Part Two: Living Grace

Part Two: Living Grace

Grace is a lilting thing...

The key metaphor running through chapters two, three and four of this part of the book first appears on page 42 of Part One:

“... to this Jewish Jesus we pay homage ... and we rejoice that this ‘parfait gentil Knight’ fought so good a fight against the Satan of evil-thinking, the adversary of us all—and sowed so fine a planting for all men to reap when His Knighthood was in flower—when He ascended to His Father, and our Father, to His God and our God.”

A happy man or woman is a radiant focus of good will, and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.—Robert Louis Stevenson

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind—Joseph Addison

MOONFLOWER

(To compare it (Grace) to the pale moonflower, exquisite though that blossom be, is that enough?)

The moon at night, in soft blue-white,
   Through garden sends her beam;
Then quiet here, we see appear
   The flower of moon-gleam.

By light of day, in different way,
   The garden is bedecked;
Its robe is hued—oh not subdued—
   Full colored its effect.

The hollyhock tall, against the wall,
   Is lovely in its height;
Red roses rare, pink too are there,
   All radiant in sunlight.

The sunflower gold, its own doth hold,
   In centered brown its might;
Blue aster star is seen afar,
   With clear and broad day-sight.

Of posies gay, in bright array,
   Myriads bloom at noon;
We know not how, but only thou
   Art flower of the moon.