Will Levington Comfort

“ Thus we heal from the infinite tears of the changes of matter and dissolution, and lift our love to the Masters and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly only that which can contain us. If the Masters loved us with all their power, we would fall in the madness of too much light.... Always, they give us all the love that we can endure.... We give our all to them and expand daily, until we know the passion to break ourselves open in ecstasy, like the king bee under the whirring wings of the queen. ”

“ How long it was before she freed herself, Paula never knew. Indeed, she was not conscious of being actually awake, until she felt the bitter cold and hurried into the heated room beyond. She was physically wretched, but no longer obsessed.... She would not believe now that the beyond-devil had called again. It was all a dream, she told herself again and again—this rush of images and the summons from the enemy. Yesterday, she had been too happy; human bodies cannot endure so long such refining fire; to-day was the reaction and to-morrow her old strength and poise would come again. ”

“ No one had taught her that kindness may be a motive in itself.
And now Morning was coping with what seemed a real idea: What was the quality of the switch-board that harnessed her character? Here she was wild and disordered—like a creature denied her drug. With that mystic rumble of angry New York in her ears—the essential buzz of a million desires passing through her—she was a force, flying and valuable force. Was she lain open to obsession now because she was removed from that slavery? Was that maddening vibration the lost key to her poise? ”

“ You must learn the world—be well grounded in the world. You need not forget the Old Mother. Your feet are of clay—but you must have the immortal gleam in your eyes. Do not forget the Old Mother—yet it is only when the Father appears that you can see her as she really is. It is the light of His spirit that has shown you the passion of the rose, the goodness of the wheat, the holiness of the forests. By His quickening you are hushed in the beauty of the Mother.... The myriads of makers of books have not yet sensed this beauty.
There is a different love of Nature. ”

“ To the boy-brain, supremacy at war is the highest victory the world can give. Japan has the health of a boy, heals like an earth-worm, and blazes with pride in the possession of his first weapons. Like the boy again, he is blind to the intrinsic rights of women. Shamelessly, he casts his women out over the seven seas to fill the brothels of every port—breeds human cattle to feed the world’s lusts, and knows no prick of pride—but watch him run hot-breathed to the rifle-pits if so much as a bit of humor from an outside nation stirs the restless chip upon his shoulder! ”

“ Already Skag shared with the natives the attitude of devotion to the great Nerbudda. She was sacred to the people, and to every creature good, for her gift was like the gift of mothers. When all the world was parched and full of deep cracks, yawning beneath a heaven white and cloudless, and rain forsook the land, and every leaf hung heavy and dust-laden; when heat and thirst and famine all increased, till creatures crept forth from their hot lairs at evening and moved in company—who had been enemies, but for sore suffering—then would she yield up her pure tides to satisfy their utmost craving. ”

“ Pidge hadn’t caught the Spring magic coming home from the factory, but now as they walked down Sixth Avenue under the momentary crashes of the Elevated—it stole up out of the pavements as if she were in a meadow—that untellable sweetness which seems the breath of Mother Nature herself, a breath made of all the perfumes of all the flowers, without accentuating one, and a sublimation of all the passions of the human heart as well. Her left hand burrowed under the hanging sleeve of Miss Claes’ wrap. ”

“ I stood upon a bluff overlooking the ocean recently, and a breath of the south wind awakened in my mind the story of one whole summer; others have listened to forest trees or the humming roar of a distant city, or the rush of a great river, and found in them the aggregate of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the magic of the spirit of things.
In all philosophy, there is no difference of opinion as to one fact, that man is unfolding a microcosm within himself, including in his consciousness more and more the Idea of the Universe. ”

“ At this juncture Soronia entered the wine-shop from the little court, to fill the eyes and the goblets of the Americans. A dark, ardent, alluring face; flesh like dull gold, made wonderful by the faintest tints of ripe fruit; eyes that could melt and burn and laugh; a fragile figure, but radiantly abloom, and as worthily draped as a young palm in a richly blossoming vine. She made one think of a strange, regal flower, an experiment of Nature, wrought in the most sumptuous shadow of a tropic garden.... She was gone. Charter laughed at the drained look in Peter Stock's face. ”

