University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD 21 stores in the cities. After this the Cure did not have any peace with himself for days, and scarcely set foot upon the street. But he prayed many hours. In a fortnight he called upon his bishop in the great cathedral city. This bishop was very kind ; but wise and just also, in a divine way. The Cure heard him utter these words : You have lately published a volume of poetry. . . My beloved friend, it is not good poetry . . . not good. Discredit might fall upon the clergy. You shall have to withdraw your poetry. The Cure was struck into stone. He felt the tears springing, and he with- drew unable to utter a word. From this point, he languished, and in the winter lie died, grieving the unfruitfulness of his life. He found Christus Consolator turning the pages of a large book, in which all the works of the Cure were inscribed. Your poetry is beautiful, Christ said; and gave him the kiss of peace. Poet to His Dead Love By Emile D. Maloney. Your hair is caught in the stars, And you are tall and still. Now I will follow the leaves Over this desolate hill. you are demure and pale, And moth-soft is our tryst : The wind is your long hair Shaken out in the mist. Wends a mouse in the gloom — Your grey love secretly fares. You had not far to come, The hill is near to the stars.

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20 THE REDWOOD The Poetry of the Cure By Edgar Schimberg, ' 26. H N Prance there was a man once who was a priest and longed to be a poet. As a guardian of his flock he embodied many of the virtues exemplified by the divine Pastor Himself, but he was no t so happy as a poet. Either his conceptions were so profound that he had no power to set them free of his soul, or else they were so obviously pious that they seemed prosaic when set upon paper. My priest was also unfortunate in this : that he could perceive no poetry in the world at his feet, but constantly dreamed of what was distant and unat- tainable. Thus, he had inflamed his fancy by a romantic conception of the pastoral life he was to lead; but now, holding the staff in his hand, he could not comprehend the sublime poetry of the Eucharist, or that which lies in the feeding of the flock of Christ. Having imbibed a good deal of the Latin Pas- torals, he envied even the old man guarding sheep all day upon the hillside, and I would not be surprised if he had forgotten the analogy of the Scriptures. But do not suppose that the Cure spent any of God ' s time upon his verse. All his duties were fulfilled, though his labors in the squalid village were prosaic and arduous in the extreme. Indeed, scarcely a soul dreamt of the long vigils at night and the unuttered thoughts of this poor creature who longed to be a poet. The Cure had a thin face and pale blue eyes. He was rheumatic and leaned forward when he walked. And some little children, too young to be reverent, laughed when he came down the street. Many peas- ants thought him a fool, mistaking simplicity for stupidness. He was also very patient, which gave him the name of being dull. But if there were those who doubted whether the Cure could weep, to them should have been revealed the vision of the solitary midnight hours, con- sumed in striving for hopeless beauty, and in prayers to the poet-saints ; and how when prayer availed not, a quiet grief overwhelmed the tired little man, and shook the foundations of his heart, Thus defeat and sorrow were his companions, who went with him upon all his walks in the plodding parish, and dogged the grey round of his existence. Strange that no man ever saw these two beside him ! But years may accom- plish for the Cure even hopeless dreams. Supplication fails not. The stones grind in a secret Avay — the Cure has written a book. Consider the unspeak- able greatness of this work to the Cure : all the treasures of his life lie in it ; his poems have fallen from him as the years of his life, or as gold leaves from a limb. Wonder not, then, if his modest soul shrink from being suddenly revealed to all the world. Eemember that no man yet knows him. But he will have strength ; the holy saints will give him strength. Not in vain will he have labored in the secret night. His eyes have tears: he will publish his book. Holy Cure! He thinks that it may glorify God! At length, then, the book of poems was printed and sold to many book-

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22 THE REDWOOD Charles de Foucauld By Vincent O ' Donnell, ' 25. STRANGE child of his age he was, feeling deeply its newer aspira- tions, assimilating its highest culture, rejoicing in its fuller life. Saints and martyrs have been called divine artists in the moral order , the order which transcends all others. In this blessed com- pany Charles de Foucauld can be rightfully numbered, for he repre- sents the highest perfection of character discernible among men of our Charles was born of a family singularly dedicated to God, and yet he was at one time an agnostic. Countless Foucaulds had lived in the service of God. One had been a Crusader in the army of St. Louis and had died for him be- neath the walls of Jerusalem. Still another had fought alongside the holy Jean d ' Arc. A list of his illustrious progenitors stretched back to 970. Perhaps it was the urge of Noblesse oblige that carried Charles de Foucauld, soldier, scholar, scientist, explorer, monk, priest, hermit of the Sahara, through a period of darkness of unbelief into one of radiant holiness and exalted sanctity. As a young man he too had received his first Holy Communion with the customary devotion and yet in a few years he was to lose a precious posses- sion. While attending school at Nancy he was deprived of his faith in God. From then on for thirteen years he travelled the road of the unbeliever. Now a vain, egotistical, slothful, sinning man like another Prodigal he squandered a patrimony. At the age of twenty-four, in 1880, as lieutenant of the Fourth Hussars, he was ordered to Algeria. This was a decisive point in his career, for during his stay in Africa was born a love of the great solitude of the desert. By rea- son of a rather disgraceful personal affair he was ordered to leave his regi- ment, but returned to it during a time of military stress. He acquitted him- self nobly and came out of the campaign unscathed in body; and yet Africa had seared his mind, and worked a spell on him. Whatever else he did from that day onward he was certainly born to in- habit the Orient. His was the vocation of the East which comes, as someone has said, not from the love of the brilliant sunlight, but rather from the love of infinite silences, of limitless space, of the unforseen, and of the primitive in life, and rarely does the world as we know it appeal to them again. Yet Charles de Foucauld still had no faith in God. Obeying an impulse natural to an active young man enamoured of the wilderness he decided to exp lore the hitherto unexplored region of Morocco, a country into which no Christian had ever penetrated and returned alive. The enterprise was bold and perilous. He went disguised as an Arab, and with but one companion, a Jewish guide. He was very successful in his endeavor, and was awarded a gold medal by the Geographical Society in Paris. His discoveries were hailed as the