JUNE

Rise up, and do begin the day's adorning;

The Summer dark is but the dawn of day.

The last of sunset fades into the morning,

The morning calls you from the dark away.

The holy mist, the white mist of the morning,

Was wreathing upward on my lonely way.

The way was waiting for your own adorning

That should complete the broad adorned day.

Rise up, and do begin the day's adorning;

The little eastern clouds are dapple grey:

There will be wind among the leaves to-day;

It is the very promise of the morning.

Lux Tua Via Mea: your light's my way ─

Then do rise up and make it perfect day.

~Hilaire Belloc

The Sisters - A Study in June Sunlight, by Edmund Charles Tarbell.

Oil on canvas, 1890; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee.

MONTH OF MAY

THIS is the laughing-eyed amongst them all:
My lady's month. A season of young things.
She rules the light with harmony, and brings
The year's first green upon the beeches tall.
How often, where long creepers wind and fall
Through the deep woods in noonday wanderings,
I’ve heard the month, when she to echo sings,
I've heard the month make merry madrigal.

How often, bosomed in the breathing strong
Of mosses and young flowerets, have I lain
And watched the clouds, and caught the sheltered song -
Which it were more than life to hear again -
Of those small birds that pipe it all day long
Not far from Marly by the memoried Seine.

~Hilaire Belloc

Feast of the Rose Garlands, by DÜRER, Albrecht.
Oil on poplar panel, 1506; Národní Galerie, Prague

The Church, Then and Now…

“THE Catholic Church was not an opinion, nor a fashion, nor a philosophy; it was not a theory nor a habit; it was a “clearly delineated body corporate based on numerous exact doctrines,” extremely jealous of its unity and of its precise definitions, and filled, as was no other body of men at that time, with passionate conviction.”

― Europe and the Faith
at Amazon

“THE Church itself was regarded (and will continue to be regarded by its adherents) as immortal, but its administration is subject to perpetual threat of mortality, that is, of corruption and weakness tending to extinction.”

― The Crisis of Civilization
Read online
or see at Amazon

~Hilaire Belloc

The Church as the Path to Salvation, by Andrea Da Firenze.
Fresco, 1366-67; Cappellone degli Spagnoli, Santa Maria Novella, Florence

APRIL

THE stranger warmth of the young sun obeying,
Look! little heads of green begin to grow,
And hidden flowers have dared their tops to show
Where late such droughty dusts were rudely playing.
It's not the month, but all the world's a-maying!
Come then with me, I'll take you, for I know
Where the first hedgethorns and white windflowers blow:
We two alone, that goes without the saying.

The month has treacherous clouds and moves in fears.
This April shames the month itself with smiles:
In whose new eyes I know no heaven of tears,
But still serene desire and between whiles,
So great a look that even April's grace
Makes only marvel at her only face.

~Hilaire Belloc

Allegory of April: Triumph of Venus (detail),
by Francesco Cossa. Fresco, 1476-84; Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara

Communism

“UNDER communism we should have all the worst spiritual effects of industrial capitalism extended and emphasized because their tyranny would be universal. . . . When you destroy the family and the sanctity of the individual, when you make war on the tradition of human culture, you are making war on the Image of God. And because you are making war in the Image of God, which is Man, with his human dignity and free will, you find yourself at once at war with God Himself. It is not an accident that communism should produce wholesale massacre, arson, torture, and the destruction of all lovely things. A perverse theory produces perverse acts. The story has been told over and over again but it can never be told too often.”

“THOSE who rely on communism as a remedy will be in a worse case than if they had not tried any remedy at all, for communism must necessarily break down, but not till it has done vast harm.”

~Hilaire Belloc: The Way Out