What matter the garment of dogma and
story?--the raiment of pleaded fact, which for the modern is no fact? In
Diana, as in hundreds and thousands of her fellows, it had
become--unconsciously--without the torment and struggle of an older
generation--Poetry and Idea; and all the more invincible thereby.
Above her head, Poverty, gaunt and terrible in her white robe, her skirt
torn with brambles, and her poor cheek defaced by the great iron hook
which formerly upheld the Sanctuary lamp, married with St.
Francis--Christ himself joining their hands.
So Love and Sorrow pledged each other in the gleaming color of the roof.
Divine Love spoke from the altar, and in the crypt beneath their feet
which held the tomb of the Poverello the ashes of Love slept.
The girl's desolate heart melted within her. In these weeks of groping,
religion had not meant much to her. It had been like a bird-voice which
night silences. All the energy of her life had gone into endurance. But
now it was as though her soul plunged into the freshness of vast waters,
which upheld and sustained--without effort. Amid the shadows and
phantasms of the church--between the faces on the walls and the kneeling
peasants, both equally significant and alive--those ghosts of her own
heart that moved with her perpetually in the life of memory stood, or
knelt, or gazed, with the rest: the piteous figure of her mother; her
father's gray hair and faltering step; Oliver's tall youth.
Pages:
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446