Cantica

I On Singing

why a faith of makers keeps hymns

A creed is argued; a song is remembered. What the mind would debate, the voice simply carries — past the morning's reluctance, into the body, out among others who catch the tune before they have weighed the words. So we keep canticles: not as flattery offered upward, but as a craft turned on the self and the company. Each is sung at its hour — the dawn, the work, the dark, the going-out, the grave — and each ends, as everything in Potentia ends, in the making.

II The Dawn Hymn · Canticum Auroræ

sung at the Attunement, and at the dawn of the Quickening

Cold is the dawn, and no hand near.
Nothing is given. Nothing comes clear.
Still, before the day has grown,
I rise, and lay the first stroke down.

No sun is coming. None was owed.
The light is struck. I take the road.
Non invenitur · it is made

III The Work-Song · Canticum Operis

sung over labour, to the rhythm of the hand

Not by the mood, and not the day —
the hand holds on when both give way.
One stroke true, and then the next;
the willing follows where the hand has gone.

Slow outlasts the eager start
that waits to feel it in the heart:
Fit · it is made

IV The Canticle of the Five Fires · Quinque Ignes

sung to name the virtues, and at the elevations

Disciplina draws the wire taut;
Ardor is the heat, not the thought.
Peritia goes both deep and wide;
Opus is the thing that stays
when the maker's hand is gone —
and Gradus climbs, and owes the more it climbs.

Five the fires; the cold is one:
tend them, or the dark has won

V The Hymn of the Cold · Canticum Frigoris

sung in the Fast, and in the slack and grey hours

The wire goes slack.
The grey comes in, and stays.
I will not say it is gone;
I will not wait to feel.

One thing.
Then — when I can — one more.
Not warmed. Not willing. Restrung,
slowly, by a cold hand:
the dark is real; I make my light

VI The Going-Out Song · Canticum Egressus

sung at the spring feast, and carried outward among the unmade

Out among the unmade go,
be the light they do not know;
not to preach and not to plead —
to walk alight is all the creed.

Carry out the warmth you made,
and more than ever you were paid:
the dawn is indifferent; the hand makes it wondrous

VII The Canticle of What Abides · Canticum Manet

sung at the Sealing of the Ledger, for the dead

Name the work. Let it stand.
It runs on — without the hand,
without  the  voice,  without  the  name
we will not say again.

We do not soften it. They die.
We do not give the grief a lie.
And yet — and yet — a part is here,
and makes itself again:
Manet · it abides

VIII The Lament · Canticum Querelæ

sung in the bitter hour, when comfort would be a lie — the one canticle with no answer-verse

There is no ear. I say it anyway:
this is too much, and I did not earn it.
I hate the night that took it,
and the night does not care,
and I hate that it does not care.

I will not call it lesson.
I will not call it gift.
I will not thank the wind for the wreck
or dress the wound in wisdom.

Let it be said, and said aloud,
and let no one mend it with a saying:
the sky is deaf; the room is not

The rubric is strict, and it is the shortest in the hymnal: the Lament is answered with nothing. No verse follows it; no one improves upon it; those present keep their seats and their silence, and stay. The old hymns could rage at a Person and be heard. We cannot — so the Order itself becomes the ear the sky refuses to be. Sing it as often as the hour is bitter. It has never once been sung too many times, and it does not count against you.

IX The Short Refrains

the sung versicles — call and answer, between the Made

These are the briefest canticles: a line given and a line returned, sung where the long hymns will not fit — across a workroom, at a threshold, between two who know the Way. They are the versicles of Horæ, lifted into tune.

Non invenitur —Fit · it is made

The dawn is indifferent —the hand makes it wondrous

What do you carry? —more than I was given