On a hilltop over San Simeon, California, stands the “Hearst Castle,” a set of buildings constructed in the early 20th century by jillionaire William Randolph Hearst. It’s now connected with the California Parks system, and open to the public. I took a tour of it yesterday with some friends and family, and it is remarkable.

We spent most of our time in the Casa Grande, the “big house” that is most castle-like, so we didn’t get to see the numerous lesser dwellings and outbuildings which make the whole facility sprawl out less like a castle and more like a hilltop village. Thrust up into the middle of the blue California sky, the Hearst estate commands numerous panoramic ocean views and, on the day of our visit, sunshine like a perfect day in northern Italy. Before this starts sounding too much like a travel book, I’ll also mention that the site features some kind of vicious pollen (yesterday at least) that left me sneezing, bleary-eyed, and wheezing for the next ten hours.

Hearst had the bankbook and the will to get this thing built, but it was architect Julia Hunt Morgan who had the know-how. I’ll write more about Morgan later this week –it’s because my class is studying her work that I’m stopping at Hearst Castle at all– but what San Simeon shows is that in addition to her skill as an architect and builder, she was also an accomplished civil engineer. To build on that terrain, she had to solve countless problems of engineering and site development. She also had to build her own roads just to get the equipment to the site. She channeled in water, and used it to run a hydroelectric plant (one of the interesting features of the Casa Grande is that it’s quite similar to Old World castles, but was designed with modern plumbing and wiring built in seamlessly from the beginning). When the art treasures began to arrive, the local pier was too small for the big European boats, so she designed a new one. When there was nowhere to store the art, she built, down on the level ground, a concrete warehouse in the Spanish mission style which is a worthy and interesting structure in its own right. The list goes on and on. The way she uses reinforced concrete up here is amazing, whether she lets it be itself, or disguises it as wood and brick. For an architect/artist/builder/engineer as gifted as Morgan, it took a project as grand, and pockets as deep, as Hearst Castle to showcase the full range of her abilities.

On the other hand, there is something about Hearst Castle which also brings out the worst in Julia Morgan. As a designer, she practices academic eclecticism, which means that she’s studied all kinds of architectural styles, and freely chooses which style she wants to employ in a given project. She can build like anybody she wants to, and is a bit of a chameleon from one project to another. In most of Morgan’s work, she keeps to a limited palette and avoids jarring one style up against another, or jumping from one to another. But in San Simeon, there were no limits. You could always add another room, tack on another tower, dig another pool, or make a whole different house a stone’s throw away. I’m not fluent in the language of architecture, but there are places in Hearst Castle where you can’t tell if you’re in Athens, ancient Egypt, Hadrian’s Villa, a Hollywood epic about the last days of Pompeii, Spain, Morocco, or Milan. Why is that 15th century stone bust of St. Peter pasted onto the front of a miniaturized gothic cathedral topped by mission-style towers? And what is with the baroquococo riot of ornament that piles up like lumpy wedding cake frosting beside the long, clean, Spartan lines of marble terraces? What should you expect to see after you’ve seen arts-and-crafts bathrooms inside Regency period bedrooms connected to a billiards room with 15th-century ceilings brought over from England? A private movie theater, of course. Maybe it was my allergies, but I think I hallucinated that Jane Austen was wearing a flapper dress and whipping Chaucer at pool in a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Everything’s wonderful, but piled up together it’s what we call “a bit much.”

That’s the other Morgan weakness that comes out in San Simeon: the dazzle factor. In Morgan’s other work, she likes dramatic flourishes but can be restrained and make use of deliberate understatement. At Hearst Castle, she makes one grand overstatement after another. Pools are skirted by colonnades at the edges of gardened terraces beside palaces giving way to yada yada you get the idea. And though Morgan is always fond of ornament, here she ornaments everything to the gilt. If one flourish is good, why not five? If this makes guests say “wow,” maybe two of them will make guest say “double wow.”

