The Dolorous Stroke

Le Morte d'Arthur, Chapter XV.  How Balin fought with King Pellam, and how his sword brake, and how he gat a spear wherewith he smote the dolorous stroke.

“Thereby stood a table of clean gold, with four pillars of silver that bare up the table, and upon the table stood a marvelous spear strangely wrought.  And when Balin saw that spear, he gat it in his hand and turned him to King Pellam, and smote him passing sore with that spear, that King Pellam fell down with a swoon, and therefore with the castle roof and walls brake and fell to earth.”

. . . . .

 
Today I celebrate my death,

a death like the extirpation of the central head

of a many headed hydra,

a real and very painful dying.   

I am slain by God’s holiness,

by my alienation from Him,

by my alienation from humankind,

by my alienation from mine own self

and from life itself.   

I am slain. 

I slew myself. 

Wielding the clumsy two-edge sword of human will,

I, by grace, stroked my own dolorous stroke,

not knowing what I would become

or even fully what I slew.   

The sad grey kingdom of mine own self

received the stroke with fearful thankfulness. 

It was a relief to die. 

It is a relief to die.    

Amid the falling dust and ashes of my life

immediately a rose springs forth,

a symbol at once of the wound of Christ,

now my own wound,

and the beauty of His resurrection and mine own.   

Now I live, roses, dust and ashes,

and writhing heads of lesser selves still dying. 

But the roses, ah the roses of His new life mine own, yet His. 

It is the fragrance of the roses that I would linger on.