.

And those that sleep in Jesus Christ (saith the Apostle) will God bring with him; not only fetch them out of the dust when he comes, but bring them with him, that is, declare that they have been in his hands ever since they departed out of this world. They shall awake as Jacob did, and say as Jacob said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and this is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven. And into that gate they shall enter, and in that house they shall dwell, where there shall be no Cloud nor Sun, no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no foes nor friends, but one equal communion and identity; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity.

II

Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, I.31.

You never enjoy the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it, that you had rather suffer the flames of Hell than willingly be guilty of their error. There is so much blindness and ingratitude and damned folly in it. The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said "God is here, and I wist it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and the Gate of Heaven."

III

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, My Diaries; Being a Personal Narrative of Events, 1888-1914 (New York, 1932), p. 229, describing a visit from William Morris in May 1896.

We had a long discussion whether the love of beauty was natural or acquired. 'As for me,' he said, 'I have it naturally, for neither my father nor my mother nor any of my relations had the least idea of it. I remember as a boy going into Canterbury Cathedral and thinking that the gates of Heaven had been opened to me--also when I first saw an illuminated manuscript. These first pleasures, which I discovered for myself, were stronger than anything else I have had in life.'

Canterbury Cathedral, from the Quire

Three Thoughts: 'Death, and the little perpetual daily dyings'

Three texts I came across this week, which resonated with each other.

I

John Donne, from his last sermon, 'Death's Duel':

This exitus à morte is but introitus in mortem; this issue, this deliverance, from that death, the death of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this world; we have a winding-sheet in our mother's womb which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding-sheet, for we come to seek a grave.
...
That which we call life is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as the phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung. Our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth. Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry and angry, that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did; and besides, all the way, so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of this life, as that death itself would be an ease to them that suffer them.


II

William Wordsworth, from 'Intimations of Immortality':

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy:
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.


III

Walter Pater, from Marius the Epicurean:

There is a certain grief in things as they are, in man as he has come to be, as he certainly is, over and above those griefs of circumstance which are in a measure removable -- some inexplicable shortcoming, or misadventure, on the part of nature itself -- death, and old age as it must needs be, and that watching for their approach, which makes every stage of life like a dying over and over again. Almost all death is painful, and in every thing that comes to an end a touch of death, and therefore of wretched coldness struck home to one, of remorse, of loss and parting, of outraged attachments. Given faultless men and women, given a perfect state of society which should have no need to practise on men's susceptibilities for its own selfish ends, adding one turn more to the wheel of the great rack for its own interest or amusement, there would still be this evil in the world, of a certain necessary sorrow and desolation.

Three Thoughts: 'Estrangement'

Three texts I read recently, which have one word in common.

Charles Fairfax Murray, 'The Last Parting of Helga and Gunnlaug'

I

An anonymous fifteenth-century carol, from the manuscript Cambridge University Library MS. Additional 5943:

Wolde God that hyt were so
As I cowde wysshe bytuyxt vs too!

The man that I loued altherbest
In al thys contre, est other west,
To me he ys a strange gest;
What wonder est thow I be woo?

When me were leuest that he schold duelle,
He wold noght sey onys farewelle;
He wold noght sey ones farewell
Wen tyme was come that he most go.

In places ofte when I hym mete,
I dar noght speke, but forth I go;
With herte and eyes I hym grete;
So trywe of loue I know no mo.

As he ys myn hert loue,
My dyrward dyre, iblessed he be;
I swere by God, that ys aboue,
Non hath my loue but only he.

I am icomfortyd in euery side;
The coloures wexeth both fres and newe;
When he ys come and wyl abyde,
I wott ful wel that he ys trewe.

I loue trywely and no mo;
Wolde God that he hyt knywe!
And euer I hope hyt schal be so;
Then schal I chaunge for no new.


In 1418 this manuscript belonged to a man named John, a Carthusian monk at the priory of Hinton, Somerset; it also contains a version of the poem ‘Ecce ancilla domini’, which features a line about another memorable 'guest'.  Unusually, in the manuscript a different hand has gone through and added feminine pronouns in place of each 'he' in this poem, between the lines of every verse.

