The Hall of Discovery

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The Canticle of Brother Son

Most High, Omnipotent, Good Lord,
Thine be the praises, the glory, and the honor and every blessing.

To Thee alone, Most High, do they belong
and no man is worthy to mention Thee.

May Thou be praised, my Lord, with all Thy creatures,
especially mister brother sun,
of whom is the day, and Thou enlightens us through him.

And he is beautiful and radiant with a great splendor,
of Thee, Most High, does he convey the meaning

May Thou be praised, my Lord, for sister moon and the stars,
in heaven Thou has made them clear and precious and beautiful

May Thou be praised, my Lord, for brother wind,
and for the air and the cloudy and the clear weather and every weather,
through which to all Thy creatures Thou gives sustenance

May Thou be praised, my Lord, for sister water,
who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste

May Thou be praised, my lord, for brother fire,
through whom Thou illumines the night,
and he is handsome and jocund and robust and strong

May Thou be praised, my Lord, for our sister, mother earth,
who sustains us and governs,
and produces various fruits with colored flowers and green plants

May Thou be praised, my Lord, for those who forgive for the sake of Thy love,
and endure infirmity and tribulation

Blessed those who endure them in peace,
because by Thee, Most High, will they be crowned

May Thou be praised, my Lord, for our sister, bodily death,
whom no man living can escape

Woe to those, who die in mortal sin:
blessed those whom she will find in Thy most holy desires,
because the second death will do them no evil

Praise and bless my Lord,
and give Him thanks and serve Him with great humility!

By St. Francis of Assisi (Probably written 1224-5).
Translated from original Italian by Fr. K. Esser.

Forgotten dreams

A mind a haze with hope and dreams,
Wishing and seeing with a smile on the lips,
But that's not reality, a timeless hope of constant happiness
Wishing for that ever dream.

ssssssss mist is sucked away,
Replaced with the horror of blood,
Only to see the dashing of mortal hopes and happiness,
A cut throat reality.

So into dark's depths of never dream,
The suffering of a cross t to bear,
Not your dreams NO
But the will of one who suffered long and hard.

Not the dream of this life, not everdream.

By Alanna_Halfelven (06/06/07)

The Sacrifice

They say He was great,
They say He was divine,
But did one ever stop to think
About His dying time.

Tortured and insulted,
Struck and misunderstood,
Carried the cross
And torture so I could stumble with mine.

No happy feeling here, no clapping or cheer,
Just sweat and blood on a mountain,
And His dread carried out for real.

Blood pouring, spit, insult, twisting of the mind,
Flail through skin, muscle and bone, rejection,
persecution, hatred, anger.

After the unrecognisable mass was nailed to the tree,
To the dreaded Hell he went,
To fire and pain of anguish and sorrow.
Who knows what He saw?

Rising from the grave
He rose to something incomprehensible to us.
But for us now,
Like those before us,
Our turn to dance the dance of Pain.

By Alanna_Halfelven (06/06/07)

The beauty of the night

The dead silence,
Casting shadows seemingly timeless
the scrawny willows and burnt out tress,
The branches reaching through the moon
And silent rustlings of living leaves.

The bright moon rising with its craters in our sight,
Accompanied by the nightingale's song,
A beautiful bird of the night.
The form reflected by hidden streams,
Gently rippling over rocks and pebbles.

There is beauty in the night,
Sites of wonder as we ponder what no mortal hands could create.
There is a beauty in the night that no one can take.

By Alanna_Halfelven (06/06/07)

The Hound of Heaven

I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe d pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat, and a Voice beat,
More instant than the feet:
All things betray thee who betrayest me.

I pleaded, outlaw--wise by many a hearted casement,
curtained red, trellised with inter-twining charities,
For though I knew His love who followe d,
Yet was I sore adread, lest having Him,
I should have nought beside.
But if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of his approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clange d bars,
Fretted to dulcet jars and silvern chatter
The pale ports of the moon.

I said to Dawn --- be sudden, to Eve --- be soon,
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover.
Float thy vague veil about me lest He see.
I tempted all His servitors but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him, their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue,
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind,
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue,
Or whether, thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn of their feet,
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following feet, and a Voice above their beat:
Nought shelters thee who wilt not shelter Me.

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of Man or Maid.
But still within the little childrens' eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me.
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair,
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
Come then, ye other children, Nature's
Share with me, said I, your delicate fellowship.
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning with our Lady Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting with her in her wind walled palace,
Underneath her azured dai:s,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice, lucent weeping out of the dayspring.

