I met a man today who knew beauty. He was a French country
lawyer. ... The sunset tonight revealed all the sadness of the Burning
Babe. I failed today.

July 30.

Another sadder failure of the will. Yet beauty came in the evening.
The love of man, far more the love of God, is God in heaven descended
upon earth, eternity made time in beauty, "majestic instancy," the
Word made Flesh. The soul is the pool wherein God and we see our
images, and Heaven will be the mutual contemplation of our souls. So
that human love is the adoration of God in human flesh, and therein
may the beloved be seen as the image of God in time. The praise of Our
Lady should then be the praise of God. Was this Patmore's secret? Or
Dante's and Petrarch's? "My lady was desired in the high heaven." ...
I see now how in Heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage.
Far flowing ramparts of a starry world! The _flammantia moenia mundi_
of Lucretius. To contemplate Beauty FACE TO FACE! What a wonderful
proof of the beauty of our souls. Twin mirrors of a single singing
thought, the face of man looking into the Face of God, soul mingling
with Soul in immortal music, bathed in the cool wind of Our Lady's
eyes. Today I lost a nation in the cycle of my soul. What is the blood
but the history of my planets as engraved upon the constellations of
my flesh? It is the book of the angel of judgment for the first
syllable of my song, as the emotions, the intellect, and, alas, the
will, for the second, third, and fourth. The flesh is the ebb tide
from God, as the emotions are the flood. The intellect is the second
ebb, and in the will pray God that it may be flood! The other is
Hell....

July 31.

... A victory for the will this morning. ... Tomorrow is the first of
August, and I shall enter upon my forty days. The ringing in my ears
is the ringing of my fleshly stars "toned all in Time." I have
commenced an anthology of high imaginings more worthy than a book of
essays of that title I have loved and desired to use for
years,--_Flame and Dew_. If rightly done, it may do poetry one of the
greatest of services by assisting it to praise Beauty on many lips in
naked Light. I wish to consecrate my work on it to that end. Today I
have been influenced by Frederick Tennyson, Traherne, and Patmore. In
agony lies the highest music. The key is struck by circumstance,
Time's organist, and the stars tremble with music. For the full
thundering silence of Absolute Beau