It will not leave me...I feel it though I can't understand it.
I can't grasp it, nor yet forget it, and when I think I've grasped it, I cannot take its measure!
How can one measure what seems beyond measuring?
It did not fit the rules, yet it had no faults.
It sounded so old.
Yet as fresh as a bird's song in May!
.....he sang it because he had to...
And as he had to, he could.
Of course the old cobbler wasn't really thinking of the Mass, he was actually just on about a song - but as so often, Wagner's, (reflected in words he gives his alter ego,) esteem for his own metier, for his own skills are a pale echo of what all men's souls somehow recognize in, and desire from, the transcendent. The which is only available to them in the right worship of God. And isn't this a perfect description of the awe felt by, and the sensation left with, those of us privileged to participate in the Holy Sacrifice? When we sing the Mass don't we acknowledge a ceremony that is both beyond end somehow within our selves?
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