So it was done.
I in their delicate fellowship was one.
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies,
I knew all the swift importings on the wilful face of skies,
I knew how the clouds arise,
Spume d of the wild sea-snortings.
All that's born or dies,
Rose and drooped with,
Made them shapers of mine own moods, or wailful, or Divine.
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the Even,
when she lit her glimmering tapers round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
and its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.
Against the red throb of its sunset heart,
I laid my own to beat
And share commingling heat.

But not by that, by that was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know what each other says,
these things and I; In sound I speak,
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake my drouth.
Let her, if she would owe me
Drop yon blue-bosomed veil of sky
And show me the breasts o' her tenderness.
Never did any milk of hers once bless my thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase, with unperturbe d pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
And past those noise d feet, a Voice comes yet more fleet:
Lo, nought contentst thee who content'st nought Me.

Naked, I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke. My harness, piece by piece,
thou'st hewn from me
And smitten me to my knee,
I am defenceless, utterly.
I slept methinks, and awoke.
And slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours,
and pulled my life upon me.
Grimed with smears,
I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst like sunstarts on a stream.
Yeah, faileth now even dream the dreamer
and the lute, the lutanist.
Even the linked fantasies in whose blossomy twist,
I swung the Earth, a trinket at my wrist,
Have yielded, cords of all too weak account,
For Earth, with heavy grief so overplussed.
Ah! is thy Love indeed a weed,
albeit an Amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must, Designer Infinite,
Ah! must thou char the wood 'ere thou canst limn with it ?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust.
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver upon the sighful branches of my
mind.

Such is. What is to be ?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds,
Yet ever and anon, a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity.
Those shaken mists a space unsettle,
Then round the half-glimpse d turrets, slowly wash again.
But not 'ere Him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal; Cypress crowned.
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether Man's Heart or Life it be that yield thee harvest,
Must thy harvest fields be dunged with rotten death ?

Now of that long pursuit,
Comes at hand the bruit.
That Voice is round me like a bursting Sea:
And is thy Earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me.
Strange, piteous, futile thing;
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of Naught (He said).
And human love needs human meriting ---
How hast thou merited,
Of all Man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot.
Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee, I did'st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.
Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.

By Francis Thompson
1893

A canticle of Death

Light is at the end of the tunnel,
One day we'll see and hurt no more.
One day we'll stop to think of what went before us,
A breeze in time and nothing more.

The air we breathe is decay,
The smell we ingest is mixed with black,
The taste we experience is mixed with poisin,
Till the day we die we stumble and crack.

We won't get what we want today,
We won't see what we desire,
We won't get what we dream,
Our child's play forgotten. We play with fire.

Black this world seems to be,
In this world mixed with Black and shadow,
The beauty of death met with faith,
We groan until the breaking of the world.

By Alanna Halfelven
(13/03/07)

My Song of Today

Oh! how I love Thee, Jesus! my soul aspires to Thee -
And yet for one day only my simple prayer I pray!
Come reign within my heart, smile
tenderly on me,

Today, dear Lord, today.

But if I dare take thought of what the morrow brings -
That fills my fickle heart with dreary, dull dismay;
I crave, indeed, my God, trials and sufferings,

But only for today!

O sweetest Star of heaven!
O Virgin, spotless, blest,
Shining with Jesus' light, guiding to Him my way!
O Mother! 'neath thy veil let my tired spirit rest,

For this brief passing day!

Soon shall I fly afar among the holy choirs,
Then shall be mine the joy that never knows decay;
And then my lips shall sing, to heaven's angelic lyres,

The eternal, glad today!

By Saint Therese of Lisieux
June 1894
translated by S L Emery

Treasure in the sands

A treasure shinning bright,
given to a wonderer by a man,
gold and shimmery, different colours and hues.

The wonderer a child, no more than a
child at heart, searching in the sands.

The treasure held in the hands with awe,
only to be seen by a thief in the desert,
a thief living in the dead of night.

During the day, the thief had watched,
working his way closer to the treasure shinning like gold.

Hand outstretched, grasping in the air, the thief wanted more.

The wonderer held it close,
injured by scratches of hands.

The child at heart, though adult on the surface
clenched.
Though it was only the man that saved the child
the man that gave the treasure.

He knocked the theif as his horse ran past,
freeing the child from pain
and the robbery so close.

The smile of the man said it all,
the child, the wanderer was safe,
the treasure kept and the warm smile reflecting the sun
was held in the mind of the child.

By Alanna_Halfelven
05/02/07

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