Clarion

Down through the misty vistas of the ages rings a clarion declaration and although the very heavens echo to the reverberations, but few hear and fewer understand: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."   Here then is the eternal paradox. The Word is lost yet it is ever with us. The light that illumines the distant horizon shines in our hearts. "Thou wouldist not seek me hadst thou not found me." We travel afar only to find that which we hunger for at home.

A narrow alley in San Francisco, California, is also an art exhibit, with walls covered by beautifully painted images and murals. It is called the Clarion Alley Mural Project, or CAMP, and it was established by a group of volunteers in 1992.

This Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime’s search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man’s utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion.

The clarion’s call to action has been heard.

Then ſtrait commands that at the warlike ſound / Of Trumpets loud and Clarions be upreard / His mighty Standard; […]

And like a silver clarion rung / The accents of that unknown tongue, / Excelsior!

There is no bard in all the choir, / Nor Homer's self, the poet sire, / […] / Nor Collins' verse of tender pain, / Nor Byron's clarion of disdain, / […] / Not one of all can put in verse, / Or to this presence could rehearse, / The sights and voices ravishing / The boy knew on the hills in spring, […]

Blind me, take away mine eyes, and let the darkness utterly fence me in, and still mine ears would catch the tone of thy unforgotten voice, striking more loud against the portals of my sense than can the call of brazen-throated clarions:– […]

Others [i.e., other birds] on ground / Walk'd firm; the creſted Cock whoſe clarion ſounds / The ſilent hours, and th' other whoſe gay Traine / Adorns him, colour'd with the Florid hue / Of Rainbows and Starrie Eyes.

And his this Drum, vvhoſe hoarſe heroic baſe / Drovvns the loud Clarion of the braying Aſs.