But Oh, those heavenly moments when I feel this trivial universe
too small to contain my Attributes; when a sense of the divine
Ipseity invades me; when I know that my voice is the voice of
Truth, and my umbrella God's umbrella!




_The Spring in London_


London seemed last winter like an underground city; as if its
low sky were the roof of a cave, and its murky day a light such
as one reads of in countries beneath the earth.

And yet the natural sunlight sometimes shone there; white clouds
voyaged in the blue sky; the interminable multitudes of roofs
were washed with silver by the Moon, or cloaked with a mantle of
new-fallen snow. And the coming of Spring to London was to me
not unlike the descent of the maiden-goddess into Death's
Kingdoms, when pink almond blossoms blew about her in the gloom,
and those shadowy people were stirred with faint longings for
meadows and the shepherd's life. Nor was there anything more
virginal and fresh in wood or orchard than the shimmer of young
foliage, which, in May, dimmed with delicate green all the
smoke-blackened London trees.