Suffice it for the present that we notice the existence of these two establishments. We shall have at a future time to narrate their progress and development.
From The Month.
THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.
§ 1.
GERONTIUS.
JESU, MARIA—I am near to death,
And thou art calling me; I know it now.
Not by the token of this faltering breath,
This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow,—
(Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)
'Tis this new feeling, never felt before,
(Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)
That I am going, that I am no more.
'Tis this strange innermost abandonment,
(Lover of souls! great God! I look to thee,)
This emptying out of each constituent
And natural force, by which I come to be.
Pray for me, O my friends; a visitant
Is knocking his dire summons at my door,
The like of whom, to scare me and to daunt,
Has never, never come to me before.
'Tis death,—loving friends, your prayers!—'tis he!…
As though my very being had given way,
As though I was no more a substance now,
And could fall back on naught to be my stay,
(Help, loving Lord! Thou my sole refuge, thou,)
And turn no whither, but must needs decay
And drop from out this universal frame
Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss,
That utter nothingness, of which I came:
This is it that has come to pass in me;
O horror! this it is, my dearest, this;
So pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to pray.
ASSISTANTS.
Kyrie eleïson, Christe eleïson, Kyrie eleïson.
Holy Mary, pray for him.
All holy angels, pray for him.
Choirs of the righteous, pray for him.
Holy Abraham, pray for him.
St. John Baptist, St. Joseph, pray for him.
St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Andrew, St. John,
All apostles, all evangelists, pray for him.
All holy disciples of the Lord, pray for him.
All holy innocents, pray for him.
All holy martyrs, all holy confessors,
All holy hermits, all holy virgins,
All ye saints of God, pray for him.
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GERONTIUS.
Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;
And through such waning span
Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent,
And, ere afresh the ruin on thee fall,
Use well the interval.
ASSISTANTS.
Be merciful, be gracious; spare him, Lord.
Be merciful, be gracious; Lord, deliver him.
From the sins that are passed;
From thy frown and thine ire;
From the perils of dying;
From any complying
With sin, or denying
His God, or relying
On self, at the last;
From the nethermost fire;
From all that is evil;
From power of the devil;
Thy servant deliver,
For once and for ever.
By thy birth, and by thy cross,
Rescue him from endless loss;
By thy death and burial,
Save him from a final fall;
By thy rising from the tomb,
By thy mounting up above,
By the Spirit's gracious love,
Save him in the day of doom.
GERONTIUS.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro te,
Miserere, judex meus,
Parce mihi, Domine.
Firmly I believe and truly
God is Three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son.
And I trust and hope most fully
In that manhood crucified;
And each thought and deed unruly
Do to death, as he has died.
Simply to his grace and wholly
Light and life and strength belong,
And I love supremely, solely,
Him the holy, him the strong.
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Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro te,
Miserere, judex meus,
Parce mihi, Domine.
And I hold in veneration,
For the love of him alone,
Holy Church, as his creation.
And her teachings, as his own.
And I take with joy whatever
Now besets me, pain or fear,
And with a strong will I sever
All the ties which bind me here.
Adoration aye be given,
With and through the angelic host,
To the God of earth and heaven,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro te,
Miserere, judex meus,
Mortis in discrimine.
I can no more; for now it comes again,
That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain,
That masterful negation and collapse
Of all that makes me man; as though I bent
Over the dizzy brink
Of some sheer infinite descent;
Or worse, as though
Down, down for ever I was falling through
The solid framework of created things,
And needs must sink and sink
Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still,
A fierce and restless fright begins to fill
The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse,
Some bodily form of ill
Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse
Tainting the hallowed air, and laughs and flaps
Its hideous wings,
And makes me wild with horror and dismay.
O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!
Some angel, Jesu! such as came to thee
In thine own agony. ……
Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary, pray for me.
ASSISTANTS.
Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour,
As of old so many by thy gracious power:—Amen.
Enoch and Elias from the common doom; Amen.
Noe from the waters in a saving home; Amen.