[Would to God that it were so
As I could wish betwixt us two!

The man that I loved of all the best
In all this land, from east to west,
To me he is a strange guest;
What wonder is it though I be woe?

When most I wanted him to dwell,
He would not say once farewell;
He would not say once farewell
When time was come that he must go.

In places oft when I him meet,
I dare not speak, but forth I go;
With heart and eyes I him greet;
So true of love I know no mo. [other]

As he is my heart's love,
My dearest dear, blest may he be!
I swear by God that is above,
None hath my love but only he.

I am comforted on every side;
The colours wax both fresh and new;
When he is come and will abide,
I'll know full well that he is true.

I love him truly, and no mo;
Would to God that he it knew!
And ever I hope it shall be so;
Then shall I change him for no new.]


II

'Estrangement'
William Watson (1858-1935)

So, without overt breach, we fall apart,
Tacitly sunder — neither you nor I
Conscious of one intelligible Why,
And both, from severance, winning equal smart.
So, with resigned and acquiescent heart,
Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie,
I seem to see an alien shade pass by,
A spirit wherein I have no lot or part.

Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim,
From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn
That June on her triumphal progress goes
Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him
She is a legend emptied of concern,
And idle is the rumour of the rose.


III

From Persuasion, ch.8:

From this time Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot were repeatedly in the same circle. They were soon dining in company together at Mr Musgrove's, for the little boy's state could no longer supply his aunt with a pretence for absenting herself; and this was but the beginning of other dinings and other meetings.

Whether former feelings were to be renewed must be brought to the proof; former times must undoubtedly be brought to the recollection of each; they could not but be reverted to; the year of their engagement could not but be named by him, in the little narratives or descriptions which conversation called forth. His profession qualified him, his disposition lead him, to talk; and "That was in the year six;" "That happened before I went to sea in the year six," occurred in the course of the first evening they spent together: and though his voice did not falter, and though she had no reason to suppose his eye wandering towards her while he spoke, Anne felt the utter impossibility, from her knowledge of his mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any more than herself. There must be the same immediate association of thought, though she was very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain.

They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exceptions even among the married couples), there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.

Three Thoughts: Worlds and Perspectives

I

Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, 1:19.


You never know yourself till you know more than your body. The Image of God was not seated in the features of your face, but in the lineaments of your Soul. In the knowledge of your Powers, Inclinations, and Principles, the knowledge of yourself chiefly consisteth; which are so great that even to the most learned of men, their Greatness is Incredible, and so Divine, that they are infinite in value.

Alas, the world is but a little centre in comparison of you! Suppose it millions of miles from the Earth to the Heavens, and millions of millions above the stars, both here and over the heads of our Antipodes, it is surrounded with infinite and eternal space; And like a gentleman's house to one that is travelling, it is a long time before you come unto it, you pass it in an instant, and leave it for ever. The Omnipresence and Eternity of God are your fellows and companions, and all that is in them ought to be made your familiar Treasures. Your understanding comprehends the World like the dust of a balance, measures Heaven with a span, and esteems a thousand years but as one day.


II

Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, II:13, reporting words supposedly spoken in 627 by one of the men of King Edwin of Northumbria, as they discussed the question of converting to Christianity.


O king, it seems to me that this present life of man on earth, in comparison to that time which is unknown to us, is as if you were sitting at table in the winter with your ealdormen and thegns, and a fire was kindled and the hall warmed, while it rained and snowed and stormed outside. A sparrow came in, and swiftly flew through the hall; it came in at one door, and went out at the other. Now during the time when he is inside, he is not touched by the winter's storms; but that is the twinkling of an eye and the briefest of moments, and at once he comes again from winter into winter. In such a way the life of man appears for a brief moment; what comes before, and what will follow after, we do not know. Therefore if this doctrine offers anything more certain or more fitting, it is right that we follow it.


