The Moon-drawn juices mount; the leaves distil, the Sun’s gold heart-beats into chlorophyll. Out of the Plant’s green blood man’s red is wrought, while stars rain down to gild his brow with thought.
Isabel Wyatt
The Dance of Death
18th century German oil painting. Artist unknown.
Mutability
We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day.
We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free.
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability!
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Good and Evil
André Jacques Victor Orsel. 1832.
The Sleeping Earth
Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing, And may this storm be but a mountain-birth, May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rock. Consciousness burning
Victor Safonkin. 2007. Oil on canvas.
To Love..
To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.
Victor Hugo
A Knight, Death and the Devil
Albrecht Durer. 1513.
Mother Nature
Mother nature is a brutal bitch, red in tooth and claw, who destroys what she creates.
Ernest Becker
Image: ‘The Goddess Kali’. Robert B. Godfrey. 1770.
The Devil and his Minions
My skull’s a chapel. So is yours. The thoughts go in and out like godly folk to mass. But what of hands that itch for gold? What of feet that burn to stray down all the soft and leafy paths to Hell, the truant heart that hungers for the love of mortal flesh? A man can’t live his life within his skull. His other members harry him. They drag him forth. The Devil and his minions lie in wait without.
Elric talking to Godric. From ‘Godric’, by Frederick Buechner
The Aesthete 