Algernon Blackwood

“ Climbing the shoulder of a big, blue wind, they were off and away!
It was a jolly night, a windy night, a night without clouds, when all the lanes of the sky were smooth and swept, and the interstellar spaces seemed close down upon the earth.
'Kind thoughts, like fine weather, Link sweetly together God's stars With the heart of a boy,' sang Rogers, following swiftly with Jimbo and his sister. For all moved along as easily as light across the surfaces of polished glass. ”

“ But the radiant form of the other turned to her motionless cage upon the bed behind her. 'Don't despise them,' she replied, looking down upon the worn-out prison-house, while a little dazzle of brilliance flashed through her atmosphere. 'They are our means of spreading this starlight about the world and giving it to others. Our brains transmit it cunningly; it flashes from our eyes, and the touch of our fingers passes it on. ”

“ He has belief and vision like a child, and therefore turns instinctively to children because they keep it alive in him, though he hardly knows why he seeks them. The world, too, is a great big child that is crying for its Fairyland....'
'But the practical--' objected Mother, true to her type of mind-an echo rather than an effort.
'--is important, yes, only it has been exaggerated out of all sane proportion in most people's lives. So little is needed, though that little of fine quality, and ever fed by starlight. Obeyed exclusively, it destroys life. It bricks you up alive. ”

“ There was perpetual metamorphosis and rich transformation; many became one, one many; the universe was a single thing, charged with stimulating emotional shocks as each scrap of interpretation passed in and across the mind.... ”

“ And remember,' she added, as Mother rose softly out of the trees and hovered a moment overhead, 'that if you need the Sweep or the Lamplighter, or the Gardener to burn away her dead leaves, you have only to summon them. Think hard, and they'll be instantly beside you.'
Upon an eddy of glowing wind Mother drifted across the fields to the corner of the village where her mother occupied a large single room in solitude upon the top floor, a solitude self-imposed and rigorously enforced.
'Use the finest quality,' she heard her friend thinking far behind her, 'for you have plenty of it. ”

“ WOMAN OF THE Think with passion HAYSTACK. That shall fashion Life's entire design well-planned; Voice (still nearer) . While the busy Pleiades, ROGERS. Sisters to the Hyades, Voice (quite close) . Seven by seven, Across the heaven, ROGERS. Light desire With their fire! Voice (in his ear) . Working cunningly together in a soft and tireless band, Sweetly linking All our thinking, In the Net of Sympathy that brings back Fairyland!' Mother kept close to her husband ”

“ He's filling his sack in the Star Cave. Men have to gather it,--the little store they possess is soon crystallised into hardness by Reason,--but women have enough in themselves usually to last a lifetime. They are born with it.'
'Mine crystallised long ago, I fear.'
'Care and anxiety did that. You neglected it a little. But your husband's cousin has cleaned the channels out. He does it unconsciously, but he does it. ”