The Thunderers (verse)
C., T.
November a6, 1924 THE COMMONWEAL 73 blankets, lying on the ground around the smoldering embers...
...With an acceding caution—why I should be so careful I did not know—I only felt that I must—I stole away from that camp, from my sleeping companions, and softly, even stealthily, crept up a steep slope that ended in a ledge of rock from which I knew I could look down over and above the mighty plain below...
...The sky, though paling, was incredibly thick with stars brilliant beyond the experience of all save those who have climbed high in the arid regions where the air becomes like the spirit of air, purged of all impurities...
...It was such dread as in a dream Opens the door of hell— When sudden, o'er the Alcazar, A swooping storm wiped out each star And swift there came the irashing jar Of thunder, and the lightning fell And slew the King cf Spain...
...that I was as one exalted in spirit on that mountain top, and that for a little space I heard in the cry of a hidden bird a language that my soul understood but could not translate for my mind to grasp...
...Many years later, however, when (and again upon my knees) I saw another shining glory encircling a globe, a globe of ineffable whiteness—the Sacred Host uplifted in a monstrance—L at least partly understood why I fell upon my knees upon that Arizona mountain top, and why this tiny circle—whose centre is everywhere and its circumference nowhere—was more awful and more mighty than the sun...
...The silence was—the silence made me think of—silence...
...T.C...
...The little wind that comes before the dawn had not yet begun to stir...
...That is the exterior of the memory...
...Such were the events...
...Bishops, princes, warriors tall And ladies frail or true, Were in the lofty banquet ball, And deadly terror seized them all To heir the King blaspheme...
...He was right, for what the bird voice said (I did not see the tiny thing) in that silence under the stars, just as dawn began, was (very soft, very sweet, most pure) and thrice repeated "Jesu Maria, Jesu Maria, Jesu Maria.~~ When the voice had ceased, greatly wondering, and awed as it is strange that one should be awed by something so little and so sweet, I reached the ledge of rock, cresting a slope that was almost a precipice, falling away after the first steep pitch in a more gradual descent of thousands of feet Across fifty miles of mesa lying below me like a black sea rose high mountains in the east, above which the sky became clearer and dearer, and even as I watched the sun was lifted up, a pale, dear, tremendous globe rayed with a golden glory...
...It was the voice of a bird...
...Never before had I heard that voice...
...Later on that day I asked one of the scientists the name of the bird, and I was told the name bestowed upon it by science (which in time, no doubt, will duly catalogue all thinks under the sun) but that name I have also forgotten...
...They built the Alcazar again— But kings are humbler now...
...We were in it clearing in a dark wood, a wood of the high mountains, squat, stiff cedars, wind-blown and fantastic, like things carved out of bronze, and a few thin tall pines...
...They go one better—all alone, Each nsa god on his lofty throne Making the world in his image—but The door of the thunder bolt is shu4 And the winds of heaven sigh, "TutI Tut...
...I have told you what happened: what I saw, and what I heard...
...But little high-brows—-bellows-blown, Now sit on stools, and think, And dip worn pens in ntery ink, And from the King's boast do not shrink...
...never since then have I heard it...
...Ohol I'm bored—oho...
...But I cannot tell you what really matters (to me at least) in striving to recall my memory...
...But I asked a man who lived in that country, a man in whose veins there was Indian blood and the blood of the Spanish who were the first white men to er~ter Arizona, and he told me that I had beard the Jesu Maria bird...
...But God did not consult me, so, The world its dull drab way must go...
...The Thunderers It was a King of Spain who said: "Had God consulted me, The world would bc a charming place, And men would be a braver race, And women, much more fair of face, And in their hearts more free— And much more kind to me...
...the heart drinks it like immaterial wine...
...But at this point language fails...
...As I moved, step by step, suddenly I was stricken still by a voice—a very tiny, a very soft, sweet, most pure little voice, scarcely audible, yet distinct as the last tone of a silver bell vibrating on the very edge of silence...
...They do not lift their pride so high, They play at golf and dumbly die, Invite no strokes of an angry sky, Content if left to reign...
...November a6, 1924 THE COMMONWEAL 73 blankets, lying on the ground around the smoldering embers of a camp fire, they were motionless like logs or stones in the dusk...
...For alas, [cannot reniember, still less express, the soul of my memory—I only know that its soul seemed manifest then, but that now the veils have dropped again I can only say (but how can you understand...
...That is the memory...
...nor can I tell you why, when the globe of the sun appeared, ringed in a glory of living gold, 1 fell upon my knees...
...All I can say now is that it seemed to be the only right attitude in which to view that spectacle...
Vol. 1 • November 1924 • No. 3
