The Theosophical Forum – December 1940

BY THE SEA — G. Cardinal Le Gros

It was on an evening, I like to think, when there was nothing at all but the illimitable loneness of the sea, and from the rim of it, and on into infinity, the rose-flame of the sky.

He was going to a far country, not to return, and his words drifted away with pale leaves and delicate blossoms over the star-clear waters:

Brightest of all the bright
     Blossoms along the sea,
Cradled in song and light, —
     Bloom in the soul of me!

After the sunset-gleam,
     Over the twilight-dew
Gather me, dream by dream,
     Into the dream of you.

There had been a time, he remembered, in his childhood, when the flowers that he saw were more than flowers and the songs that he heard were more than songs. The faces of people glowed with a strange, beautiful light: there was hope in them and a remembrance of something ineffable. But as the years passed, dark veils fell before his eyes. The flowers lost their bright enchantment, becoming flowers, the songs songs. The light in human faces was gone. Towered in gloom a different world appeared: sunlessness and starlessness brooded over the cities and the mountains and the sea. Only in memory, and slowly retreating, was the golden world with its luminous flowers and living songs and faces that were not faces at all, but living souls.

The long music of the waters, whispering through the avenues of the waves, heard him and listened; and then, strand upon beautiful strand, climbed slowly upward through the jewel-mist of the stars. . . .

And if it was the wind that made words, speaking to him, he did not know. And if it was the loneness of the sea, or the sky above it that made words, speaking to him, he did not know. But he heard, somewhere in the world, near him or afar he was never able to tell, words spoken not in time, but in the vastness and quietness of eternity. And hearing them, he thought of waving flowers in the morning, flowers of pale and delicate flame that reached upward to heaven, and he thought of songs that rose like sunlight on swift wings, pouring melody over the world, and he thought of human faces luminous with beauty and joy.

The whole world, with its mountains and seas, and the sky above it, and him, became — and he knew that it had always been so — a divine loneness and oneness of peace. Even the words of eternity were of him, spoken by him, through the winds or the sky or the waters he was never to know. But wherever flowers were, or songs, there was he. And wherever human hearts beat there he was also.

It was on an evening, I like to think, when there was nothing at all but the illimitable loneness of the sea, and from the rim of it, and on into infinity, the rose-flame of the sky.



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