Charnwood Psalter
Bruno Walker O.C.R.
Mount Saint Bernard Abbey
Charnwood Forest
Leicestershire
1950
‘Et fortasse ipse mons Christus est . . . Ipse est per quem ascendimus, et ad quem ascendimus.’ —St Ambrose.
‘And perchance the mountain itself is Christ, on whom and to whom the whole ascent is made.’
Contents
- ‘These oceans of the dark’
- ‘This random scene’
- ‘Enter alone the Charnwood World’
- ‘These tracks were trodden’
- ‘If the brief coming of a friend’
- ‘Now first we walk’
- ‘At dawn I leave my people’
- ‘Here I touch England’s heart’
- ‘Great only Father’
- ‘True child and man’
- ‘Remember, God’
Ascent
Fly to the mountains,
The mountains of help.
Turn from the plain,
The woods and the steel of the roads.
Climb to those rocks of peril, those ranges.
Breathe the air-fountains,
Springs that fail not,
Waters of air for the thirst of the plain.
Cleave to the mountains of help, to the Helper,
Who moulds our chaos to peace without labour.
Strong hands of the Helper!
Strong arms of the Helper!
Timeless beneath me.
Climb the mountains of help.
My foot on the mountains and rocks,
It shall never be moved.
These mountains do not sleep!
They watch and guard me, timeless ever beneath me.
A cleft in the rock!
A hole in the wall!
Here shadows are dark from the rays of His passing!
Here shadows are cool from the fire of His coming!
His moon shall not blind me.
I will come out when the glory has passed.
I will stand on the rocks of the summit
And breathe crystal waters of light from the fountains
Of air in the deep of the mountains.
I will turn back when His light is returning,
Go in to the clefts of the rock,
To the hole in the wall of the Helper
Timeless beneath, around and above me, not sleeping for ever.
The Challenge
Hark! Freedom’s challenge in the mountain tempest-fury!
Hear it in the frantic wind, the breathing mountain incense!
Hear it in the storm-cry, the burden of the moorlands,
That rise away to heaven
Over the river of fire.
Chained,
I drank the wine of the tempest;
Chained,
I fled the city of bondage;
Flung back a challenging love to the mountains,
Braved the river of fire.
I am wild with the pain of that challenge of freedom,
Withering thought,
Overwhelming desire;
Drunk with the tempest overladen with incense,
Burnt back to ashes in the river of fire.
On a desolate hill
Past the city of bondage,
Over the river of fire,
I found my hope
In bondage nailed and free
On a strange and challenging tree.
His flaming eye
Made molten the chains that clung to me.
They fell to ground.
He yoked me,—gripped with thongs
Of unbearable freedom, Immense, unbelievable freedom.
Away, then, away to the moors and the mountains,
The mountains of incense, the heights
Where that love is known, unseen yet enslaving
With unbearable freedom,
Immense, unbelievable freedom!
Away on the light of the morning and evening,
Beyond the far cry of the ox and the eagle,
Beyond the last fanfare of storms in the valleys,
Beyond the far summits of all holy mountains,
Rock-rending winds and the fire that consumes them,
The crumbling of earth in the fear of His presence!
Past all the structures of all constellations,
Past even the flicker of their last scintillations!
Lo, planets and suns are dissolved in our joining,
Skies melt away as a mist in the forenoon,
Stills the slow throbbing of moment and moment,
Fails the strong confine of measure and distance.
Beyond and within,
Where He is,
Beyond all,
Within and apart,
I am bound in the bondage
Of unbearable freedom,
Immense, unbelievable freedom.
Hold and bind
Your slave and your victim in these horrible heights
Of your freedom,
Killing, transforming, new-moulding in fire of delights
To your freedom of love.
Builder
Lord, I build,
With a hammering, sizing, fitting and failing!
What toil till each corner is filled,
Strong patience availing.
Skilled? Not I!
Witness the changing, turning and lifting,
The pain to make each lie
Plumb and unshifting.
God’s own trade,
This labour of building, of hard stones to hew,
To fit till the facing is made
Close-jointed and true.
Souls are your rubble,
O God, and how stubborn, cross-grained and brittle!