There’s an amusing letter exchange between Hearst and Morgan, which suggests how the design got out of control. Morgan had thought of a way to heighten the initial impact of seeing Hearst Castle, by having cars drop guests at the steps before going on to a separate parking area. She summarized, “a strikingly noble and saississant effect would be impressed upon everyone on arrival.” “Saississant” apparently means “gripping,” and is a word Morgan probably picked up while studying at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in France. Hearst replied, “Heartily approve those steps. I certainly want that saississant effect. I don’t know what it is but I think we ought to have at least one such on the premises.”

I don’t know what it is, but we ought to have one. And why? To make folks say Wow. And what are they saying Wow about? William Randolph Hearst, the amazing fellow who had all this built. Call my architect and have her put some more classical stuff in here. Get the European auction houses to send over some more old things, we need to loot the past to glorify the modern millionaire. I want Zeus over the mantelpiece and Jesus on the cross at that end of the big room. Let’s call the dining room a refectory, like monks eat in. I can afford anything, and Julia Morgan can build anything. Let’s make this room like the nave of a church, put in a real rood screen from some old European church that’s strapped for cash and willing to sell, and invite celebrities to eat here. If you think about it, after all, it’s still a church, just devoted to the service of a different god.

My point (and I do have one) is not that Hearst is an irreverent egomaniac, devoted to no cause higher than himself. My point is that his devotion to such an inferior good is bad for art. I think it pushed Julia Hunt Morgan’s work over the line from academic eclecticism with a taste for ornamentation into outright decadence. “Decadence” is literally a falling off, a decline from a classical period. Morgan’s total architectural body of work might not be exactly classical, but I don’t find it decadent, except for here at Hearst Castle. Here, all her powers are summoned forth and called into service, but they are in service of a puny godling, a modern millionaire. The message they underline is a message too meager to bear the beauty of these buildings. The message is: Hearst is great, wow, what a place, what a guy.

Great art needs to be evoked by a great cause. Julia Morgan had powers of creativity which should have been called forth by something so far above her that she could have poured forth perfect buildings one after another without ever attaining the goal. Instead, the greatest commission she ever worked on was devoted to something too tiny, too self-referential, too earthbound. As a result, all the force of her genius ran toward decadence, and no matter how hard she worked she could only dig herself deeper into that decadence. The spectacle of Hearst Castle is for me not an exclamation point, but a question mark: what beauty might have come into the world if the powers of Julia Hunt Morgan had been called forth by a greater commission?

Stick figures can no longer hold the sheer expressive force of the knights. Behold! The advent of the solid form, on which the St. George shield and crusader helmet can be displayed. On the left of the image is the shield, while the right side of the page (by the skinny leg) is a fat sword.

Jesus says in Luke 16:17, “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.”

Other translations say, instead of “one dot,” things like “one stroke” or, as the KJV has it, “a tittle.”

The greek word used here for dot/stroke/tittle is keraia, literally a little horn. Most translations take this to be a mark that actually distinguishes one letter from another (the dot or line that turns what might be a lowercase “L” into a “t” or an “i”). These are tiny pen-strokes, but they carry meaning, and their absence could conceivably convert one word to a different word. A Q without a tail is an O, for instance.

But some commentators think that a little horn on a letter might be more ornamental than semantic. I. Howard Marshall, for instance, in his big Luke commentary, says that the “keraia” Jesus mentions here should probably be thought of as a minor decorative flourish used to make the writing attractive, but not signifying any difference of meaning. Perhaps it’s more like the foot of a T than the tail of a Q, and that, even that, is what Jesus is saying will not pass away.

A possible (but not very responsible) translation would be, “Not a serif of the law will pass away.”

Which raises the hypothetical and unedifying question, what font would God use? Surely not anything sans seraphim.

See where this is going? Put your own font jokes in here, it’s easy. I shall now go and compose an entire liturgy beginning with the stately place-holder Latin of “lorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci…”

After toiling away in the mines of academe, there’s nothing so refreshing as a good wacky book, and one of my favorites is Power of Will by Frank Channing Haddock (I can’t verify his lifespan, but possibly 1853 - 1915).