Abraham from th' abounding guilt of heathenesse; Amen.
Job from all his multiform and fell distress; Amen.
Isaac, when his father's knife was raised to slay; Amen.
Lot from burning Sodom on its judgment-day; Amen.
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Moses from the land of bondage and despair; Amen.
Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair; Amen.
And the children three amid the furnace-flame; Amen.
Chaste Susanna from the slander and the shame; Amen.
David from Golia and the wrath of Saul; Amen.
And the two apostles from their prison-thrall; Amen.
Thecla from her torments; Amen:
—so, to show thy power,
Rescue this thy servant in his evil hour.
GERONTIUS.
Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep.
The pain has wearied me. …Into thy hands,
Lord, into thy hands. …
THE PRIEST.
Proficiscere, anima Christiana de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the name of God,
The omnipotent Father, who created thee!
Go, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,
Son of the Living God, who bled for thee!
Go, in the name of th' Holy Spirit, who
Hath been poured out on thee! Go, in the name
Of angels and archangels; in the name
Of thrones and dominations; in the name
Of princedoms and of powers; and in the name
Of cherubim and seraphim, go forth!
Go, in the name of patriarchs and prophets;
And of apostles and evangelists,
Of martyrs and confessors; in the name
Of holy monks and hermits; in the name
Of holy virgins; and all saints of God,
Both men and women, go! Go on thy course;
And may thy place to-day be found in peace,
And may thy dwelling be the holy mount
Of Sion: through the same, through Christ, our Lord.
§ 2.
SOUL Of GERONTIUS.
I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed.
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes:—some one softly said
"He's gone;" and then a sigh went round the room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry "Subvenite;" and they knelt in prayer.
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I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah! whence is this? What is this severance?
This silence pours a solitariness
Into the very essence of my soul;
And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Hath something too of sternness and of pain.
For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
By a strange introversion, and perforce
I now begin to feed upon myself,
Because I have naught else to feed upon.
Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,
But in the body still; for I possess
A sort of confidence, which clings to me,
That each particular organ holds its place
As heretofore, combining with the rest
Into one symmetry, that wraps me round,
And makes me man; and surely I could move,
Did I but will it, every part of me.
And yet I cannot to my sense bring home,
By very trial, that I have the power.
'Tis strange; I cannot stir a hand or foot,
I cannot make my fingers or my lips
By mutual pressure witness each to each,
Nor by the eyelid's instantaneous stroke
Assure myself I have a body still.
Nor do I know my very attitude,
Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.
So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning on an onward course,
And we e'en now are million miles apart.
Yet . … is this peremptory severance
Wrought out in lengthy measurements of space,
Which grow and multiply by speed and time?
Or am I traversing infinity
By endless subdivision, hurrying back
From finite toward infinitesimal,
Thus dying out of the expanded world?
Another marvel; some one has me fast
Within his ample palm; 'tis not a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being,
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
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I cannot of that music rightly say
Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones.
Oh what a heart-subduing melody!
ANGEL.
My work is done,'
My task is o er,
And so I come,
Taking it home,
For the crown is won.
Alleluia,
For evermore.
My Father gave
In charge to me
This child of earth
E'en from its birth,
To serve and save,
Alleluia,
And saved is he.
This child of clay
To me was given,
To rear and train
By sorrow and pain
In the narrow way,
Alleluia,
From earth to heaven.
SOUL.
It is a member of that family
Of wondrous beings, who, ere the worlds were made,
Millions of ages back, have stood around
The throne of God:—he never has known sin;
But through those cycles all but infinite,
Has had a strong and pure celestial life,
And bore to gaze on th' unveiled face of God,
And drank from the eternal fount of truth,
And served him with a keen ecstatic love.
Hark! he begins again.
ANGEL.
Lord, how wonderful in depth and height,
But most in man, how wonderful thou art!
With what a love, what soft persuasive might,
Victorious o'er the stubborn fleshly heart,
Thy tale complete of saints thou dost provide,
To fill the throne which angels lost through pride!
