that pathetic short-cut suggested by Nature the supreme joker as a remedy for our loneliness, that ephemeral communion which we persuade ourselves to be of the spirit when it is in fact only of the body - durable not even in memory!

When, and how, and at what stage of our development did spirituality and our strange notions of religion arise? the need for worship which is nothing more than our frightened refuge into propitiation of a Creator we do not understand? A detective story, the supreme Who-done-it, written in indecipherable hieroglyphics, no Rosetta stone supplied by the consummate Mystifier to tease us poor fumbling unravellers of his plot.

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time.

My garden all is overblown with roses,/ My spirit all is overblown with rhyme.

It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.

I cannot bear that you / Should think me faithful, when I am untrue.

To hope for Paradise is to live in Paradise, a very different thing from actually getting there.