A Writer's Notebook (20 page)

God goes through all the ways of the earth, ploughing the land and sowing pain and anguish, sowing from East to West.

The sumptuous gold of a summer evening.

Like the sword whose fire dried the tears in the desolate eyes of Eve.

The hothouse beauties of Pater's style, oppressive with a perfume of tropical decay: a bunch of orchids in a heated room.

The sun was a roaring furnace, melting the massive clouds into a golden, ardent rain; and the glow was so tremendous
that one thought of some giant cataclysm in which might be forged a new and mighty world; and the Eastern clouds were the trailing volumes of smoke from the vast combustion. One could imagine the titan creators of a new world, throwing into the seething cauldron the false gods, the pomps and vanities, the thousand metals, the innumerable works of man; and with an awful silence all living things were sundered and dissipated and resolved into new, invisible, ethereal, mystical substances.

The young leaves shivering a little, voluptuously, under the quick pressure of the breeze.

My soul seemed a stringed instrument upon which the Gods were playing a melody of despair.

My heart was sad for her sake, and though I had ceased to love her, I found no consolation. A painful sense of emptiness had replaced the bitter anguish of before; and it was perhaps even harder to bear. Love may go and memory yet remain, memory may go and relief even then may not come.

The bitter waves of the sea.

The clouds sped across the sky, copper and red against the milky blue.

The heather rich with the subdued and decorous richness of the amethyst.

Under the low grey sky the colours of the landscape stood out with singular distinctness; there was a richness in the fields, brown or green, in the sombre tones of the hedges and the trees, unlike the brilliancy of an Italian landscape, but as intense
and as opulent, as though composed of elemental colours. It reminded one of those early pictures in which the same luminous quality is obtained by a ground of solid gold.

When you are in love what use is it to you if all you get in return is kindness, friendship, affection? It is Dead Sea fruit that sticks in your throat.

In the old days it had been enough to be with——, to walk with her in silence, to talk of the most insignificant things; but now when silence fell upon us, I racked my brain for something to say, and when we talked, our conversation sounded forced and unnatural; I felt it embarrassing to be alone with her.

What a strange idea is this that change must always be progress! Europeans complain that Chinese workmen use the same implements as they have used for centuries; but if with these rude tools they have been able to work with a delicacy and a sureness unsurpassable by Western artificers, why on earth should they change?

The three duties of woman. The first is to be pretty, the second is to be well-dressed, and the third is never to contradict.