What grieving compassionate trouble
To cleave and to whittle!
Together we build,
With a hammering, sizing, fitting and failing,
In pain till each comer is filled,
Long patience availing.
Sonnets
I
These oceans of the dark, these terrible tides,
Measure the flickering years with ebb and flow;
They surge and flood, confining on all sides
The island of our day, this candle’s glow
That challenges the universal dark
For this one hour, and checks the invading night
With daring gloom; rather a moment’s spark
Forming a moment’s island of frail fight
Within the unmeasured ocean of the void.
Yet light will conquer. All these lights are made
In revelation. No! He has not toyed
With our desire and hope. When these lights fade,
His conquering cataracts of glory roll
Down the torn darkness to the blinded soul.
II
This random scene, this manifold display
Of restless being, water, air and stone,
All intermingling, everywhere astray,
Each interacting, yet distinct, alone!
This faithful fallow crumbling to the tread,
These winter trees, their sudden inscape still!
The memory of summer in their dead
Dank leaves along the lane, that granite hill,
Our sad slow cattle at the Flat field gate,
The sodden farmyard—There!—the hungering flight,
Ragged, abreast, of wild-duck through the late
Last warmth of dusk before the reign of night!
All these are eloquent in prophetic pain:
Charnwood keeps vigil for our Christ again.
III
Enter alone this Charnwood world of grey
Pale purple-tinted Advent mists and stand
Where the determined plough has cut its way
With clean decision through the sleeping land.
How small a solitude is here contained
Between the random walls and bosky hedge,
With here a rock amid the tilth, steel-grained,
Plough-scarred, but ringing laughter to the sledge!
How small a solitude, and yet how strained
With mystery! This rock, that glint of sand,
Each single grain a miracle unexplained
That jolts dull thought to glory Him who planned
And trained each atom of each broken sod
To shout in naked being full proof to God.
IV
These tracks were trodden by the flocks of ages,
Who trekked in fear to find the highland fold.
And we but falter where they trod of old,
Through the same storms, the elemental rages,
The same despairs and fears, the weary stages
That lead to God the hard ways they foretold.
And we have known how each step is enrolled
By shepherd angels on eternal pages
Against the judgment. Yet this night I tread
Utterly lonely on a path untrod,
On mountains where no sheep were ever led
Till You led me this very hour, Your rod
My only comfort in my lonely dread,
One Shepherd of one sheep, one soul’s one God!
V
If the brief coming of a friend will kiss
With sudden magic the familiar face
Of home, illuminating joys we miss
Through constant nearness; if the common place
Becomes enchanted, perfumed by the breath
Of one ephemeral presence, frail as air;
If swift departure strikes the cold of death
Through the love-fibred soul and plants despair;
Then hallowed hundredfold is all the earth,
For Christ has christened her, land, sea and sky,
When coming in by hidden human birth,
He graced her life and climbed her cross to die.
Nor yet, nor yet has that pure presence fled:
Gone, He remains our Guest in Living Bread.
VI
Now first we walk by day, we steal unseen
The sanctity of flowers, try count or weigh
The ages of our Charnwood tors, and glean
Delight from liquid squirrels in their play,
Their wild electric play.
And then we brave the night and boldly name
The stars of God, voicing their constant praise;
And revel with the winter storms and claim
The brotherhood of winds that flood these ways
These rugged cloistral ways.
Then only will we find the spiritual lanes
That lead the soul to know the deep embrace
Of bremal contemplations, with the pains
Of daily Calvaries, and keenly trace
Through the vast wonder and the deeps of grace
The one redeeming secret of our race,
Christ in each human face.
VII
At dawn I leave my people, stand between
Your hiding mercy and their flagrant sin.
Burdened with all their prayer I mount within
Your healing silences. No light is seen.
No mercy heard. The lively mind, once keen,
Is stunned and still. Your mysteries begin.
And by my blinded ministry You win
The awful commerce in your Blood: You clean
In passioned beauty the polluted scroll
Of history: Lord, not what I understand
I do, but fearful, act the infinite more
That hides past thought within my faithbound soul.
That more I do, that more I hold in hand,
And God to man, man to his God restore.
