Air for Viola da Gamba (verse)
Frant-Walsh, Joseph
44 THE COMMONWEAL May 19, 1926 hair on fire, and burnt away all the flesh of his face. his soul to fire and his...
...And yet between vice and virtue there is And he had all his senses, all his strength...
...expressionless, as though it had been contracted in Evil is outside the scheme of things: in itself it does a spasm...
...if you wish to be taken in, knock at the doors vanquishes the night...
...The ages are given freely by the vanquished...
...Francesco he had discovered a nobler blessedness through pain...
...the image of his life was order to chaos...
...like them he had found the sufferings cA r for Viola da Gamba of his body negligible in comparison with the anguish Do you remember now how rain of heart and mind in the loss of something more than Ran thickly down each window pane, a physical pleasure...
...He returned home a mass of bandages : his family Life is more mysterious than it first looks: and could not reach through them to kiss him : they be- though pain is, indeed, the shadow thrown by the lieved that beneath them there still remained a counte- black form of evil, it is also the means of heroism...
...Andrea, (How does that old sonata go...
...their eyes saw the soul: when it knows them, it will recognize misbehind the hideous mask to the soul of the man, and fortunes as no longer fate but providence...
...It is just the opposite of that divine a lie...
...still exist, uniting men with the sacrifice of love which, It has led him not by a bright star to the cradle of with unending toil and pain, drew patterns of eternal the Redeemer, but by the deadly shadow of His pas- perfection from chaos and old night, and which offers sion and cross to the heavens of His resurrection...
...It attacks who had passed away...
...He had lost the most imme- society as artillery attacks a town, reducing it from diate means of expression...
...message brighter than the lights upon the altar: "If And therefore it illuminates the dignity of heroes...
...nal castigation by God...
...hood like the marvel of a vanishing dream, looked You went between the lilac row, from a short day to a lifetime of darkness...
...at it as the gateway of eternity...
...Giuliano We sat beside a hemlock blaze lost his religion, Andrea lost his hope of martial And felt the glow of coming days...
...things than the most manly of ambitions...
...not exist...
...He had his epiphany...
...44 THE COMMONWEAL May 19, 1926 hair on fire, and burnt away all the flesh of his face...
...It burns into the very fibres But his return to his family told him there were other of his flesh and annihilates the trace of form...
...And clouds of lilac were as blurred But in the case of the other three sufferers, As old sonatas dimly heard...
...the mercy which look back on a history of nature's secrets being opened, you have asked in vain from the triumphant will be and her powers put under the yoke...
...It we solve the problem of evil...
...Not a contheir blindness gave him a beauty no fire could de- tagion, not a condemnation, not a shame, suffering will stroy, no time could change...
...Only Giuli- Comes timidly and wanders in...
...We denied will be offered by a beggar...
...Eddy's contentions...
...nance...
...But the world as a He went to the refuge of the blind...
...But the cure was worse than the disease, and In a life in which there was no pain there would be he sorrowed when his eyes opened...
...whose life had known the sacred hunger which turned JOSEPH FRANT-WALSH...
...men a more perfect blessedness in exchange for all So it was with Giovanni...
...they knew his whole has still to know the powers and mysteries of voice and heard that it was sweet...
...ano, who had even lost that memory of prayer which You took my heart that rainy day even those who do not pray recall from their child- And then you went went far away...
...In solving the problem of suffering, a pool where he used to lead the flocks to drink...
...But even Massiano felt that in accepting the utter desperation, the finality And do you know how still the rain Is, now, upon each leaded pane, of slavery and sorrow was the beginning of a victory And breath of lilacs, wet and thin, and the opening of an eternal freedom...
...The treasure which the rich have ize our heritage as the children of redemption...
...And exist apart from it, as disease exists only in a body his mother who knew him as she had borne him, whole which should be healthy, and it tends to reduce them and beautiful, lit a candle before his picture as of one to annihilation or at least to formlessness...
...was a mask, covered with bleeding scars, formless and There is a truth behind Mrs...
...glory, and Massiano lost his sense of death as the Ah, there were only just we two, crowning and consecration of life...
...the loss was of inward things only...
...Evil then exists only in things which every look of compassion was like a fresh blow...
...his soul to fire and his heart to bronze, found himself It is the pains of fire by which man images his eter- disabled before he could once face conscious danger...
...like Luciano, Pietro, and the failures by which they mar the order it had made...
...If we accept our lot, we realof those who love...
...Mirrors had been no effort, and where there was no effort, there could removed from the house, but he found his image in be no heroism...
...life which gives us the model of human life in its creaOne summer evening, between the fireflies and the tive sacrifice, in restoring to patterns of perfection the stars, he saw the crucifix, and it spoke to him with a guilty life it drew from out the void before its guilt...
...he ceased to look And laughter leaping up the flue...
...you wish to be understood, speak to the soul of the "Exalted into the eternal," says Delcroix, "sorrow sufferer...
...But a contrariety...
...named after these conquests...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 2
