Читать книгу Judgment at Chelmsford - Charles Williams - Страница 4

PROLOGUE

The place is outside the gates of Heaven, considered as in the air above the diocese. CHELMSFORD enters

CHELMSFORD. I am a young See, yet I am one

with all the rest of Christendom, blest as they–

Canterbury, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch,

Jerusalem, my predecessors, my brothers and lords.

My house is in the plains beyond the mouth of Thames,

and built by the rushing wind and the tongued flames

where the coast of heaven borders the English coast

and the byres of Essex are the shires of the Holy Ghost.

I am as old as the whole Church in Britain.

Cedd raised the first rough fold of my sheep

and I hallow his name wholesomely where the plough

shears the fields still as in his own years,

but otherwise now towns are much of my ministry:

mark them, the might, mirth, and misery of England,

spreading, treading hard on each other’s heels, making me

changed from what I was once, before the charge

of my children was wholly mine, before the mitre

touched my brows with something darker than age,

to assuage their need, comfort, console, cherish,

lest if they perish I too be cast from the place

with my peers, the patriarchates, the heavenly thrones

whose zones map Christendom, in England, and beyond

where the great ships float from my river. To-day

the fledged heel of Contemplation strikes the edged wheel

of Time, to spin it, and heaven opens within.

It is my birthday; on this feast I come to the place

of grace in vision, to the gate of heaven, to walk

and talk with the grand celestial princes, they

who assess the deeds of the Church militant on earth,

and confess in clear light the fulfilment of their needs.

I am come shyly to meet them; blessed be he

who made me also in Christendom holy and free.

A kind of gentle discord. The ACCUSER comes in

THE ACCUSER. Halt there, sweet!

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