Windows of Night
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About this ebook
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.
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.
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Windows of Night - Charles Williams
Prelude
(TO H. S. M.)
WHEN from the house where I was nursed
Into the outer world I first
With doubtful footing went,
I saw in a bewildered earth
Nor nights of peace nor days of mirth
Nor twilights of content.
All the unhappiness of youth
I knew, and knew it less than truth,
And felt beneath me move
The quaking ground whereon I trod,
Spoiling the towers of every god,
And all the doors of love.
I saw the blinding tyrants smite
Their serving-folk with death or night
For avarice or whim;
The dancing heavens go lightly by
Above the plague pits, huddled high
With corpses to the brim.
I saw, above all purpose set,
The fitful poised Almighty threat
Float sadly in the air,
Which, though but few it seemed to strike
With madness, cancer, and their like,
Yet taught to all despair.
I knew the last fear—lest there hid
In Death’s unopened pyramid
Only Life’s self abhorred:
But O amid such darkening gloom
What fantasy decreed my doom
Beneath a courteous lord?
All things I feared—and lo on me
The world’s accustomed irony,
Grown swiftly gracious, smiled:
Among the starving I was fed,
Into security was led,
And guarded from the wild.
Yet, for all favours of its past,
How should I trust Life’s grace to last?
Only, the chance of ill
More distant and more doubtful runs
Afar from me, since all my suns
Are blest with your goodwill.
And what more joys, what friendships new,
Had happily their source in you!
As when we left the town,
And shy and laughing and amazed
To hear myself by strangers praised,
We took the road to Downe:
As London, my own city, known
For a mere torment of great stone
By many a wandering wit,
Re-risen for me, stood in the void
Of my desire, and was enjoyed,
For you were part of it.
In one same spring your name and hers,
The world’s and heaven’s best messengers,
Smote first my careless ears:
Who knew not then what springs should build
About me, from those names fulfilled,
A shelter for my years.
Those names fulfilled!—Of the last End,
The Mystery that hath for friend
All governments of peace,
What pious dream hath more of fame
Than each admired prophetic name,
Sounding it without cease?
Faint though I fall in ways of ill,
I see the shining glory still
In the world’s fair employ,
Creation marvellously wrought
To one sole multitudinous thought,
The Day, the Morning Joy.
And bitter though within me hate
Wars with inexorable Fate,
To wreck its rich delight,
I know the hinted close of dawn,
The quenched activities withdrawn,
The Evening Joy, the Night.
But her a hundred sonnets praise,
And all the friends who tread my ways
Have each their share of song;
Yet, sir, my world must lack its due
Accomplishment, except to you
Some period may belong.
Poets by generations count
Their lives, and sum the full amount
In centuries; but I,
Whom no kind Muse hath brought to name
Within the sanctuary of Fame,
Before my death must die.
On many a mightier shield than mine
Your quartered arms shall they design
Who keep the heraldic scrolls
Of Art; but though the future paints
You in the list of their All Saints,
You will not scorn All Souls?
Then, maugre what the wise allow,
Under your titles be I now
Of this small freehold seised;
And let me to my doubtful heart
Profess a virtue in my art,
For you were sometimes pleased.
These meditations, since your care
Sustains unharmed my household stair,
And the peace where they grow,
Take, the poor symbols of your due;
All verse, and more than verse, to you,
With her and God, I owe.
Sleep
NOW industry is ended; now, kind sleep,
Only be pleased to be not overswift,
But let our loosed and drowsy bodies keep
A little taste of exile; slowly sift
Night’s heavier from the airy thoughts of day,
And at the point of our surrender make
Some new, delicious, ever-shorter stay;
Slowly to sleep is good, swiftly to wake.
Ah! coveted Joy, too absolute in content
To be exchanged for immortality,
How dost thou lure us from our late consent
And our night prayers to light and ecstasy,
Tempting us now, with our last waking breath,
To ask no more, but only this, of death.
The Window
PUT out the candles, friend, while I unclose
The window of our thought upon the night,
Time, and the world, where London, light by light,
Twinkles away into an unknown end
And darkness at the edge of Being flows;
Upon the slope, which at this sill begins
But there is lost in what black origins!
Put out the lights, put out the candles, friend:
No gleam upon the guessed horizon throws
Any small flaming wick of faith or hope,
For studies meet, nor on the ragged slope,
Which here the intent Imagination knows.
Out of the black and vacant heaven looks down
An everlasting silence, here touched white
With borrowed flame to the fantastic site
Of mirrored cities and reflected streets.
Turn, turn your eyes! this is man’s topmost town,
Close-set beneath us: there is Thames, and here,
Where the glow gathers deepest, Westminster;
District on district thrust, while each repeats
Some huge word man’s devising mind hath known,
Some station upon his long toil, which we
Here dimly from his first beginning see,
But not his end, nor whereby helped or thrown.
The window of our nature opens: see,
In the vast vision of our conscious mind,
A living mud bubbles into mankind
Momently, and each moment from the mud
Shapes yet another surge of anarchy.
Life wakes and heaves and in a babble of cries
Swarms out of earth a little, and so dies
And is swallowed under life; what streaks of blood
Gleam under