Believe it or not, the whole thing’s available online at mulitple locations of a new ageish sort (a good pdf version is here, a subdivided html presentation here).

The book is written in a tone of voice that I find incantatory and impossible to ignore. Here’s a line from the first page:

“POWER OF WILL” has been a pioneer in its chosen field — the only book of its kind, the only kind of its class, the only class in the world.

It starts with a bold claim (pioneer), ups the ante to a shocking assertion (only book of its kind), leaps to a near contradiction (only kind of its class), and climaxes in a boast that escapes the petty constraints of reason: the only class in the world! What does that even mean?

Haddock expresses gratitude for “[t]he kindness with which the book has been received, its literary deficiencies being overlooked in view of its practical purpose.” So he knows he’s no Billy Shakespeare, if you get my drift, and let me assure you that his is no false humility. When it comes to prose style, Haddock has a lot to be humble about. His writing is hard to describe. Imagine if somebody whose job was to write instruction manuals for major appliances suddenly got ecstatic religion and tried to explain what had happened in his soul. Now imagine that he did in a second language, say in English which he hadn’t started learning until he was an adult. Now imagine that he’s drunk when he’s writing it, and SOMEWHAT EXCITABLE, tending to speak BOMBASTICALLY and in ALL CAPS, ALL CAPS, ALL CAPS. The result is glossolalic. But imagination falters here, so it’s best if I just share the opening sentence from the Statement of General Principles:

The goal of evolution is psychic person. Person acts behind the mask of body. The basic idea of person is self determined unfoldment. The central factor in such unfoldment is Will. Will is a way person has of being and doing. A certain complex of our ways of being and doing constitutes mind.

Ever seen a train go over a cliff? One car after another, slowly dragging toward the edge, plunk, plunk, plunk. You’re sure each car will be the last, but somehow the horrific momentum keeps up and takes another car, and another. That’s how Haddock’s sentences feel to me.

Haddock thinks (dicy start for a sentence there, I admit) that you can use your force of will to carve ruts into your brain, and those ruts can make you strong. It’s an interesting combination of yankee know-how, self-help, hack science, and spiritual conjuring.

From the facts which we have been reviewing, we arrive at one of the most important of all conclusions, namely, that the gray matter of our brains is actually plastic and capable of being fashioned… We can make our own brains, so far as special mental functions or aptitudes are concerned, if only we have Wills strong enough to take the trouble… It is the Will alone which can make material seats for mind, and when made they are the most personal things in the body.

(Sounds to me like somebody’s gray matter is actually plastic, all right) Haddock goes on: “Your brain matter is your sole workshop for success in this world, and possibly the next too.” Possibly.

For long stretches of the book, it sounds like sheer positive thinking:

Be sure the intended effort is one within the possibility of your powers to carry through. … If it is possible to choose the time of applying the final effort, select a period when you are at your best physically and mentally. … Impress upon your mind, over and over again, the demand that you simply MUST win. Scout and ridicule the little flickering thoughts that pipe up: “There’s a big possibility that you won’t get it.” … Mentally demand, over and over, and with intensest vigor of thought, that you shall and will get what you seek. Say: “I DEMAND health. I DEMAND luxuries. I DEMAND better things in life. I simply MUST have them. I DEMAND the universal forces to bring into my career the values I seek, I DEMAND THEM !

Haddock is a man with a plan: scout, ridicule, DEMAND. I don’t know, Frank… it seems far fetched.

If this seems far fetched, just bear in mind that you are using that positive state of mind which is exactly the opposite of the cringing, timid condition which you know is the sort that gets “kicked aside.” If the negative phases of mind gets what it expects (kicks, drudgery, slights, life’s dregs) then beyond any question the POSITIVE mind can get the big things it demands. … But to him who constantly declares, “I RESOLVE TO WILL! ATTENTION!!” perfect power of continued and exclusive concentration comes at last to be second nature.

Then there’s the visual style of the book, which is supposed to be classy, I think, but which ends up over-using blackletter fonts so obtrusively that it makes a P.T. Barnum broadside look understated. There is such profligate use of red ink that it suggests there was a knife fight at the printshop the day the book was going through the press.