III

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 5

And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott, lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed, and it was as rownde as eny ball. I loked þer upon wt þe eye of my vnderstondyng, and I þought, 'What may þis be?' And it was answered generally thus: 'It is all þat is made.' I merueled howe it myght laste, for me þought it myght sodenly haue fall to nought for lytyllhed. & I was answered in my vnderstondyng: 'It lastyth & euer shall for god louyth it, and so hath all thyng his begynning by þe loue of god.' In this lytyll thyng I sawe thre propertees. The fyrst is þt god made it, þe secunde is þet god louyth it, & þe þrid is, þat god kepith it.

[And in this he shewed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed, and it was as round as a ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and I thought, 'What can this be?' And it was fully answered thus: 'It is all that is made.' I marvelled how it could survive, for it seemed to me that it could suddenly have fallen into nothing, it was so little. And I was answered, in my understanding: 'It survives, and ever shall, because God loves it; and so everything has its beginning because of the love of God.' In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, and the third is that God keeps it.]

God creating the earth, from British Library MS. Royal 17 E VII

Unruly Wills and Affections

About this time every year I post this prayer, the Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Easter in the Book of Common Prayer:

O almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Hearing it yesterday at College Evensong, it made me think of this, a prayer of St Anselm:

Illuminatio mea, tu vides conscientiam meam,
quia "Domine, ante te omne desiderium meum";
et tu donas si quid bene vult anima mea.
Si bonum est, domine, quod inspiras,
immo quia bonum est, ut te velim amare,
da quod me facis velle,
da ut quantum iubes tantum te merear amare.
Laudes et gratias tibi ago pro desiderio quod inspirasti;
laudes et preces offero,
ne sit mihi donum tuum infructuosum,
quod tua sponte dedisti.
Perfice quod incepisti,
dona quod me benigne praeveniendo immeritum desiderare fecisti.


My light, you see my conscience,
because, "Lord, before you is all my desire,"
and if my soul wills any good, you gave it me.
Lord, if what you inspire is good,
or rather because it is good, that I should want to love you,
give me what you have made me want:
grant that I may attain to love you as much as you command.
I praise and thank you for the desire that you have inspired;
and I offer you praise and thanks
lest your gift to me be unfruitful,
which you have given me of your own accord.
Perfect what you have begun,
and grant me what you have made me long for,
not according to my deserts but out of your kindness that came first to me.


And that made me think of this:

We are all prone to love; but the art lies in managing our love: to make it truly amiable and proportionable. To love for God's sake, and to this end, that we may be well-pleasing unto Him: to love with a design to imitate Him, and to satisfy the principles of intelligent nature, and to become honorable, is to love in a Blessed and Holy manner.

Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations 2:69.


This is not an art I've mastered; has anyone?




The pictures are unrelated; I took them last week, like them, and can't imagine another occasion on which I might post them.

Three Thoughts: On Loving and Loving God More

I.

Richard Lovelace (1649):

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkinde,
That from the Nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet minde,
To Warre and Armes I flie.

True; a new Mistresse now I serve,
The first Foe in the Field;
And with a sterner Faith embrace
A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.

Yet this Inconstancy is such,
As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee (Deare) so much,
Lov'd I not Honour more.

And C. S. Lewis on this poem, from The Four Loves (1960):

There are women to whom the plea would be meaningless. Honour would be just one of those silly things that Men talk about; a verbal excuse for, therefore an aggravation of, the offence against "love's law" which the poet is about to commit. Lovelace can use it with confidence because his lady is a Cavalier lady who already admits, as he does, the claims of Honour. He does not need to "hate" her, to set his face against her, because he and she acknowledge the same law. They have agreed and understood each other on this matter long before. The task of converting her to a belief in Honour is not now, now, when the decision is upon them to be undertaken. It is this prior agreement which is so necessary when a far greater claim than that of Honour is at stake. It is too late, when the crisis comes, to begin telling a wife or husband or mother or friend, that your love all along had a secret reservation - "under God" or "so far as a higher Love permits". They ought to have been warned; not, to be sure, explicitly, but by the implication of a thousand talks, by the principle revealed in a hundred decisions upon small matters. Indeed, a real disagreement on this issue should make itself felt early enough to prevent a marriage or a Friendship from existing at all. The best love of either sort is not blind. Oliver Elton, speaking of Carlyle and Mill, said that they differed about justice, and that such a difference was naturally fatal "to any friendship worthy of the name". If "All" - quite seriously all - "for love" is implicit in the Beloved's attitude, his or her love is not worth having. It is not related in the right way to Love Himself.

