And just as this opening poem teaches the happiness of poverty, so the
next, "The Juggler of Touraine," teaches the happiness of lowliness.
Poor Barnabas, just a common juggler, when winter came, because he had
been spending the summer amusing people, had no place to go, and a
sympathetic monk took him into the monastery to live. Barnabas was
happy for a time; but after a while, as he saw everybody else
worshiping the Beautiful Mother with lute and brush, viol, drum,
talent, and prayer, he began to feel that his talents were
worthless:
"But I, poor Barnabas, nothing can I,
But drone in the sun as a drowsy fly."
The Shoes of Happiness.
Then came a thought that leaped like flame over his being, and an hour
later the monks found him, kneeling in the sacred altar place. What he
was doing chagrined them. They were shocked just as many people of this
day, to see a man worshiping with a different bend of the knee than
that to which they had been accustomed. How prone we are to judge those
who do not worship just as we have worshiped! This seems such a common
human weakness that Alfred Noyes, with a touch of kindly indignation,
speaks a word in "The Forest of Wild Thyme" that may be interjected
just here in this study of Barnabas the juggler, whom the monks
indignantly found worshiping the Virgin by juggling his colored balls
in the air, and speaking thus as he juggled:
"'Lady,' he cried again, 'look, I entreat:
I worship with fingers, and body, and feet!"
"And they heard him cry at Our Lady's shrine:
'All that I am, Madame, all is thine!
Again I come with spangle and ball
To lay at your altar my little, my all!'"
The Shoes of Happiness.
But the poor old monks were indignant. They, and some others of more
modern days, had never caught the real gist of the "Judge not" of the
New Testament; nor had they read Noyes:
"How foolish, then, you will agree,
Are those who think that all must see
The world alike, or those who scorn
Another, who perchance, was born
Where--in a different dream from theirs--
What they called sins to him are prayers!
We cannot judge; we cannot know;
All things mingle, all things flow;
There's only one thing constant here--
Love--that untranscended sphere:
Love, that while all ages run
Holds the wheeling worlds in one;
Love, that, as your sages tell,
Soars to heaven and sinks to hell."
The Shoes of Happiness.
No, we have no right to judge one another. The monks condemned poor
Barnabas because he was not worshiping as they had always worshiped.
They too forgot the real spirit of worship as they condemned him:
"'Nothing like this do the rules provide!
This is scandal, this is a shame,
This madcap prank in Our Lady's name.
Out of the doors with him; back to the street:
He has no place at Our Lady's feet!'"
The Shoes of Happiness.
However, then, as now, men are not the final judges:
"But why do the elders suddenly quake,
Their eyes a-stare and their knees a-shake?
Down from the rafters arching high,
Her blowing mantle blue with the sky--
Lightly down from the dark descends
The Lady of Beauty and lightly bends
Over Barnabas stretched in the altar place,
And wipes the dew from his shining face;
Then touching his hair with a look of light,
Passes again from the mortal sight.
An odor of lilies hallows the air,
And sounds as of harpings are everywhere.
"'Ah,' cry the elders, beating the breast,
'So the lowly deed is the lofty test!
And whatever is done from the heart to Him
Is done from the height of the Seraphim!'"
The Shoes of Happiness.
"HOW THE GREAT GUEST CAME"