VIII
Here I touch England’s heart, amid these crags
Of granite Chamwood! Yet not England’s now!—
The whole world’s pulse is beating in my brow.
And more, the universal creature drags
Its creature weight upon my priestly head.
I crush the stars within my chalice cup;
Glean the wide universe and gather up
Each grain, to grind and knead a perfect bread.
My moment now redeems the wealth of time,
While space contracts upon my altar stone,
Laden with God, Who from this priestly throne
Hallows the breadth of space, the length of time;
While I, made Christ, pay back the widow’s mite,
God’s Creature, in this world-regracing rite.
IX
Great only Father, when the golden water
Of morning washes through the Calvary trees,
You clothe me priest of your world-gracing Daughter.
Then fired by impulse of your Son’s decrees,
I kiss our Charnwood rock, the worlds one altar,
The stone of Abel and Melchisedech,
Mountain of Christ, whereon we climb and falter
As He before us on His Calvary trek.
Receive now, garnered in this bread and wine,
The Benedicite* of creation’s art,
Of all our work together, yours and mine.
I raise our gifts, I play my Christly part:
I hold—not vine-blood but my God’s Blood shed!
His gift of cross-torn Flesh, not broken bread!
* A canticle calling upon all creatures to praise God. The final “e” is pronounced.
X
True child and man, true monk and priest, new Christ:
That is the life-command, the charted way,
High destiny on which we toil and pray,
For which the years are wholly sacrificed.
And yet all that, all that has not sufficed
The claims of love. Though now I were to pay
That full achievement, still the scales would weigh
Short of the measure Golgotha has priced.
So give me, Lord, that gift of utmost giving,
Call me that name that only You can know;
Shatter this self and flood me with the living
Of your own life. Then shall I vastly grow,
Perfect in Christly selfhood, Christ proclaiming
My secret, final, and divine renaming.
XI
Remember, God, your millstones how they grind
And kill the innocent life-germ of the wheat,
That we may consecrate this bread to find
Your living flesh the very food we eat.
Remember, God, the passion of the vine,
Her perfect fruit destroyed within the press,
That we may sacrifice in seeming wine
The Blood You lost in torrents of distress.
Remember, God, each broken mind and soul,
Each body torn, with all the wealth of pain
Squandered through wastes of time. Man’s passion whole
We gather up, let no least throb be vain.
Knead all to one clean sacrificial bread,
One chaliced blood through one atoning Head!
The Wall
He waits in hiding behind our wall
Through steadfast years.
There seems no gate;
The stonework and the mighty piers
Climb steep and tall.
We wait in patience behind our wall
Through steadfast years.
It seems of late
To tremble for the height it rears
And soon must fall.
At times, at times in constant trust
Unmoved desire
We see the light
Of stones all burning with his fire
To cinder dust.
A whispered word behind our wall
Has touched the night.
The instant heard,
The ready soul in lightning flight
Obeys the call.
So wait and watch beside your wall
And yearn for Him
To come your side.
The dark hour that you cry to Him
All barriers fall.
Burning Bush
Draw near, strange self, to the Bush
That buds with healing fire.
Draw near to the Bush that buds with fire And flowers in flame.
So meet your only God in the desert,
Treat with your God who has driven you into this waste
Of silence and sand.
God of the Burning Bush,
Named ‘I Who am’,
Suddenly, suddenly,
Here where the sand is alone with the sky
And I with You,
I meet my stranger self
Not knowing who I am;
Only a twilight of memory lingering out behind,
A twilight of memory red with sin,
A twilight of memory purpled with pain,
A memory crowded with random variety
Of times and places, voices and passing faces
Strangers all.
But always, always this fugitive self
Wandering through them,
Seeking memory of who I am,
Whence I came
And the sound of my name.
God of the Burning Bush,
Tell my secret.
Call me, O God, by name for I fear that I am not,
Knowing not my name.
Then I learnt my name from God in the Burning Bush,
Named ‘I Who am’;
Nameless before Him,
I heard my name from the fire of His Burning Bush,
I heard my name, ‘I am who am not’.
