still unsatiated: 'I saw Him and sought Him, I had Him, and I wanted Him.' Fletcher's tenderness, Ford's passion lose colour placed side by side with the utterances of this worn recluse whose hands are empty of every treasure."[1] Sometimes with her subject her language assumes a majestic solemnity: "The pillars of Heaven shall tremble and quake" (lxxv.); sometimes it seems to march to its goal in an ascent of triumphal measure as with beating of drums: "The body was in the grave till Easter-morrow and from that time He lay nevermore. For then was rightfully ended" . . . (close of Chap. li.). Generally, perhaps, the style in its move-
- ↑ "Catholic Mystics of the Middle Ages." Edinburgh Review, October 1896.
seers of truth to whom longer trial has offered a sterner strength of complex thinking, for wider service here, but who, although they may have learnt thus 'more' in the knowledge of love, "shall never know nor learn other thing without end."—"I understood none higher stature in this life than childhood."
"It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be.
······
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night.
It was the plant and flower of Light."
For all of the Company of saints have the sight of One Vision, and be it in the steadfast fulfilment of labour, or from out of the merriment of play,—through the strong, bright peace of endurance, or the silent acquiescence of the will, led along valleys of darkness,—or again in some swift rush of prayer into the morning light,—all of the saints, the babe and the ancient, beholding "the Blissful Countenance" say "with one voice": "It is well." "Amen. Amen."—(De la More Press: London, 1906.)