The book is, as reviewers say, unputdownable. Page after page, it contains sheer found poetry. I leave you with these thoughts, gathered freely from the meadow of the text and offered to the reader as a kind of nosegay of the spirit:

Exercise No. 9.
Gaze steadily, but winking naturally, at a small spot on the wall of a room, eight or ten feet away. Do not strain the eyes. Count fifty while so gazing. Keep mind wholly on the thought: The Direct Eye. Put back of that thought the Mood of a strong Will: “I WILL! I AM FORCING WILL INTO THE EYE.”

Repeat this exercise ten times for ten days, with rest, as above, adding each day to the count fifty, twenty counts; thus, first day, fifty; second day, seventy; third day, ninety.

Nerve Leakage Saps the Brain.

Keep your body healthy, A Temple for Emphatic Personality

“I RESOLVE TO WILL! THE MOOD OF EMPHATIC PERSONALITY IS MINE !”

Exhaustive understanding the only true reading;

But there is no cure for want of brains. Without brains, so called opinions are fools’ quips, At the brainless person Nature wrings her helpless hands. It is a finality of despair.

OPINIONATIVENESS : This habit is the outcome of a stubborn Will exercised by a blind soul.

Let a list of personal faults be carefully and deliberately made. They should be scrutinized severely to ascertain their power and results. Then resolve to destroy them, root and branch. Begin at once. Carry the list with you. Frequently read it. Determine, again and again, to be rid of them. Give each a definite time for extirpation. Preserve a record of success and failure in this respect, Read this at the close of each day of battle.

Continue until free.

Meanwhile, in all things, cultivate the resolute, conquering Mood of Will. You can be free!

RESOLVE! “ATTENTION TO THE KING ON HIS THRONE!”

Another G. K. Chesterton poem, and another Freddy illustration.

When we went hunting the Dragon
In the days when we were young,
We tossed the bright world over our shoulder
As bugle and baldrick slung;
Never was world so wild and fair
As what went by on the wind,
Never such fields of paradise
As the fields we left behind:

For this is the best of a rest for men
That men should rise and ride
Making a flying fairyland
Of market and country-side,
Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood,
Wings upon pot and pan,
For the hunting of the Dragon
That is the life of a man.

For men grow weary of fairyland
When the Dragon is a dream,
And tire of the talking bird in the tree,
The singing fish in the stream;
And the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale,
And the wonder is stiff with scorn;
For this is the honour of fairyland
And the following of the horn;

Beauty on beauty called us back
When we could rise and ride,
And a woman looked out of every window
As wonderful as a bride:
And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed,
And the children cheered and ran,
For the love of the hate of the Dragon
That is the pride of a man.

The sages called him a shadow
And the light went out of the sun;
And the wise men told us all was well
And all was weary and one:
And then, and then, in the quiet garden,
With never a weed to kill,
We knew that his shining tail had shone
In the white road over the hill:
We knew that the clouds were flakes of flame,
We knew that the sunset fire
Was red with the blood of the Dragon
Whose death is the world’s desire.

For the horn was blown in the heart of the night
That men should rise and ride,
Keeping the tryst of a terrible jest
Never for long untried;
Drinking a dreadful blood for wine,
Never in cup or can,
The death of a deathless Dragon,
That is the life of a man.

A sermon I preached at my home church, Grace Evangelical Free Church of La Mirada , on Sunday May 14, 2006. An mp3 of it will eventually be posted here.

(I started the sermon by taking out a camera and snapping pictures of the congregation left, right, and center, then pointing the camera up at the ceiling and getting a shot of that)

Thanks for bearing with me here. I don’t get to preach all that often, so I just wanted to get a little snapshot to remember you by.

But also, have you ever noticed that whenever you point a camera at something, the thing you’re pointing the camera at suddenly becomes much more interesting to everybody else? When I first pointed the camera at this side of the room, most of you were turning your heads and craning your necks to see what in the world was going on over there that was so important I had to take a picture of it. Couldn’t this have waited until the sermon was over? “What in the world is going on over there that he needs a picture of it right now?”