October
Worn beads of grace go trickling through the roughened fingers;
The full grain falls to swell the bag;
The chanting thrashers flood the grey-stone forest farms with monotones of gratitude;
The dark-white mists curl wrapping round the patient trees:
October’s perfect night comes conquering the dusk.
A while ago September gave us evening peace
With hope more manly than these granite hills.
But now October falls like evening conquered by a night of love,
Like hope upon the threshold,
Hope possessed.
October is the age of contemplation, consummation,
Quieter labours and more steadfast joy,
Labours ending and new works begun.
Labour then a little longer through the October day-time.
(Quietly, for all need of haste is over.)
Call home your memories in the October evening,
Regrets, desires, and all your vagrant thoughts;
October evening is the age of recollection,
Harvest in the spirit.
And then be still in labour through the October night-time,
Working in the soul the work of patience, prayer that roots in faith,
Buds with hope and flowers full charity.
Now comes at last the age of contemplation, consummation,
Our labours ending on the vigil of All Saints,
All souls at home with God.
So, Mary, now that all is nearly over,
Tired fingers fondle bead by bead,
Each one new love and plenitude of grace.
The while clean fingers of the mind are fondling mysteries,
The joy, death, glory of the eternal year,
The labours of the long redeeming liturgy:
Nazareth to Calvary,
Calvary to the crowning of your maiden-queenhood
In the glory of your victory
Beneath the throne of God.
October!
October on the forest and the farm lands!
October in the soul!
Short days are shorter now.
Long nights are longer now.
But oh! how strong and live this death in dusk and darkness strains with joy,
With love and hidden glory!
And Father, now this very death in dusk and darkness forms the tryst that hides You
Only to yield and give You,
Father, with Your Son and Holy Spirit,
Through Mary in the October of the soul.
November
November comes upon us with a shout
That echoes through the silence of her natural sorrows.
November breaks upon us with perpetual light
That tears the curtaining of her natural gloom.
And all this dead life, damp corruption, cold despair,
In rotting leaf and flower
Fading and falling everywhere,
Hides with the buried seed the second youth
Of souls in millions flocking back to God,
Their rest,
Their living rest, perpetual light.
October fell like peace of evening conquered by the night of love,
Like hope upon the threshold,
Hope possessed.
November comes with wide eternities of living rest, perpetual light,
All hope cast out by conquering charity.
November burns with exquisite fire that cauterises sin
In secrecies of dearest pain
Down to the soul’s root.
November!
November clinging to the naked trees!
November on the sodden fields and fallow!
November in the soul!
November in the soul made horrible with many deaths,
Made beautiful with the eternal birth!
(Yet many times, November, you must borrow,
And stage within my soul
April’s Gethsemane and Calvary,
The sweat of blood, that kiss,
The spittle and the thorns,
That final Death.
And so the old stains shall be burnt away,
The old life killed and killed again.
And God’s new child shall laugh within the Father’s love,
Play in the Son’s vast brotherhood,
Grow in the Spirit’s grace).
Now are your desert fields made tense with powerful counterplay and hidden intercourse of mystic charities,
Three worlds of God, three armies caught in combat unto life.
Your sodden airs are strained, keen with this commerce,
Soul bartering for soul.
Your falling skies are dark with climbing incense.
Your deadly stillnesses are loud with traffic of these eager spirits
Wrestling in God-spilt charity.
Oh, tell me, is it now three worlds or one?
One Christ and many million men,
Or now one man and many million Christs?
Or yet again, one Christ, one Man, one perfect manhood moulded in one Christ,
One temple of a million million stones,
Yet each one stone known, measured, numbered,
Hewn, cut, and finished to the templet—Christ?
For now are all made one in Christ, as Christ in God,
Perfect at last in One
King-Christ, Crowning Creation, God.
December
Cruel December,
You chant no song
But this canticle of the dead souls
Calling for the Word that lives
And summons the dead to life ;
This psalter of our dead souls
Longing for the Father to speak.
For nothing remains
But death and still despair
In this age of death, this cruel December
Coming when all is finished and the year gone.
Lord of the years,
King of the ages,
We stumbled down the precipitous year
Till all our hopes like vessels of glass that fall on rock
Are strewn in shards on roads of days we can never retrace.
