Arthur Machen

“ Here at Lupton, in school and in the playing-fields, in our sports and in our studies, each action is of eternal import, each action forms part of that character which will be our ever lasting possession. ”

“ Many of the boys, taking the Doctor's solemn warnings to heart, had already made friends who would be useful in later life—useful, that is, in forwarding them in their desire to Do some Good in the World. ”

“ There is no one here whose gift of statesmanship will be exercised in concocting measures against the liberties of the people; there is no one whose military ability will be utilised in deeds of savage and remorseless oppression. ”

“ How was it that he had not been ruined utterly, that he had not become a "practical" man, longing for the time when he should be able to do some great work in the world—say, by sitting in the House of Commons? ”

“ One knew better, perhaps—one had been vouchsafed sure proofs from within and from without; and yet it was so entirely natural to believe that man is sustained by loaves from the baker and meat from the butcher, and to take one's measures accordingly. ”

“ There were lads of his own age who were already bubbling over with enthusiasm in the cause of Humanity, who were already beginning to count the rewards that really earnest, disinterested work for one's fellow-men seldom fails to procure ”

“ Michael the Archangel—a strange, riven height, venerated by the people before the coming of the "Black Hag of Geneva, who sends body and soul quick to hell." Here, they said, in the old days those who knew would sometimes go apart, climbing the red height till they came to the Chapel of the Archangel, a very small and ancient place, of which the foundations still remained, standing in a thick wood of ash-trees. ”

“ The Hazel boasts that its boughs are the "quire of the birds of God," the Wych-elm of its potency in magic, the Oak has borne sway from all ages, the White Thorn is the "shining house of Merlin," the Yew has "an honourable station near the altars of the saints"; and so the poem ranges through all the trees of the wood, till the Ash triumphs ”

“ This observance, it has been said, furnishes the explanation of the curious poem by Morvran called "The Sovereignty of the Ash." Ambrose, as he gazed up towards the mountain, could see the wood, the boughs of the ash-trees tossing in the wind, and he remembered the poem, a strange piece of metrical ingenuity in the original, which had served as a model to many generations of bards, though none had ever equalled it in the complexity of its structure. ”