Pointing is powerful. You can try this yourself: find the least interesting object around, something totally nondescript and ordinary - - no offense - - and point a camera at it. Everybody who walks by will turn their heads to see what you’re looking at. You don’t even have to have film in the camera; the pointing’s the thing.

In fact, you don’t even need a camera. You could simply use digital equipment: your finger (thank you for the sacrificial laughter). If you like practical jokes, you can go to a crowded place, get a few friends together and all stare at the sky and point. You will draw a crowd. Now, if they don’t find anything worth looking at, they’ll turn their attention back to you and decide that you are yourself a rather interesting specimen, at least an eccentric type of individual, a camera-pointing oddity. But when normal folks stare up into the sky, it’s because there’s something unusual there, something worth seeing: a blimp, a balloon, a butterfly, a banner behind an airplane advertising a new movie, other things that start with B.

It’s no surprise that you can draw attention to something by pointing to it. Pointing is powerful; there is so much power in pointing that is not polite to point. But when you see something that other people should see, the best and most immediate testimony you can give is to point.

You don’t even have to know what it is you’re pointing to, because all your finger says is, quite elegantly and eloquently, “Looky there.” Of course the people you’re with have to understand what pointing means, because in itself, holding out your finger could just mean, “Looky here, I’ve got a finger.” If you’ve ever tried to communicate with an untrained dog, you know what I mean. You point to something, and the dog stares hard at your finger. The paradox is that the harder you work at pointing, the more interesting your finger becomes. No, don’t looky here, looky there, there! Index finger: indicare, to point! Bad dog! Bad dog! [stop pointing, wag finger at dog]

The book of Acts is all about this phenomenon. Not dogs staring at fingers; that’s actually a very minor topic in the Acts of the Apostles, hardly mentioned at all. But Acts is all about pointing, or in Luke’s terms, testifying, bearing witness. These are great New Testament words: witness, testify, testimony. I am rephrasing this set of words as “point” in order to get around our tendency to hear them as churchy words, bits of Christianese whose meaning has gone dormant. Acts is all about pointing. At the very beginning, Jesus tells his disciples “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” (1:8) You will be witnesses: you will testify, you will see something great, you will come to understand it, and you will point others to what you have seen. Here in Jerusalem, and out to the ends of the earth.
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R. A. Torrey (1856 - 1928) travelled the world preaching the gospel. In a series of startlingly successful preaching tours around 1902 - 1906, his preaching sparked revivals and drew crowds on multiple continents. Throughout these tours and for the rest of his ministry, he delighted in pointing out that the message he preached was changeless. He had been an international superstar in his forties — The Heir Apparent To Dwight Moody, the Billy Graham of His Day - - and even as his reputation faded and he devoted himself more and more to unspectacular tasks of institution-building, he was convinced that the message of salvation remains the same. Here is the theme stated in the introduction to 1922’s The Gospel for Today: New Evangelistic Sermons for a New Day (NY: Revell, 1922):

The Gospel presented in these sermons is the same Gospel of a crucified Christ, a Saviour from the guilt of sin, and a risen Christ, a Saviour from the present power of sin, that we have been preaching throughout our entire ministry as pastor, and as evangelist in all parts of the world.

and

The Real Gospel, when preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, produces the same effects in individual lives to-day, and in the transformation of families and communities, that it has produced throughout all the centuries since our Lord Jesus Christ died on the Cross of Calvary and rose again and ascended to the right hand of the Father and poured out His Holy Spirit upon His people. Practical results prove that that Gospel does not even need to be restated, though of course it is desirable to adapt the illustrations and method of argument to the thinking of our own day.

And in that same volume, in the chapter entitled “The Great Attraction: The Uplifted Christ,” the Torrey of the 1920s, after the crowds have dwindled, can’t help reliving a little bit of his glory days. But he plays this popularity card to refute the modern claim that you have to show movies and do tricks to keep your church popular. He uses his “big revival meeting” stories to underline the sufficiency of the message of Christ for keeping the churches full:

Nineteen centuries of Christian history prove the drawing power of Jesus when He is properly presented to men. I have seen some wonderful verification of the assertion of our text as to the marvelous drawing power of the uplifted Christ.

