61
" Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. This is the reason why beauty is still escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet possessed, it cannot be handled. …It instantly deserts possession, and flies to an object in the horizon. If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time. "
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
65
" So at last Ilar Sant came to this wood, which people now call St. Hilary's wood because they have forgotten all about Ilar. And he was weary with his wandering, and the day was very hot; so he stayed by this well and began to drink. And there on that great stone he saw the shining fish, and so he rested, and built an altar and a church of willow boughs, and offered the sacrifice not only for the quick and the dead, but for all the wild beasts of the woods and the streams." And when this blessed Ilar rang his holy bell and began to offer, there came not only the Prince and his servants, but all the creatures of the wood. There, under the hazel boughs, you might see the hare, which flies so swiftly from men, come gently and fall down, weeping greatly on account of the Passion of the Son of Mary. And, beside the hare, the weasel and the pole-cat would lament grievously in the manner of penitent sinners; and wolves and lambs together adored the saint's hierurgy; and men have beheld tears streaming from the eyes of venomous serpents when Ilar Agios uttered 'Curiluson' with a loud voice—since the serpent is not ignorant that by its wickedness sorrow came to the whole world. And when, in the time of the holy ministry, it is necessary that frequent Alleluyas should be chanted and vociferated, the saint wondered what should be done, for as yet none in that place was skilled in the art of song. Then was a great miracle, since from all the boughs of the wood, from every bush and from every green tree, there resounded Alleluyas in enchanting and prolonged harmony; never did the Bishop of Rome listen to so sweet a singing in his church as was heard in this wood. For the nightingale and thrush and blackbird and blackcap, and all their companions, are gathered together and sing praises to the Lord, chanting distinct notes and yet concluding in a melody of most ravishing sweetness; such was the mass of the Fisherman. Nor was this all, for one day as the saint prayed beside the well he became aware that a bee circled round and round his head, uttering loud buzzing sounds, but not endeavouring to sting him. To be short; the bee went before Ilar, and led him to a hollow tree not far off, and straightway a swarm of bees issued forth, leaving a vast store of wax behind them. This was their oblation to the Most High, for from their wax Ilar Sant made goodly candles to burn at the Offering; and from that time the bee is holy, because his wax makes light to shine upon the Gifts. "
71
" THE LILIES
This morning it was, on the pavement,
When that smell hit me again
And set the houses reeling.
People passed like rain:
(The way rain moves and advances over the hills)
And it was hot, hot and dank,
The smell like animals, strong, but sweet too.
What was it?
Something I had forgotten.
I tried to remember, standing there,
Sniffing the air on the pavement.
Somehow I thought of flowers.
Flowers! That bad smell!
I looked: down lanes, past houses--
There, behind a hoarding,
A rubbish-heap, soft and wet and rotten.
Then I remembered:
After the rain, on the farm,
The vlei that was dry and paler than a stone
Suddenly turned wet and green and warm.
The green was a clash of music.
Dry Africa became a swamp
And swamp-birds with long beaks
Went humming and flashing over the reeds
And cicadas shrilling like a train.
I took off my clothes and waded into the water.
Under my feet first grass, then mud,
Then all squelch and water to my waist.
A faint iridescence of decay,
The heat swimming over the creeks
Where the lilies grew that I wanted:
Great lilies, white, with pink streaks
That stood to their necks in the water.
Armfuls I gathered, working there all day.
With the green scum closing round my waist,
The little frogs about my legs,
And jelly-trails of frog-spawn round the stems.
Once I saw a snake, drowsing on a stone,
Letting his coils trail into the water.
I expect he was glad of rain too
After nine moinths of being dry as bark.
I don't know why I picked those lilies,
Piling them on the grass in heaps,
For after an hour they blackened, stank.
When I left at dark,
Red and sore and stupid from the heat,
Happy as if I'd built a town,
All over the grass were rank
Soft, decaying heaps of lilies
And the flies over them like black flies on meat... "
― Doris Lessing , Going Home
72
" It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight. All we can do is use a word as an indicator, or a whole bunch of words as a general directive. But the ominous thing in the crow's flight, the bare-faced, bandit thing, the tattered beggarly gipsy thing, the caressing and shaping yet slightly clumsy gesture of the down-stroke, as if the wings were both too heavy and too powerful, and the headlong sort of merriment, the macabre pantomime ghoulishness and the undertaker sleekness - you could go on for a very long time with phrases of that sort and still have completely missed your instant, glimpse knowledge of the world of the crow's wingbeat. And a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying. "
― Ted Hughes , Poetry in the Making: An Anthology
73
" I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding. I sing to you of the god of the dust that flies off the ice-burned comet, and the god of the spaces in between. I sing to you of the god that twists like a serpent at the center of every sun and is found again coiled within every electron, shared by both and worshiped by each in its own way. I sing to you of the god that collects asteroids together in mockeries of his sister’s solar systems, jealous of his elder sibling’s power. I sing to you of all these, and many, many more." - Lupa, " The Forgotten Gods of Nature "
79
" That City of yours is a morbid excrescence. Wall Street is a morbid excrescence. Plainly it's a thing that has grown out upon the social body rather like -- what do you call it? -- an embolism, thrombosis, something of that sort. A sort of heart in the wrong place, isn't it? Anyhow -- there it is. Everything seems obliged to go through it now; it can hold up things, stimulate things, give the world fever or pain, and yet all the same -- is it necessary, Irwell? Is it inevitable? Couldn't we function economically quite as well without it? Has the world got to carry that kind of thing for ever?" What real strength is there in a secondary system of that sort? It's secondary, it's parasitic. It's only a sort of hypertrophied, uncontrolled counting-house which has become dominant by falsifying the entries and intercepting payment. It's a growth that eats us up and rots everything like cancer. Financiers make nothing, they are not a productive department. They control nothing. They might do so, but they don't. They don't even control Westminster and Washington. They just watch things in order to make speculative anticipations. They've got minds that lie in wait like spiders, until the fly flies wrong. Then comes the debt entanglement. Which you can break, like the cobweb it is, if only you insist on playing the wasp. I ask you again what real strength has Finance if you tackle Finance? You can tax it, regulate its operations, print money over it without limit, cancel its claims. You can make moratoriums and jubilees. The little chaps will dodge and cheat and run about, but they won't fight. It is an artificial system upheld by the law and those who make the laws. It's an aristocracy of pickpocket area-sneaks. The Money Power isn't a Power. It's respectable as long as you respect it, and not a moment longer. If it struggles you can strangle it if you have the grip...You and I worked that out long ago, Chiffan..." When we're through with our revolution, there will be no money in the world but pay. Obviously. We'll pay the young to learn, the grown-ups to function, everybody for holidays, and the old to make remarks, and we'll have a deuce of a lot to pay them with. We'll own every real thing; we, the common men. We'll have the whole of the human output in the market. Earn what you will and buy what you like, we'll say, but don't try to use money to get power over your fellow-creatures. No squeeze. The better the economic machine, the less finance it will need. Profit and interest are nasty ideas, artificial ideas, perversions, all mixed up with betting and playing games for money. We'll clean all that up..." " It's been going on a long time," said Irwell." All the more reason for a change," said Rud. "
