The Peace That Consecration Brings

I walked alone in a dark deserted wood

Where briars held the lower ground that year

Among foreboding trunks in silence stood

And found a path that seemed to disappear

Advancing neither towards the light nor dark,

A strange inhuman path that drew me on.

Around me dying branches bare and stark

Impeded my march towards the burning dawn

That leads to joys we cannot yet conceive,

And secret haunts where Beauty undefiled

Lives the truth our spirits must retrieve

When all our warring instincts are reconciled.

I walked through death and walked through life again

And with each birth the goal drew nearer still,

Through happiness and grief and numbing pain

I heard the summons of a higher Will,

"Close the door on all unholy things

And know the peace that consecration brings."