When he left the cottage, he did not return to the house, but
threaded the little forest of pines, climbing the hill till he came
out on its bare crown, where nothing grew but heather and
blaeberries. There he threw himself down, and gazed into the
heavens. The sun was below the horizon; all the dazzle was gone out
of the gold, and the roses were fast fading; the downy blue of the
sky was trembling into stars over his head; the brown dusk was
gathering in the air; and a wind full of gentleness and peace came
to him from the west. He let his thoughts go where they would, and
they went up into the abyss over his head.
'Lord, come to me,' he cried in his heart, 'for I cannot go to thee.
If I were to go up and up through that awful space for ages and
ages, I should never find thee. Yet there thou art. The tenderness
of thy infinitude looks upon me from those heavens. Thou art in
them and in me. Because thou thinkest, I think. I am thine--all
thine. I abandon myself to thee. Fill me with thyself. When I am
full of thee, my griefs themselves will grow golden in thy sunlight.
Thou holdest them and their cause, and wilt find some nobler
atonement between them than vile forgetfulness and the death of
love. Lord, let me help those that are wretched because they do not
know thee. Let me tell them that thou, the Life, must needs suffer
for and with them, that they may be partakers of thy ineffable
peace. My life is hid in thine: take me in thy hand as Gideon bore
the pitcher to the battle.
Pages:
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545