II

Thomas Traherne (c.1636-1674):

Suppose a curious and fair woman. Some have seen the beauties of Heaven in such a person. It is a vain thing to say they loved too much. I dare say there are ten thousand beauties in that creature which they have not seen: they loved it not too much, but upon false causes. Nor so much upon false ones, as only upon some little ones. They love a creature for sparkling eyes and curled hair, lily breasts and ruddy cheeks which they should love moreover for being God's Image, Queen of the Universe, beloved by Angels, redeemed by Jesus Christ, an heiress of Heaven, and temple of the Holy Ghost: a mine and fountain of all virtues, a treasury of graces, and a child of God. But these excellencies are unknown. They love her perhaps, but do not love God more: nor men as much: nor Heaven and Earth at all. And so, being defective to other things, perish by a seeming excess to that.

We should be all Life and Mettle and Vigour and Love to everything; and that would poise us. I dare confidently say that every person in the whole world ought to be beloved as much as this: And she, if there be any cause of difference, more than she is. But God being beloved infinitely more, will be infinitely more our joy, and our heart will be more with Him, so that no man can be in danger by loving others too much, that loveth God as he ought.

Centuries of Meditations, 2:68.


III.

A sonnet from Christina Rossetti's sequence 'Monna Innominata' (1881):

Or puoi la quantitate
Comprender de l'amor che a te mi scalda. - Dante
Non vo' che da tal nodo mi scioglia. - Petrarca

Trust me, I have not earn'd your dear rebuke,
I love, as you would have me, God the most;
Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,
Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look
Unready to forego what I forsook;
This say I, having counted up the cost,
This, though I be the feeblest of God's host,
The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook.
Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you overmuch;
I love Him more, so let me love you too;
Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him,
I cannot love Him if I love not you.

Three Thoughts: On the Consolations of Nature

First, Pride and Prejudice, chapter 27:

Before they were separated by the conclusion of the play, she had the unexpected happiness of an invitation to accompany her uncle and aunt in a tour of pleasure which they proposed taking in the summer.

"We have not quite determined how far it shall carry us," said Mrs. Gardiner, "but perhaps to the Lakes."

No scheme could have been more agreeable to Elizabeth, and her acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. "My dear, dear aunt," she rapturously cried, "what delight! what felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend!"

Edward Thomas:

Beauty

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,
No man, woman, or child alive could please
Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh
Because I sit and frame an epitaph --
'Here lies all that no one loved of him
And that loved no one.' Then in a trice that whim
Has wearied. But, though I am like a river
At fall of evening while it seems that never
Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while
Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,
This heart, some fraction of me, happily
Floats through the window even now to a tree
Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale,
Not like a pewit that returns to wail
For something it has lost, but like a dove
That slants unswerving to its home and love.
There I find my rest, and through the dusk air
Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there.


And Rupert Brooke:

Pine Trees and the Sky: Evening

I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky,
And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover,
And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.

And in them all was only the old cry,
That song they always sing - 'The best is over!
You may remember now, and think, and sigh.'
And I was tired and sick that all was over,
And because I,
For all my thinking, never could recover,
One moment of the good hours that were over.
And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.

Then from the sad west turning wearily,
I saw the pines against the white north sky,
Very beautiful, and still, and bending over
Their sharp heads against a quiet sky.
And there was peace in them; and I
Was happy, and forgot to play the lover,
And laughed, and did no longer wish to die;
Being glad of you, O pine trees and the sky!

