Perpetual Light

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Title: Perpetual Light
Author: William Rose Benet
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6597]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on December 30, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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PERPETUAL LIGHT
"Ah, do not turn to me that face which is no longer?of this world!... There are enough angels to?serve the mass in Heaven! Have pity on me, who?am only a man without wings, who rejoiced in this?companion God had given me, and that I should?hear her sigh with her head resting on my shoulder!...?the bitterness like the bitterness of?myrrh... And for you age is already come.?But how hard it is to renounce when the heart is?young!"
"THE TIDINGS BROUGHT TO MARY"
PERPETUAL?LIGHT
A Memorial.
BY
WILLIAM ROSE BEN��T
..that we may be able to arrive?with pure minds at the festival?of perpetual light. Through the?same Christ our Lord. Amen.?--_Oremus._
DEDICATION
TO KATHLEEN AND MARGARET
Think of no verse when you read this,?But think of her alone?And her enduring benefice,?Sunlight on stone.
For day is stone and night is stone?Save she has made them bright,?Now she knows all that may be known?Of day and night.
Courage like hers we have from her,?Strength to be straight and brave,?And noble memories that recur?And heal and save.
By her clear eyes, by her pure brows,?We take the Sign,?And kneel within her Father's house--?And yours and mine.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The first eleven poems in the section entitled, "Before" originally appeared in my first volume, "Merchants from Cathay" published by the Century Company. This volume is now out of print and I hold the copyright. The three poems following these originally appeared in my second volume, "The Falconer of God and Other Poems." For permission to reprint a few of the remaining poems I have to thank the editors of _Reedy's Mirror, The Bang, The Lyric, The Madrigal_, The Sun Dial _(New York Evening Sun), Everybody's Magazine, The Century?Magazine_, and "Books and the Book World" (New York Sunday Sun). For the group, "The Long Absence" in the section entitled, "After," I owe thanks to _The Yale Review_.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
BEFORE?The Snare of the Fowler?Thwarted Utterance?The Song of Her?"Always I Know You Anew"?The Rival Celestial?The Tamer of Steeds?Love in Armor?Wardrobe of Remembrance?The Second Covenant?Dedication to a First Book?The Shadowed Road?Love in the Dawn?"Had I a Claim to Fame?"?The One?Dream and Deed?A Taper of Incense?To Purity?Atonement?The Adoration?Talisman?Recognition?The Silver Hind?Aristeas Relates His Youth?Man Possessed?Miniature?Death Will Make Clear?Sunlight?And a Long Way Off He Saw Fairyland?In Time of Trouble?Anomaly?The Lover?Judgment?Unforgotten?The Pale Dancer?Premonition
AFTER?Introductory Poem?The Long Absence?By the Counsel of Her Hands?Strength Beyond Strength?Que Sais-Je??Ebb-Tide?Coward?Aquilifer?The Woman?Pervigilium?Time Was?The Masters?When?Children?The Retreat?Sealed
FOREWORD
TERESA FRANCES THOMPSON, who also bore my name by marriage, died on January 26, 1919. This verse is published to her memory, because I wish to keep together the poetry she occasioned and enable those who loved her--and they were a great many-to know definitely what she was to me.
I think that is the truth. This is the only means I have at present of acknowledging publicly the vast debt I owe to her.
As I turn these poems over--if they are even to be called poems--I realize that they can never begin to express what her personality was. The earliest ones were written by a boy who was in love, and the latest by a man who has suddenly stepped into the dark. Those between are fragments from the days when we were struggling along together at the everyday tasks and outside interests and dreams that possessed us. The war entered our lives to change them in September, 1917. The poem, "Man Possessed," was written within sound of her actual voice, the others all in absence from her at various times and in moods made strange by absence.
And yet this is all I have at present to give in her memory. But I hold by these because--though they are poor, freakish fragments as far