at the solution.  To him brother Wind and brother Fire and brother Worm are alike and equal, for he sees them in the light of infinity.  But all are wonderful, and we must not sneer at the stars. ...  Today writing as a means of expression has seemed to be absolutely futile.  Silence is the only active way of praise that I can find, provided that it informs some daily action.  My will won again today.  Horizons are wonderful.  S——­ told me that Lionel invited him into his Oxford rooms one evening at sunset and led him to a seat from which nothing lower than the horizon was to be seen.  “There,” he said, “nothing matters that is below that line.”  You see he knew that our souls in their beauty are always above it.

August 3.

To watch a grass-blade tapping will teach you wonderful music—­the language of the wind.  The sunlight running through my flesh in-flames the song of the will.  I lost myself tonight in the crowded silences.  Joy stays with me now, and if I can only join it to sorrow, the will can then sing simply and freely a continuous song.  The turning of the tide is soon to come, and my homesickness for G——­ville is transforming itself into a different nostalgia.  My planets are rising in song like little candle flames.  I wish I possessed their humility.  Within me tonight are quiet moonlit waters very full and rich with silent promises of rest.

August 4.

At Mass today Mr. C——­ showed a fine courtesy serving with the high humility of a punctilious gentleman. ...  Today I saw the body of Christ, “infinite riches in a little room.”  The human body of Christ in its passion is the sum of all our bodies, and it is this truth to which pantheism in its blindness dimly beckons.  The saints and pure poets and those who have died for friends are the image of the Sacred Heart, and in them at moments of pure reflection there is naked light and the vision which is insupportable.  Hence in the greatest saints the stigmata.  All God’s lonely ones are the reflections of His pain when they attain to sanctity.  And holy priests are the reflections of His Hands.  Little children and saints may look into His Eyes and see their own.  And repentant sinners may reflect His Feet in their tears.  All the births and lives of the earth go to form His Human Body, which is vast as Eternity and radiating with Light from all points and inward to the Heart of Light.  To some saints it has been permitted to be the spouse of this body and soul.  Magic is white or black.  White magic is the offspring of spiritual marriage and is a sacrament.  Black magic is the offspring of unauthorized spiritual contacts.  My frame tonight is possessed by angels dancing before the throne in a fearfully rapid rhythm.  The secret of spiritual achievement is unremitting labor urged without ceasing by a fearful joy.  No drama is more vast than that of the crucifixion, and yet I have seen it all in the heart of a strawberry blossom with wounds all glorified in an ecstasy of living trembling light, and heard the beating of His Sacred Heart while universe called out to universe in the anguish of His surrender and all the stars died into the Light of Eternity.  The tide has turned.