In London, for two continuous months, six afternoons and evenings each week, I saw the great Royal Albert Hall filled and even jammed, and sometimes as many turned away as got in, though it would seat 10,000 people by actual count and stand 2,000 more in the dome. On the opening night of these meetings a leading reporter of the city of London came to me before the service began and said, “You have taken this building for two consecutive months?” “Yes.” “And you expect to fill it every day?” “Yes.” “Why,” he said, “no one has ever attempted to hold two weeks’ consecutive meetings here of any kind. Gladstone himself could not fill it for two weeks. And you really expect to fill it for two months?” I replied, “Come and see.” He came and he saw.

On the last night, when the place was jammed to its utmost capacity and thousands outside clamored for admission, he came to me again and I said, “Has it been filled?” He smiled and said, “It has.” But what filled it? No show on earth could have filled it once a day for many consecutive days. The preacher was no remarkable orator. He had no gift of wit and humor, and would not have exercised it if he had. The newspapers constantly called attention to the fact that he was no orator, but the crowds came and came and came. On both rainy days, and fine days they crowded in or stood outside, oftentimes in a downpour of rain, in the vain hope of getting in. WHAT DREW THEM? The uplifted Christ preached and sung in the power of the Holy Spirit, given in answer to the daily prayers of 40,000 people scattered throughout the earth.

In Liverpool, the Tournament Hall, that was said to seat 20,000 people, and that by actual count seated 12,500 comfortably, located in a very out-of-the-way part of the city, several blocks from the nearest street-car line, and perhaps half a, mile from all the regular street-car lines, was filled night after night for three months, and on the last night they crowded 15,000 people into the building at seven o’clock, and then emptied it, and crowded another 15,000 in who had been patiently waiting outside; 30,000 people drawn in a single night! By what? By whom? Not by the preacher, not by the singer, but by Him who had said nearly nineteen hundred years before, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.”

Variations on a theme: Eine Kleine Knecht Musik # 3,226.

“We had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “but God gave us boldness to declare the gospel to you.” And they had suffered there: as Acts 16 narrates, Paul and Silas were chained and put into prison in Philippi. What kept them from giving in to discouragement? Paul doesn’t report to the Thessalonians the remarkable events in Philippi: How the power of God took them out of their chains and shook open every door in the prison. Even the prison-keeper became a Christian because of what he saw, and the message Paul and Silas brought.

But did any of it really happen?

It’s a question likely to offend anybody who’s accustomed to take the Bible as a truth-telling document. But it’s a live issue for Bible scholars working in the historical-critical mode. In fact, it’s one of the main things to inquire about, and the answer, if you follow an influential stream of scholarship, is no: the earthquake didn’t happen, it was fabricated by Luke to drive home a spiritual point.

This kind of scholarship is irritating to the faithful, and I freely confess that my own aggravation level mounts as I interact with critical commentaries that take this approach. Sometimes I will simply put down a commentary that crosses that line and loses my trust. There’s such a wealth of careful scholarship available that is written from a conservative evangelical perspective, after all, that I don’t usually need to resort to scholarship that keeps lapsing into outright denial of things the Bible affirms. If we’re not in a golden age of evangelical Bible commentaries, we’re pretty close to it: for many books of scripture, the most rigorous, critical, open-minded and comprehensive commentaries available are by evangelical authors.

Depending on the passage, though, I sometimes find that a less conservative scholar has done such a thorough job that I would really be missing out on the best work in the field if I didn’t read them. So I grit my teeth and see what there is to learn. Take for example the rich and well-researched Acts commentary by Ernst Haenchen (1894-1975), The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971). It’s a book that contains many insights I haven’t found anywhere else. But here is how he handles the miraculous elements in the Philippi story.
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One of my favorite G. K. Chesterton Poems, entitled “A Second Childhood.”

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber’s dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And I find that I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky;
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I:
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.