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He lay a grovelling babe upon the ground,
Polluted in the blood of his first sire,
With his whole essence shattered and unsound,
And, coiled around his heart, a demon dire,
Which was not of his nature, but had skill
To bind and form his opening mind to ill.
Then was I sent from heaven to set right
The balance in his soul of truth and sin,
And I have waged a long relentless fight,
Resolved that death-environed spirit to win,
Which from its fallen state, when all was lost,
Had been repurchased at so dread a cost.
Oh what a shifting parti-colored scene
Of hope and fear, of triumph and dismay,
Of recklessness and penitence, has been
The history of that dreary, lifelong fray!
And oh the grace, to nerve him and to lead,
How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need!
O man, strange composite of heaven and earth!
Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower
Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth
Cloaking corruption! weakness mastering power!
Who never art so near to crime and shame,
As when thou hast achieved some deed of name;
How should ethereal natures comprehend
A thing made up of spirit and of clay,
Were we not tasked to nurse it and to tend,
Linked one to one throughout its mortal day?
More than the seraph in his height of place,
The angel-guardian knows and loves the ransomed race.
SOUL.
Now know I surely that I am at length
Out of the body: had I part with earth,
I never could have drunk those accents in,
And not have worshipped as a god the voice
That was so musical; but now I am
So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possessed,
With such a full content, and with a sense
So apprehensive and discriminant,
As no temptation can intoxicate.
Nor have I even terror at the thought
That I am clasped by such a saintliness.
ANGEL.
All praise to him, at whose sublime decree
The last are first, the first become the last;
By whom the suppliant prisoner is set free,
By whom proud first-borns from their thrones are cast;
Who raises Mary to be queen of heaven,
While Lucifer is left, condemned and unforgiven.
§ 3.
SOUL.
I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord,
My guardian spirit, all hail!
ANGEL.
All hail, my child!
My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou?
SOUL.
I would have nothing but to speak with thee
For speaking's sake. I wish to hold with thee
Conscious communion; though I fain would know
A maze of things, were it but meet to ask,
And not a curiousness.
ANGEL.
You cannot now
Cherish a wish which ought not to be wished.
SOUL.
Then I will speak. I ever had believed
That on the moment when the struggling soul
Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell
Under the awful presence of its God,
There to be judged and sent to its own place.
What lets me now from going to my Lord?
ANGEL.
Thou art not let; but with extremest speed
Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge:
For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.
Divide a moment, as men measure time,
Into its million-million-millionth part,
Yet even less than that the interval
Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest
Cried "Subvenite," and they fell to prayer;
Nay, scarcely yet have they begun to pray.
For spirits and men by different standards mete
The less and greater in the flow of time.
By sun and moon, primeval ordinances—
By stars which rise and set harmoniously—
By the recurring seasons, and the swing,
This way and that, of the suspended rod
Precise and punctual, men divide the hours,
Equal, continuous, for their common use.
Not so with us in th' immaterial world;
But intervals in their succession
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Are measured by the living thought alone,
And grow or wane with its intensity.
And time is not a common property;
But what is long is short, and swift is slow,
And near is distant, as received and grasped
By this mind and by that, and every one
Is standard of his own chronology.
And memory lacks its natural resting-points,
Of years, and centuries, and periods.
It is thy very energy of thought
Which keeps thee from thy God.
SOUL.
Dear angel, say,
Why have I now no fear at meeting him?
Along my earthly life, the thought of death
And judgment was to me most terrible.
I had it aye before me, and I saw
The Judge severe e'en in the crucifix.
Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled;
And at this balance of my destiny,
Now close upon me, I can forward look
With a serenest joy.
ANGEL.
It is because
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear.
Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so
For thee the bitterness of death is passed
Also, because already in thy soul
The judgment is begun. That day of doom,
One and the same for the collected world—
That solemn consummation for all flesh,
Is, in the case of each, anticipate
Upon his death; and, as the last great day
In the particular judgment is rehearsed,
So now too, ere thou comest to the throne,
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense,
And heaven begun.