C’est eux qui en ont besoin
Mais naturellement il faudrait une école de moi
Et non pas une école d’hommes.”
The tenderness and charm of those passages in which he celebrates the importance and sanctity of childhood, its innocence, its capacity for growth, its virginal outlook, its freshness and power of response, place him in the front rank of the poets who have treated this most difficult subject, and constantly remind us of Blake:
“Comme leur jeune regard a une promesse, une secrète assurance intérieure, et leur front, et toute leur personne.
Leur petite, leur auguste, leur si révérente et révérende personne....
Heureuse enfance. Tout leur petit corps, toute leur petite personne, tous leurs petits gestes, est pleine, ruisselle, regorge d’une espérance.
Resplendit, regorge d’une innocence
Qui est l’innocence même de l’espérance.”
This hope, the childhood of the heart, is to Péguy the most precious of human qualities, and the one in which man draws nearest to an understanding of the Divine Idea. Jesus is “the man who has hoped,” and the Christian assault, which is the assault of hope, can alone make a breach in the defences of eternity. It is “the faith that God loves best”; the beginning of liberty, the growing point of the eager spirit of life. Faith beholds that which is: Charity loves that which is: Hope alone beholds and loves that which shall be. Faith is static; hope dynamic. Faith is a great tree; hope is the rising sap, the little, swelling bud upon the spray.