“ Talking and listening carried them on. John Morning had the different phases of self segregated in an astonishing way. He spoke of himself as man can only with a woman—making pictures of certain moments, as a writer does. Volumes of emotion, they burned, talking and listening, leaning upon each other’s words and thoughts. They were one, in a very deep sense of joy and replenishment. They touched for moments the plane of unity in which they looked with calm upon the parting, but the woman alone poised herself there. They left the old darkey—a blessing in his voice and smile. ”

“ This was New York—among men—food and drink and warmth. This, too, was life; these were men who toil every day, who cannot take months to dream in, who cannot cross the sea and observe heroes and saints, but men who crowd and toil and fight, even expire, for their pleasures—such were the surgings of Bellair’s brain in the midst of the music. Bessie was the arch of it all—the arch of the old home, New York,—not this Bessie, but the Bessie that might be, the significant woman it was his work to make and mould. ”

“ Human throats are inarticulate, afield; the reality that voices heroic utterance and makes it memorable is not at work in man-fabric; splendid faces and brave actions—but the words are the revealers of emptiness. For the animal is awake and upstanding; the spirit that quickens reality is apart.
The battlefield opened to Mowbray's eyes that day with abnormal clearness, as if he had brought rest and reflection to a problem that long had harried him, He felt singularly light and full of ease—as one does sometimes in the first hours of the day after a sleepless night. ”

“ Each with its fragrance—the elm, the silentest and sweetest of all. The elm has forgotten her body in spreading her grace to the stars; the elm for aspiration, loving the starlight so well that she will not hide it from the ground; most beautiful of all, save the beech in winter, a swift and saintly passing of a noble life. The maple warms you in spite of herself, giving up her secrets which are not all clean—a lover of fatness, her shade too dense, a hater of winter, because she is bare, and the secret of all ugliness in her nudity. ”

“ You are Beth Truba of street and studio. You can send lovers away. You can make them afraid of your tongue, strip them of all ardor with your nineteenth century bigotry.... You have so many years to waste. Empty arms are so light and cool, their veins are never scorched; they never dry with age!... Oh, red-haired Beth Truba, all the spaces of sky are laughing at you! To-morrow or next day, by the ocean, another woman will start the flames in those cool eyes of his, and feel them singing around her!... ”

“ One thought apart from these effects, Paula could not shake from her mind: Were there human beings with dead or dying souls? Did she pass on the street men and women in whom the process of soul-starvation was complete or completing? Could there be human mind-cells detached from hope, holiness, charity, eternity, and every lovely conception; infected throughout with earth's descending destructive principle? The thought terrorized her soul, so that she became almost afraid to glance into the face of strangers. To think of any man or woman without one hope! ”

“ There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes—a new joy—a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To love—that is all the Soul asks. ”

“ To be with him in great wanderings of gentle purport; to meet the suns and storms with calmness and cheer; constantly to toil together, helping, meditating, always together on the world’s highways, always looking toward God’s Good Hope, with thoughts in the stars, but not so lost in the stars that they missed the sorrowing by the roadside;—wandering grateful for life together, having a tear for the helpless, a smile for the beautiful, and a love for each other so vast and pure that it must needs love the world and reflect the love of God.... ”

“ They were beneath the monster. Bellair felt more than the crush of the weight of flesh, a force kindred to electricity, but not electric, a smothering defiling dynamics, that despoiled him by the low, cold depth of its vibration, rather than by the fierce fury of it. Then he thought of the woman’s child. It came to him like a pure gleam. The child must live. The thought was very real, out of the self, but not for self.... It seemed that he heard the heart of Stackhouse break, and the demon hiss away. ”