Commonplace Book

'...the poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their death-song amid the flames.'

from The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (Chapter XII)

Commonplace Book

'...In the oxygen of success even the dullest metals will scintillate...'

from The Romance of Zion Chapel by Richard le Gallienne (Chapter X)

Commonplace Book

'Holy to them grew the stillness: the ripple suffused in golden moonlight: the dark edges of the leaves against superlative brightness. Not a chirp was heard, nor anything save the cool and endless carol of the happy waters, whose voices are the spirits of silence. Nature seemed consenting that their hands should be joined, their eyes intermingling. And when Evan, with a lover's craving, wished her lips to say what her eyes said so well, Rose drew his fingers up, and, with an arch smile and a blush, kissed them. The simple act set his heart thumping, and from the look of love, she saw an expression of pain pass through him. Her fealty - her guileless, fearless truth - which the kissing of his hand brought vividly before him, conjured its contrast as well in this that was hidden from her, or but half suspected. Did she know - know and love him still?..'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter XXIII)

Commonplace Book

'Over a length of the stream the red round harvest-moon was rising, and the weakened youth was this evening at the mercy of the charm that encircled him. The water curved, dimpled, and flowed flat, and the whole body of it rushed into the spaces of sad splendour. The clustered trees stood like temples of darkness; their shadows lengthened supernaturally; and a pale gloom crept between them on the sward. He had been thinking for some time that Rose would knock at his door, and give him her voice, at least; but she did not come; and when he had gazed out on the stream till his eyes ached, he felt he must go and walk by it. Those little flashes of the hurrying tide spoke to him of a secret rapture and of a joy-seeking impulse; the pouring onward of all the blood of life to one illumined heart, mournful from excess of love.'

from Evan Harrington by George Meredith (Chapter XXIII)

Commonplace Book

'Some reversal of blood and annihilation of thought took place as the covered prominence of her breasts pressed on the front of his dinner-jacket. His mouth at this moment[,] had it been a dog's, would have made a mother draw her child away.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 3)

Commonplace Book

'There followed, as he walked away, one of those moments when he came face to face with his life. And he experienced the vacuum which at that time Sart[r]es extolled, with international success, to his juniors, but which Nature allegedly abhors; he experienced nausee and the only joy left seemed to kick it all down - the sweet-tasting "No," of a child asked nicely.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 1)

Commonplace Book

'He had let go eventually with relief. The taste of ashes he discovered had been stronger than he had known. The relationship had become habit; a lie in a very vacant niche.'

from A Share of the World by Hugo Charteris (Part Two, Chapter 1)