All really imaginative literature is only the contrast between
the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul.
Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will
not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will
worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained
to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante,
to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell.
It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has
probably been made.
Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night;
she whinnies to me from the rocking tree-tops and the roaring wind;
I will catch her and ride her through the awful air. Woods and
weeds are alike tugging at the roots in the rising tempest,
as if all wished to fly with us over the moon, like that wild
amorous cow whose child was the Moon-Calf. We will rise to that mad
infinite where there is neither up nor down, the high topsy-turveydom
of the heavens. I will answer the call of chaos and old night.
I will ride on the Nightmare; but she shall not ride on me.
The Telegraph Poles
My friend and I were walking in one of those wastes of pine-wood
which make inland seas of solitude in every part of Western Europe;
which have the true terror of a desert, since they are uniform,
and so one may lose one's way in them. Stiff, straight, and similar,
stood up all around us the pines of the wood, like the pikes of a
silent mutiny.
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