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37 - Centaur by Algernon Blackwood · Centaur

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty seven of The Centaur by Alginon Blackwood. This
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  Speaker 1: Liberal Wox recording is in the public domain. Read by
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  Speaker 1: yoganand The Centaur, chapter thirty seven. The hours when the
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  Speaker 1: mind is absorbed by beauty or the only ass when
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  Speaker 1: we really live, so that the longer we can stay
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  Speaker 1: among these things, so much the more is snatched from
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  Speaker 1: inevitable time. Richard Jeffries, in the relationship that his everyday
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  Speaker 1: mind bowed to his present state, there lay moreover a
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  Speaker 1: wealth of pregnant suggestion. The bridge connecting his former civilized
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  Speaker 1: condition with this cosmic experience was a curious one that
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  Speaker 1: out a lesser state, it seemed, had known a fortes
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  Speaker 1: sometimes of the greater, and it was hence had come
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  Speaker 1: those dreams of golden age that used to haunt him.
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  Speaker 1: For he began now to recall the existence of that
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  Speaker 1: outer world of men and women, though by means of
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  Speaker 1: certain indefinite channels only, and the things he remembered were
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  Speaker 1: not what the world calls important. There were moments when
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  Speaker 1: he had known beauty. Beauty, however, not of the grandiose
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  Speaker 1: sort that holds the crowd, but of so simple and unadvertised,
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  Speaker 1: a kind that most men overlook it altogether. He understood
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  Speaker 1: now why the thrill had been so wonderful. He saw
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  Speaker 1: clearly why those moments of extracy had often felt in
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  Speaker 1: nature and used to torture him with an inexpressible yearning
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  Speaker 1: that was rather pain than joy. For they were precisely
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  Speaker 1: what he now experienced when the viewless figure of a
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  Speaker 1: God passed by him down there, out there below, in
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  Speaker 1: that cabin lesser state. They had been partial, but were
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  Speaker 1: now complete. Those moments of worship he had known in woods,
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  Speaker 1: among mountains, by the shorts of desolate seas, even in
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  Speaker 1: a London street, perhaps at the sight of a tree
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  Speaker 1: in spring, or of a pathway of blue sky between
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  Speaker 1: the summer clouds. These had been one and all tented
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  Speaker 1: to partial revelations of the consciousness of the soul of earth.
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  Speaker 1: He now knew face to face these where is only
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  Speaker 1: memories of that outer world, of people, cities, or of civilization.
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  Speaker 1: Apart from these he had no single remembrance. Certain of
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  Speaker 1: these little partial foretastes now came back to him like
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  Speaker 1: fragments of dream that troubled the waking day. He remembered,
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  Speaker 1: for instance, one definite picture a hot autumn sun upon
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  Speaker 1: a field of stubble, where the folded corn sheaf stood,
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  Speaker 1: thistles waving by the hedges, a yellow field of mustard
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  Speaker 1: rising up the slope against the skyline, and beyond a
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  Speaker 1: row of peering elms that rustled in the wind. The
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  Speaker 1: beauty of the little scene was somehow poignant, he recalled
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  Speaker 1: it vividly. It had flamed about him, transfiguring the world
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  Speaker 1: he had trembled, yearning to see more. For just behind it,
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  Speaker 1: he divined with an exulting, passionate worship, this gorgeous, splendid
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  Speaker 1: earth being, with whom at last he now actually moved
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  Speaker 1: in that instant of a simple loveliness, Her consciousness had
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  Speaker 1: fringed its own, had bruised it. He had known it
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  Speaker 1: only by the partial channels of sight, smell, and hearing,
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  Speaker 1: but had felt the greater thing beyond without being able
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  Speaker 1: to explain it, And a portion of what he felt
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  Speaker 1: had burst in speech from his lips. He was there,
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  Speaker 1: he remembered with two persons, a man and woman, whose
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  Speaker 1: name and face, however, he could not summon, And he
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  Speaker 1: recalled that the woman smiled incredulously when he spoke of
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  Speaker 1: the exquisite perfume of those folded corn sheaves in the air,
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  Speaker 1: she told him, He imagined it. He saw again the
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  Speaker 1: pretty woman's smile of incomprehension. He saw the puzzled expression
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  Speaker 1: in the eyes of the man. He heard him murmur
