When four knights scattered the blood and brains of St. Thomas of Canterbury it was not only a sign of anger but a sort of black admiration. They wished for his blood, but they wished even more for his brains. Such a blow will remain for ever unintelligible unless we realize what the brains of St. Thomas were thinking about just before they were distributed over the floor. They were thinking about the great medieval conception that the Church is the judge of the world. Becket objected to a priest being tried even by the Lord Chief Justice. And his reason was simple: because the Lord Chief Justice was being tried by the priest. The judiciary was itself _sub judice_. The kings were themselves in the dock. The idea was to create an invisible kingdom without armies or prisons, but with complete freedom to condemn publicly all the kingdoms of the earth.
Progress is not an illegitimate word, but it is logically evident that it is illegitimate for us. It is a sacred word, a word that could only rightly be used by rigid believers and in the ages of faith.
With all the multiplicity of knowledge there is one thing happily that no man knows: whether the world is old or young.
People, if you have any prayers, Say prayers for me; And lay me under a Christian stone In this lost land I thought my own, To wait till the holy horn be blown And all poor men are free.
Why should I care for the Ages Because they are old and grey? To me like sudden laughter The stars are fresh and gay; The world is a daring fancy And finished yesterday.
Why should I bow to the Ages Because they are drear and dry? Slow trees and ripening meadows For me go roaring by, A living charge, a struggle To escalade the sky.
The eternal suns and systems, Solid and silent all, To me are stars of an instant, Only the fires that fall From God's good rocket rising On this night of carnival.
Nor shall all iron doors make dumb Men wondering ceaselessly, If it be not better to fast for joy Than feast for misery?
When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.