Divorce

By Charles Williams

Charles Williams was one of the finest -- not to mention one of the most unusual -- theologians of the twentieth century. His mysticism is palpable -- the unseen world interpenetrates ours at every point, and spiritual exchange occurs all the time, unseen and largely unlooked for. His novels are legend, his poetry profound, and as a member of the Inklings, he contributed to the mythopoetic revival in contemporary culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John R. Mabry
• Release date: Mar 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781940671192

Charles Williams

Charles Williams (1909–1975) was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years before leaving to work in the electronics industry. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime. Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay. Williams died in California in 1975. 

Book preview

Contents

Divorce

In Time of War

I. Praise of Death

II. Lovers to Lovers

III. On the Way to Somerset

IV. In Absence

V. Reunion

VI. For a Pietà

Ballade of a Country Day

Ballade of Travellers

Ghosts

To Michal: After a Vigil

House-hunting

Celestial Cities

Ballad of Material Things

Dialogue between the Republic and the Apostasy

At the Gates

On the German Emperor

To Michal: On Forgiveness

Politics

First Love

Love is Lost

Incidents

Return

Her Dark Eyes Sparkle

Four Sonnets

After Marriage

Loving and Loved

To Michal: On Brushing her Hair

Experiments

I. Traffic

II. Anarchy

III Impossibility

On Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’

Briseis

Helen in the Chamber of Deiphobus

To Michal: Meditating a New Costume

For a Cathedral Door

To Michal: On Disputing Outside Church

Invitation to Early Communion

At the ‘Ye that do truly’

On Leaving Church

Commentaries — I

Commentaries — II

Commentaries — III

Commentaries — IV

Commentaries — V

Love’s Adolescence

Outland Travel

Advent

Christmas

The Fourth Dimension

Birds

Sleep

In an Ecclesiastical Procession

Office Hymn

Chant Royal of Feet

In a Motor-bus

In a London Office

Three Friends

‘Thy Will be done’

Prayer

Go not, my Lord

Envoy

Divorce

(TO MY FATHER)

WHEN Love, born first of thought and will,

Ponders what dooms it shall fulfil,

And knows itself and names,

Sole son of man to meet and dare

All lusts couched in the body’s lair

Till he their fury tames:

From whom his duty shall he learn,

To whom for admonition turn,

That his young heart may know

What infinite fatality

Life shall wreak on him, nor shall he

Refuse to undergo?

Whom but such souls as, torn with pain,

Have proved all things and proved them vain

And have no joy thereof,

Yet lifting their pale heads august

Declare the frame of things is just,

Nor shall the balance move?

Each to his teachers, — nor of mine,

Though long and lofty be the line,

Shall any, sir, be set

More high in this poor heart than you

Who taught me all the good I knew

Ere Love and I were met:

Great good and small, — the terms of fate,

The nature of the gods, the strait

Path of the climbing mind,

The freedom of the commonwealth,

The laws of soul’s and body’s health,

The commerce of mankind.

The charges launched on Christendom

You showed me, ere the years had come

When I endured the strain,

Yet warned me, unfair tales to balk,

What slanders still the pious talk

Of Voltaire and Tom Paine.

What early verse of mine you chid,

Rebuked the use of doth and did,

Measuring the rhythm’s beat;

Or read with me how Caesar passed,

On the March Ides, to hold his last

Senate at Pompey’s feet!

What words of grace, not understood

Until the years had proved them good,

Your wisdom set in me, —

Until the asps of blindness lay

Upon your brows and sucked away

Joy, sweetness, memory.

Now all the pages of the wise,

Whereon for happiness your eyes

Were wisely apt to pore,

Upon another’s mouth depend,

And friend by step is known from friend,

And faces seen no more.

Now, now the work all men must do

Is mightily begun in you;

And the sure-cutting days

Leave you, disfurnished, dispossessed

Of earth, to seek your spirit’s rest

Beyond our mortal ways.

Now, now in you the great divorce

Begins, whose everlasting source

Sprang up before the sun,

Whose chill dividing waters roll

’Twixt flesh and spirit, mind and soul, —

Than death more deeply run:

Divorce, sole healer of divorce;

For our deep sickness of remorse

Sole draught medicinal,

Which Grief from bitter herbage brews

Where Babylonish waters ooze

O’er Mansoul’s shattered wall;

Divorce, who cries all mortal banns;

Chief foreman of the artisans

Who quarry from Time’s pit

New stuff for souls, hewn stone on stone

Piercer of hearts, by whom is shown

Death in death implicit;

Divorce, itself for God and Lord

By the profounder creeds adored:

Who in eternity,

A bright proceeding ardour, parts

The filial and paternal hearts,

And knits the riven Three.

O if in holier hours I meet

Your happier head in Sarras’ street,

When our blind years are done,

What song remains shall run to pay

Its duty, sir, from me that