The old sins,
Ambushed in dusty files of forgotten years,
Rising, have witnessed against us.
Shame has clutched our souls with clinging fingers of fog
Filthy from cities of sin.
Leprous children, we fall in death, mouths in the dust, past help of tears.
We taste the lips of hell that kiss with fire;
We feel the teeth of hell; they leave no bones unbroken.
Hope is none.
No hope at all, no hope at all for evermore.
Yet secretly, yet secretly,
Our second hope goes up to you
Like thin smoke from a kindling fire.
A new December in the old,
A time that strikes beyond the end,
Beyond the death, beyond despair!
A new December in the soul!
A second life, another hope,
A new year leaping in the womb!
Most hidden God,
Because of all these signs of death,
Because of all this still despair,
Your Advent must be at the gate.
Your shattering Epiphany, O most hidden God,
Will break this death as day breaks night,
Banish this dread despair.
In that Your day
A song shall be taught to the dead souls
To chant in the old December.
For the glory of God’s Voice shall thunder to the heart’s joy.
God Himself shall come to save us,
And gathering our broken hopes together,
Shall mould them to a chalice of new redemption
Flooding the brim with hope.
All-holy God shall stand in the nakedness of our shame,
The wounds of our scourging sins upon Him;
All our filth shall be cleansed in His shame.
Immortal God, our guilt His judgment, robbed of life who gave all life,
Dying, shall stand our Saviour in the scrutiny of eternal death.
Unchanging God, prostrate shall lie, infant in the fodder of cattle,
Startling the old December night with the tears of a God,
The sobs of a Creator’s compassion.
Then going to die, He will fall in the dust,
No tear remaining unshed, no blood but hastens to crimson the earth with seals of love.
God Himself, our only God, will stoop to taste the kiss of a traitor;
The lips of hell shall touch Him, touch Him and perish for ever.
The teeth of hell shall be broken upon Him;
His bones unbroken shall break them as stones by a hammer.
December!
A new December in the souls that watch
In stillness for God!
Life, life from the ancient death!
Hope, hope from the old despair!
December, your fields of death hide living wheat.
Your old despair has nurtured hope.
Your bare and frosted branch bears yet the secret bud
That waits the Word of God.
‘December,
New December,
Teach me the song you sing.
For your song is the song of the living Word,
Summoning our souls to life.
Your song is the song of the Father,
Singing His Word to the world in the old December,
Killing the old death,
Breaking the old despair.’
‘Father, sing that Song in my soul with thunder,
The Glory of Your Voice to my heart’s joy
In my soul’s December.’
Descent
1950
Go down, down to the valleys again!
The mountain prevails,
The mountain has conquered.
You cannot withstand the storm of the ranges,
You are dazed with the heights.
The mountain’s holiness wounds and breaks you.
Down, my soul, to the valleys again.
The cascading torrents find peace in the valley,
Waters run deep through wheatfield and vineyard
Giving drink to the olive.
God of the mountains is God of the valley;
Seek Him in wheatfield and vineyard,
In the shade of the olive.
For a time and a time and a time,
Sit in stillness, my soul, in the valley
Alone with the world, your brother,
In the four-walled cell of the Gospel.
Sing glory to God of the mountains
For the dumb world, your brother.
Kindle your lips with psalter-fire
Sing glory to God.
He will hear your glory and find you,
Secretly find you and feed you to strength with the bread of his wheatfield,
Chasten your heart with the wine that makes virgins;
Your wounds He will heal with the olive.
He will teach you secret ways to the summit
Where eagles nest.
Mountain of God! Mountain of God!
Where pure hearts leap like antelopes,
Hearing his call in the tempest;
Run like young antelopes, strongly, to the secret places
Of God in His mountain
In summits of peace!
When I am strong with the Bread of the valley,
When my heart is made virgin,
And wounds are healed in the oil of my God,
My lips with the coals of his psalter,
I will scale your rocks and prevail,
I will leap your chasms.
(Not in my strength.)
I will run like your antelopes, strongly, to secret places,
To God in His mountain
In summits of peace.