Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.
My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is ‘Lord, I disbelieve – help thou my unbelief.
The sort of poetry I seek only resides in objects Man can’t touch – like England ‘s grass network of lanes 100 years ago, but today he can destroy them and only Lord Farrer keeps him from doing it.
The other damned saw what was happening and caught hold of it too. She was indignant and cried, “Let go-it’s my onion,” and as soon as she said, “my onion,” the stalk broke and she fell back into the flames.
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.
She had been so wicked that in all her life she had done only one good deed-given an onion to a beggar. So she went to hell. As she lay in torment she saw the onion, lowered down from heaven by an angel. She caught hold of it. He began to pull her up.
It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.
