H. B. Marriott Watson

“ Earth has no trial, hell has no torture, ruthless enough to inflict upon this fabric. Fragile, weak, perishable, sensitive of all, it stands subjective to the wild hand of Nature, piteous, unpitied, terrible, undeterred, supreme still over its vehement adversaries, indefatigable, steadfast, tolerant, and debonair, prolific and populous, the most eminent and sanest apparition upon the whole globe. ”

“ Erect from a trivial foundation, framed of a mysterious stuff unknown, insecure, desperately resolute, fulfilled of gay bravery, obnoxious to all general vicissitudes, it fronts the baser principalities of earth, unbending, unafraid. In its passage out of the void its home into the void its bourne, it holds a brief tenure of the world, the mark of multiform and multitudinous antagonists. ”

“ Pallid and frail, composite of vain and sluggish elements that blow about a windy world, it has uprisen to such a glory, has touched such an eminence, has assumed so fine a property, that now it moves the noblest visibility on earth. ”

“ We have no right to make exact comparisons; doubtless we are gone astray with the body in which we lie, our close and narrow prison-house, our exigent and sleepless tyrant. I would have you to reflect how ceaseless is its vigilance, how distressing its penalties, and, recalling .the long slavery of our fathers, to stay your denunciation of the habit in ourselves. ”

“ We are its subject and its debtor; we are its contemptuous over-lord. Here have we our home appointed us: herein we watch its growth, its lapses, its wayward courses, its eccentric, unlovely, and most horrid humours; and when it fails we fail in synchronism, clinging to it in despair, calling upon it as ourself, mournful and disconsolate, shamelessly tenacious of it, fain to grope a way from out it, all ungrateful for its hospitable sanctuary, weeping and praying for an immortality this thing has never craved. ”

“ The iron mould, growing ever more rigid, held in its core that nobler part incarcerate. And this iron flesh, our kind and goodly servitor, at once our gaoler and our bodyguard, is the blind subject of its own strict laws; which we too thus come to follow and obey. And this body which is death is the sole vehicle of life. ”

“ Surely therein the image of God was come to dishonourable uses, his trust betrayed, his hopes foregone, his faith shipwrecked, his pride swallowed in abysmal degradation. But soon the facile-growing body would outlap the soul ”

“ All the coarse and stridulous creatures of inferior creation come out against it, arrayed as one to lay it in its kindred ashes. All evils have their way with it; day by day and year by year a myriad demons claw and fret it. ”

“ Twin with the spirit in being, it battles ceaselessly for the lordship: now the slave and abject, now the imperial taskmaster. Dumb, blind, insensate, it yet lends eyes, ears, and intellectual vision to the soul. It is a clog, a heavy burden to trail us in the mire, turning to clay its own inhabitant ”

“ Thus tenaciously existent it endures, the keeper of that superior soul that is ourself. And, derivative of earth, while still our guardian, it smacks yet of its own lowly constituents. By it we have our being—this is its finest service—and with it we are ever in tumultuous war. From end to end of its swift course it is ever in our bonds and we in its ”