Three Thoughts: On Parting and Meeting Again

A Farewell
by Coventry Patmore, he of the 'Angel in the House'.
With all my will, but much against my heart,
We two now part.
My Very Dear,
Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.
It needs no art,
With faint, averted feet
And many a tear,
In our opposèd paths to persevere.
Go thou to East, I West.
We will not say
There's any hope, it is so far away.
But, O, my Best,
When the one darling of our widowhead,
The nursling Grief,
Is dead,
And no dews blur our eyes
To see the peach-bloom come in evening skies,
Perchance we may,
Where now this night is day,
And even through faith of still averted feet,
Making full circle of our banishment,
Amazèd meet;
The bitter journey to the bourne so sweet
Seasoning the termless feast of our content
With tears of recognition never dry.


Along the same lines, perhaps two generations later:

The Wayfarers
Rupert Brooke

Is it the hour? We leave this resting-place
Made fair by one another for a while.
Now, for a god-speed, one last mad embrace;
The long road then, unlit by your faint smile.
Ah! the long road! and you so far away!
Oh, I'll remember! but . . . each crawling day
Will pale a little your scarlet lips, each mile
Dull the dear pain of your remembered face.

. . . Do you think there's a far border town, somewhere,
The desert's edge, last of the lands we know,
Some gaunt eventual limit of our light,
In which I'll find you waiting; and we'll go
Together, hand in hand again, out there,
Into the waste we know not, into the night?


And the third, I think, would have to be this: Goscelin and Eva.

Three Thoughts: On 'Occasional Mercies'

'Occasional mercies' is John Donne's term for what a non-believer would call coincidences - moments of grace which come out of nowhere; reminders of mercy in a passing word or something suddenly heard or seen; flashes of heaven.

Here are his examples:

The air is not so full of motes, of atoms, as the Church is of mercies; and as we can suck in no part of air, but we take in those motes, those atoms; so here in the congregation we cannot suck in a word from the preacher, we cannot speak, we cannot sigh a prayer to God, but that whole breath and air is made of mercy. But we call not upon you from this text, to consider God's ordinary mercy, that which he exhibits to all in the ministry of his Church, nor his miraculous mercy, his extraordinary deliverances of states and churches; but we call upon particular consciences, by occasion of this text, to call to mind God's occasional mercies to them; such mercies as a regenerate man will call mercies, though a natural man would call them accidents, or occurrences, or contingencies.

A man wakes at midnight full of unclean thoughts, and he hears a passing Bell; this is an occasional mercy, if he call that his own knell, and consider how unfit he was to be called out of the world then, how unready to receive that voice, "Fool, this night they shall fetch away thy soul." The adulterer, whose eye waits for the twilight, goes forth, and casts his eyes upon forbidden houses, and would enter, and sees a Lord have mercy upon us upon the door; this is an occasional mercy, if this bring him to know that they who lie sick of the plague within, pass through a furnace, but by God's grace, to heaven; and he without, carries his own furnace to hell, his lustful loins to everlasting perdition.

What an occasional mercy had Balaam when his ass catechised him! What an occasional mercy had one thief when the other catechized him so, Art not thou afraid, being under the same condemnation? What an occasional mercy had all they that saw that when the devil himself fought for the name of Jesus, and wounded the sons of Sceva for exorcising in the name of Jesus, with that indignation, with that increpation, Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are ye?

I've posted about some of my own occasional mercies before: this moment in Norway was one, this discovery another. One came on St Margaret's day last week. Francis Thompson saw the Kingdom of God in similar chance moments:

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;–
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;– and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry;– clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!


And so did G. K. Chesterton (who died on this day in 1936), in the words of King Alfred's vision of the Virgin Mary in the Ballad of the White Horse:

"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gain,
The heaviest hind may easily
Come silently and suddenly
Upon me in a lane.

"And any little maid that walks
In good thoughts apart,
May break the guard of the Three Kings
And see the dear and dreadful things
I hid within my heart."