Novalis, Spiritual Songs III

Who in his chamber sitteth lonely,And weepeth heavy, bitter tears;To whom in doleful colours, onlyOf want and woe, the world appears;Who of the Past, gulf-like receding,Would search with questing eyes the core,Down into which a sweet woe, pleading,Wiles him from all sides evermore-As if a treasure past believingLay there below, for him high-piled,After whose lock, …

Spiritual Songs, II

Dawn, far eastward, on the mountain!Gray old times are growing young:From the flashing colour-fountainI will quaff it deep and long!-Granted boon to Longing's long privation!Sweet love in divine transfiguration!Comes at last, our old Earth's native,All-Heaven's one child, simple, kind!Blows again, in song creative,Round the earth a living wind;Blows to clear new flames that rush togetherSparks …

Dante — A Deepening and Enlargement

“Dante’, wrote Coleridge, ‘does not so muchelevate your thoughts as send them down deeper’; that is, make them more profound. The distinction was well made; it is not a rarefying but a deepening and enlargement of this quality and relation which is in question, until it becomes the universal relationship, in its most intense quality, …

Objective Value

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule that is not tyranny or an obedience that is not slavery. ⏤ CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Human Things

It is not, “Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?” The real question is “Why are all human things so bad when they claim to be so good?” — -GK Chesterton

My Life is like a Wind

"But I often ask myself to what it all goes. — I learn to love my boys. I kill in them all the bad I can. I nourish in them all the good I can. I send them across the borders of manhood — and they leave me, and most likely I hear nothing more …

Gratitude Vs. Adoration

“Gratitude exclaims, very properly: “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says: “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!” One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.” CS Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, ch. 17

That Archetypal Pattern

But if we pursue our researches into the Paradiso we find that Beatrice shows no desire to possess Dante: she takes him with one hand only to give him away with the other. "Look on us well; we are indeed Beatrice"; "Not only in my eyes is Paradise"? "Look on me, what I am; thou …

Joseph

If the stars fell; night's nameless dreamsOf bliss and blasphemy came true,If skies were green and snow were gold,And you loved me as I love you;O long light hands and curled brown hair,And eyes where sits a naked soul;Dare I even then draw near and burnMy fingers in the aureole?Yes, in the one wise foolish …