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  Speaker 1: something prosake about the soul, about birds stow and prospects
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  Speaker 1: of killing hundreds later sport. He even saw the woman
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  Speaker 1: picking away with caution, as though the touch of earth
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  Speaker 1: could stain or injure her. He especially recalled the silence
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  Speaker 1: that had followed on his words that sought to show
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  Speaker 1: them beauty. He remembered, too, above all the sense of
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  Speaker 1: loneliness among men that it induced in himself. But the
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  Speaker 1: memory brought him a curious, sharp pain. Turning to that
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  Speaker 1: couple who were now his playmates in his garden of
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  Speaker 1: the earth, he called them with a singing cry, and
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  Speaker 1: cantered over leagues of flowers, wind and sunshine. Before he
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  Speaker 1: stopped again, they leaped and danced together, exulting in their
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  Speaker 1: spacious over freedom. Want of comprehension no longer possible, the
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  Speaker 1: memory fled away. He shook himself free of it. Then
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  Speaker 1: others came in its place, another and another, not all
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  Speaker 1: with people, blind, deaf and unreceptive, Yet all of common,
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  Speaker 1: simple scenes of beauty, when something vast had searched upon
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  Speaker 1: him and broken through the barriers that stand between the
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  Speaker 1: heart and nature. Such curious little scenes they were. In
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  Speaker 1: most of them he had evidently been alone. But one
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  Speaker 1: and all had touched his soul with the foretaste of
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  Speaker 1: the same nameless ecstasy that now he knew complete In
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  Speaker 1: every one, the consciousness of the earth had bruised his own.
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  Speaker 1: Utterly simple, they had been one and all, these partial
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  Speaker 1: moments of blinding beauty in that lesser out of world.
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  Speaker 1: A big, clumsy bee he saw, blundering into the petals
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  Speaker 1: of a wild flower on which the dew lay sparkling.
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  Speaker 1: A wisp of colored cloud, driving loosely across a hills,
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  Speaker 1: dropping a purple shadow, deep waving grass, plunging and shaking
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  Speaker 1: in the wind that drew out its underworld of blue
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  Speaker 1: and silver, over the whole spread surface of a field.
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  Speaker 1: A daisy closed for the night upon the lawn, eyes
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  Speaker 1: tightly shut, hands folded. A south wind whispering through larches,
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  Speaker 1: the pattering of summer rain upon the young oak leaves,
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  Speaker 1: in the dawn, fingers of long blue distance upon dreamy woods,
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  Speaker 1: any moons shaking their pale and sturdy little faces in
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  Speaker 1: the wind, the column stillness of a pine wood in
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  Speaker 1: the dusk, young birch streets mid the velvet gloom of firs,
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  Speaker 1: the new moon setting in a cloud of stars, the
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  Speaker 1: hush of stars. And many a summer night sheep grazing
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  Speaker 1: idly down a sun baked hill, a path of moonlight
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  Speaker 1: on a lake, a little wind through bare and wintry woods. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: he recalled the wonder, loveliness and passion of a thousand more.
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  Speaker 1: They thronged, and passed, and thronged again, crowding one another,
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  Speaker 1: all golden moments of revelation, when he had caught glimpses
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  Speaker 1: of the Earth and her greater moods had swept him
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  Speaker 1: up into herself, moments in which a god had passed.
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  Speaker 1: These were his only memories of that outer world he
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  Speaker 1: had left behind, flashes of simple beauty. Was thus the
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  Speaker 1: thrill of beauty, then, explained, was loveliness as men know it,
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  Speaker 1: a revelation of the Earth's soul behind And where the
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  Speaker 1: blinding flashed, the dazzling wonder and the dream men seek
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  Speaker 1: to render permanent and music, color, line, and language, a
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  Speaker 1: vision of from nakedness. Down there, the poets and those
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  Speaker 1: simple enough of heart to stand close to nature could
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  Speaker 1: catch these whispered fragments of the enormous message told as
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  Speaker 1: in secret, but now against her very heart. He heard
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  Speaker 1: the thunder of the thing complete. Now in the glory
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  Speaker 1: of all naked bodily forms of women, men and children,
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  Speaker 1: of swift animals, of flowers, trees and running water, of
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  Speaker 1: mountains and of seas, he understood these partial revelations of
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  Speaker 1: the great earth soul that bore them, gave them life.
