No More Learning

Follow thou me!

PETER.
Yea, I will follow thee, dear Lord and Master!
Will follow thee through fasting and temptation,
Through all thine agony and bloody sweat,
Thy cross and passion, even unto death!



EPILOGUE

SYMBOLUM APOSTOLORUM

PETER.
I believe in God the Father Almighty;

JOHN.
Maker of heaven and Earth;

JAMES.
And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;

ANDREW.
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;

PHILIP.
Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;

THOMAS.
And the third day He rose again from the dead;

BARTHOLOMEW.
He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God,
the Father Almighty;

MATTHEW.
From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

JAMES, THE SON OF ALFHEUS.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church;

SIMON ZELOTES.
The communion of Saints; the forgiveness of sins;

JUDE.
The resurrection of the body;

MATTHIAS.
And the Life Everlasting.



FIRST INTERLUDE

THE ABBOT JOACHIM

A ROOM IN THE CONVENT OF FLORA IN CALABRIA. NIGHT.

JOACHIM.
The wind is rising; it seizes and shakes
The doors and window-blinds and makes
Mysterious moanings in the halls;
The convent-chimneys seem almost
The trumpets of some heavenly host,
Setting its watch upon our walls!
Where it listeth, there it bloweth;
We hear the sound, but no man knoweth
Whence it cometh or whither it goeth,
And thus it is with the Holy Ghost.
O breath of God! O my delight
In many a vigil of the night,
Like the great voice in Patmos heard
By John, the Evangelist of the Word,
I hear thee behind me saying: Write
In a book the things that thou hast seen,
The things that are, and that have been,
And the things that shall hereafter be!

This convent, on the rocky crest
Of the Calabrian hills, to me
A Patmos is wherein I rest;
While round about me like a sea
The white mists roll, and overflow
The world that lies unseen below
In darkness and in mystery.
Here in the Spirit, in the vast
Embrace of God's encircling arm,
Am I uplifted from all harm
The world seems something far away,
Something belonging to the Past,
A hostelry, a peasant's farm,
That lodged me for a night or day,
In which I care not to remain,
Nor, having left, to see again.

Thus, in the hollow of Gods hand
I dwelt on sacred Tabor's height,
When as a simple acolyte
I journeyed to the Holy Land,
A pilgrim for my master's sake,
And saw the Galilean Lake,
And walked through many a village street
That once had echoed to his feet.
There first I heard the great command,
The voice behind me saying: Write!
And suddenly my soul became
Illumined by a flash of flame,
That left imprinted on my thought
The image I in vain had sought,
And which forever shall remain;
As sometimes from these windows high,
Gazing at midnight on the sky
Black with a storm of wind and rain,
I have beheld a sudden glare
Of lightning lay the landscape bare,
With tower and town and hill and plain
Distinct and burnt into my brain,
Never to be effaced again!

And I have written.