Chapter 9: The Revelations of Grief

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

I lived with Pride; the house was hung
With tapestries of rich design.
Of many houses, this among
Them all was richest, and ‘twas mine.
But in the chambers burned no fire,
Tho’ all the furniture was gold,
I sickened of fulfilled desire,
The House of Pride was very cold.
I lived with Knowledge; very high
Her house rose on a mountain’s side.
I watched the stars roll through the sky,
I read the scroll of Time flung wide.
But in that house, austere and bare,
No children played, no laughter clear
Was heard, no voice of mirth was there,
The House was high but very drear.
I lived with Love; all she possest
Was but a tent beside a stream.
She warmed my cold hands in her breast,
She wove around my sleep a dream.
And One there was with face divine
Who softly came, when day was spent,
And turned our water into wine,
And made our life a sacrament.

Nevertheless there are occasions in life when these things become evident to even the least observant of us. When we stand beside the newly dead the most intolerable reflection of countless mourners is that their tears fall on quiet lips to which they gave scant caresses, in the days of health: their passionate words of love are uttered to unhearing ears, which in life waited eagerly for such assurances as these, and waited vainly. All the purity and beauty of the vanished human soul is revealed to us now, when it is no longer in our power to gladden or delight it with our kindness or our praise. All the willing service rendered to us by those folded hands and resting feet, which we so thanklessly accepted, is seen as a thing dear and precious to us now, when the opportunity of thanks is past forever. What would we give now if but for one brief hour we might recall our dead just to say the tender things we might have said and did not say, through all those days and years when they were with us, —presences familiar and accustomed, moving round us with so soft a tread that we scarce regarded them, nor laid on them detaining hands, nor lifted our preoccupied and careless eyes to theirs!

For most of us, alas, it is not Grief and Love alone who conduct us to the chambers of the dead; the sad and silent Angel of Reproach also stands beside the bed, and the shadow of his wings falls upon the features fixed in their immutable appeal, their pathetic and unwilling accusation. Then it is that veil after veil is lifted from the past, till in the pitiless light we read ourselves with a new understanding of our faults. We see that through some element of hardness in ourselves which we allowed to grow unchecked; through vain pride, or obstinate perversity, or mere thoughtless disregard, we repulsed love from the dominion of our hearts, and made him the servitor of our desires, but no longer the lord of our behaviour and the spirit of our lives. And now as we gaze on these things across the gulf of the irreparable, we see our sin and how it came to pass; how we were unkind not in the things we did but in those we failed to do; how, without being cruel, our denied response to hearts that craved our tenderness became a more subtle cruelty than angry word or hasty blow; how with every duty accurately measured and fulfilled, yet love evaporated in the cold and cheerless atmosphere of repression and aloofness with which we clothed ourselves; and then the significance of Christ’s teaching comes home to us, for we know too late, that kindness is more than righteousness, and tenderness more than duty, and that to have loved with all our hearts is the only fulfilling of the law which heaven approves. None, bowed beside the newly dead, ever regretted that they had loved too well; millions have wept the bitterest tears known to mortals because they loved too little, and wronged by their poverty of love the sacred human presences now withdrawn forever from their vision.