Then he went back to the monastery and found there a doorkeeper whom he did not know and who did not know him. Other monks came, and they were all strangers to him. He told them he was Father Anselm, but that was no help. Finally they looked through the books of the monastery, and these revealed that there had been a Father Anselm there a hundred or more years before. Time had been blotted out while he listened to the lark.
That, I suppose, was a case of beauty boiling over, or a soul boiling over; perhaps the same thing. Then spirits walk.
They must sometimes walk St. Andrews. I do not mean the ghosts of queens or prelates, but one that keeps step, as soft as snow, with some poor student. He sometimes catches sight of it. That is why his fellows can never quite touch him, their best beloved; he half knows something of which they know nothing--the secret that is hidden in the face of the Monna Lisa. As I see him, life is so beautiful to him that its proportions are monstrous. Perhaps his childhood may have been overfull of gladness; they don't like that. If the seekers were kind he is the one for whom the flags of his college would fly one day. But the seeker I am thinking of is unfriendly, and so our student is 'the lad that will never be told.' He often gaily forgets, and thinks he has slain his foe by daring him, like him who, dreading water, was always the first to leap into it. One can see him serene, astride a Scotch cliff, singing to the sun the farewell thanks of a boy:
'Throned on a cliff serene Man saw the sun hold a red torch above the farthest seas, and the fierce island pinnacles put on in his defence their sombre panoplies; Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees, till all the beauty of the scene seemed one, led by the secret whispers of the breeze.
'The sun's torch suddenly flashed upon his face and died; and he sat content in subject night and dreamed of an old dead foe that had sought and found him; a beast stirred bodly in his resting-place; And the cold came; Man rose to his master-height, shivered, and turned away; but the mists were round him.'
If there is any of you here so rare that the seekers have taken an ill-will to him, as to the boy who wrote those lines, I ask you to be careful. Henley says in that poem we were speaking of:
'Under the bludgeonings of Chance My head is bloody but unbowed.'
A fine mouthful, but perhaps 'My head is bloody and bowed' is better.
Let us get back to that tent with its songs and cheery conversation. Courage. I do not think it is to be got by your becoming solemn-sides before your time. You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip. Diligence--ambition; noble words, but only if 'touched to fine issues.' Prizes may be dross, learning lumber, unless they bring you into the arena with increased understanding. Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity--that corpulent cigar; if you became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around for more like a diseased goldfish.