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  Speaker 1: For one and all were channels for a loveliness. He
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  Speaker 1: saw the beauty of the natural instincts, the passion of
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  Speaker 1: motherhood and fatherhood. Earth seeking to project herself in endless
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  Speaker 1: forms and variety. He understood why love increased the heart
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  Speaker 1: and made it feel at one with all the world. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: in some amazing fashion, he was aware that others from
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  Speaker 1: that outer world beside himself, had access here, and that
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  Speaker 1: from this garden of the Earth's deep central personality came
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  Speaker 1: all the inspiration known to men. He divined that others
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  Speaker 1: were even now drawing upon it like himself. The thoughts
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  Speaker 1: of the poets went past him like thin flames, the
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  Speaker 1: dreams of millions, mute, inexpressible yearnings, like those he had
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  Speaker 1: himself once known, strained by in pale white light, to
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  Speaker 1: shoot forward with little nesting brush into some great figure,
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  Speaker 1: and then return and duble volume to the dreaming heart.
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  Speaker 1: Whence first they issued shadows too, he saw by myriads, faint,
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  Speaker 1: feeble gropings of men and women seeking it, eagerly, yet
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  Speaker 1: hardly knowing what they sought. But above all, long singing,
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  Speaker 1: beautiful tongues of colored flame, that were the instincts of
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  Speaker 1: divining children and of the pure in heart. These came
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  Speaker 1: in rippling floods, unerringly to their goal, lingered for long
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  Speaker 1: periods before returning, And all he knew were currents of
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  Speaker 1: the great earth life, moods, thoughts, dreams, expressions of a
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  Speaker 1: various consciousness with which she mothered, fed, and blessed all
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  Speaker 1: whom it was possible to reach. Their passionate yearning. Their
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  Speaker 1: worship made access possible. Along the tenderest portions of her personality.
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  Speaker 1: These latter came as by a spread network of infinitely
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  Speaker 1: delicate filaments that extend from herself deliciously inviting. The thing, however,
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  Speaker 1: that remained with him long after his return to the
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  Speaker 1: normal state of lesser consciousness, was a memory of those
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  Speaker 1: blinding moments when a god went past him, or, as
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  Speaker 1: he phrased it another way, when he caught glimpses of
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  Speaker 1: the earth naked. For these were instantaneous flashes of a
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  Speaker 1: gleaming whiteness, a dazzling and supreme loveliness that staggered thought
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  Speaker 1: and arrested feeling, while yet of a radiant simplicity that brought,
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  Speaker 1: for a second at least a measure of comprehension. He
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  Speaker 1: then knew not mere partial projections. He saw beyond, deep
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  Speaker 1: down into the flaming center that gave them birth. The
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  Speaker 1: blending of his being with the cosmic consciousness was complete
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  Speaker 1: enough for this. He describes it as a spectacle of
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  Speaker 1: sheer glory, stupendous, even terrifying. The refulgent majesty of it
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  Speaker 1: utterly possessed him. The shock of its magnificence came moreover
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  Speaker 1: upon his entire being, and was not rarely, of course,
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  Speaker 1: a sight at all. The message came not through any
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  Speaker 1: small division of a single sense. With a massed yet
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  Speaker 1: soaring power, It shook him free of all known categories.
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  Speaker 1: He then fringed a region of yet greater being, wherein
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  Speaker 1: he tasted, for a moment some secret comprehension of a
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  Speaker 1: true divinity. The deliverance into ecstasy was complete in these
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  Speaker 1: flashing moments, when a second seemed a thousand years, he
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  Speaker 1: further understood the splendor of the stage beyond Earth. In
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  Speaker 1: a turn, was but a mood in the consciousness of
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  Speaker 1: the universe. That universe again was mothered by another vaster one,
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  Speaker 1: and the total that included them all was not the
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  Speaker 1: gods but God. The end of Chapter thirty seven