Paradiso

“ These gods, like men, require an abode. In the later stages of culture this abode is a Paradise on some more or less imaginary mountain-top, or effectually cut off from men by the magical tempests of the immeasurable main, or by the supreme and silent heights of heaven. But this exaltation of ideas took long to reach. At first a strange rock, a fountain, the recesses of a cavern, or the mysterious depths of the forest, enshrouded the divinity. ”

“ A PARADISE SONG
THE day was hot, the way was long, the feet were tired, so tired;
The goal is won toward which we strove, the goal so long desired,
The eyes which sought the distant hope through wavering mists of care,
See it at last, oh close, so close in Paradise the Fair.
The black, black night through which we groped is turned to radiant day,
The doubt to certainty more glad than song or speech can say;
The baffling winds which buffeted beyond our strength to bear,
Blew us along the blessed way to Paradise the Fair. ”

“ For the charming legend of Paradise was to many Christian minds of this time what the long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had been to the Hellenic poets and the Roman elegist--the theme of much vivid imagery and highly-coloured word-painting.
Eternal spring softens the air, a healing flame floods the world with light, all the elements glow in healing warmth; as the shades of night fade, day rises.... ”

“ In fact, to us, fresh from sand and sea and “sleeping-sickness,” it was Paradise. And I said so to Du Toit as we off-saddled for a bite at midday, knee-haltering our ponies and taking our snack under the shade of a big mimosa. I said to him, “Let’s stop here! Anyway, if we find diamonds or tin, let’s stop here! What can we want more? Green trees, birds, flowers, grass, shade for the seeking, water for the digging! This is Paradise, and it’s good enough for me. ”

“ An earthly sunset told?
Hark! like a holy bell
Over that spirit Sea,
Time, in the world it loves so well,
Tolls for Eternity.
Earth calls us once again,
And, through the mystic Gleam,
The grey old City of mortal pain
Dawns on the heavenly dream.
Sweet as the voice of birds
At dawn, the years return,
With little songs and sacred words
Of human hearts that yearn.
The sweet same waves resound
Along our earthly shore;
But now this earth we lost and found
Is heaven for evermore. ”

“ Amidst these numerous specimens of delightful scenery I found a mount for contemplation, and here I indulged it. “How much of the natural beauties of Paradise still remain in the world, although its spiritual character has been so awfully defaced by sin! But when divine grace renews the heart of the fallen sinner, Paradise is regained, and much of its beauty restored to the soul. As this prospect is compounded of hill and dale, land and sea, woods and plains, all sweetly blended together, and relieving each other in the landscape ”

“ Whilst outside, the frozen wind, laden with rain and hail, was still blowing, the fine season, in The Paradise galleries, was already budding forth with the light stuffs, the flowery brilliancy of the tender shades, the rural gaiety of the summer dresses and the parasols. ”

“ They sail away, and reach the Kingdom of Dreams. This is where Heaven and Earth come together, the gates of Paradise standing alongside the entrance to Hell. This land is the location of the Gardens of the Sun, where the Sun returns at dusk and rests at night before setting off each morning. Under the protection of the Sons of the Gods and the Daughters of the Sun they stay in the pleasant Kingdom of Dreams for some time, but eventually set off again. ”

“ Or enchanted silent fountains of a Persian Paradise.
There are beech and birch and elm-tree—evening-still or
morning-tossed—
And the splendid generous chestnuts with their flame-like
blooms embossed,
There are oak and ash and elder, till the very sun is lost
In the green, delicious gloaming that's the light of Paradise.
Deeper, wider, steadier this beauty ever grows,
And from field-side up to tree-top the endless colour flows,
Till road and house and wayside, in the first days of the rose,
Are fathoms deep in waves of green, submerged in Paradise. ”

“ Paradise is the universal headquarters of all personality activities and the source-center of all force-space and energy manifestations. Everything which has been, now is, or is yet to be, has come, now comes, or will come forth from this central abiding place of the eternal Gods. Paradise is the center of all creation, the source of all energies, and the place of primal origin of all personalities. ”

“ The vision of these companions, as bright as stars, and as many in number, is so attractive, and so engrossing, that all other thoughts of Paradise die out of the mind and heart by the side of it. It is enough. It is Paradise. And if so, then the houris of earth are the Paradise of earth. ”

“ Around such chill mockery of a fire some few of us might sit on the withered leaves, spreading out each a palm towards the imaginary warmth, and talk over our exploded scheme for beginning the life of Paradise anew.
Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, I am bold to affirm—nobody, at least, in our bleak little world of New England,—had dreamed of Paradise that day except as the pole suggests the tropic. Nor, with such materials as were at hand, could the most skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of Eve's bower than might be seen in the snow hut of an Esquimaux. ”

“ Daylight chases away this illusion, but brings back the reality of Christian work, whose rugged but cheerful tasks replace the delicious but ineffectual dreams of Paradise Lost, by the hope of contributing, in some humble measure, toward restoring in a province of fallen earth the lineaments of Paradise Regained. ”

“ I cannot imagine paradise in any other form; and if God wills that I shall go there after my death, he will build me a little kiosk on that plan in the corner of some star.—Paradise as it is commonly described seems to me far too musical, and I confess in all humility that I am absolutely incapable of sitting through a sonata that should last only ten thousand years. ”

“ For a few days—a week or so, perhaps—the contemplation of them would be restful. You would lie about on the sands and in the sunshine and believe that you had found Paradise. And then I think that you would begin to get just a little discontented. The sun doesn't always shine here, you know, and when the sun doesn't shine, all the land is colorless. The sea is gray and ugly, the marshes are flat and dreary, the wind, even in the summer time, is cold. ”

“ And the blessed Petarpemôtîs once related to the brethren a story of how, on one occasion when he had gone out from the desert, he saw in his dream as if he had been taken up into heaven, and he saw there the good things that were prepared for the monks, and that the mouth of man could not describe, and that could not be uttered thereby. And he also said, “I saw Paradise with the eyes of this body, and I saw there the many multitudes of the saints, and I tasted the fruits of Paradise.” ”

“ Others expound it differently, but all agree that in Paradise is the deep rooted Tree of life, and the Tree of Knowledge whereby good and evil are discerned, the other trees also, full of vigor, and life, endued both with breath and reason. Wherefore we conclude that the real Paradise is no earthly one which can be seen; that it is placed in no spot of ground, but in the highest part of our own nature, which receives animation and life from the powers of the soul, and from the communication of the Spirit of God. ”

“ When you read “Paradise Lost” the feeling you have is one of vastness. You float under a great sky brimmed with sunshine, or hung with constellations; the abyss of space is around you; thunders mutter on the horizon ”

“ His Spirit gave him gently an answer, saying; it is Paradise that lieth so far in the East, the garden that God himself hath planted with all manner of pleasure, and the fiery stream that thou seest, is the walls or defence of the garden, but that clear light that thou seest so far off, is the Angel that hath the custody thereof, with a fiery sword: and although that thou thinkest thyself to be hard by, thou hast yet farther thither from hence, than thou hast ever been: the water that thou seest divided in four parts, is the water that issueth out of the Well in the middle of Paradise. ”

“ In Bible vignettes of the eighteenth century, Paradise—which is the archetype of the virgin splendor of nature—is depicted as a flat tiresome garden entirely without elevations of any kind, in which the dear God has already begun to correct his own handiwork, and with the shears of a French gardener has carved out from the clumps of trees, straight avenues, pyramids, and the like. ”

“ His faithful, and receive them into bliss,
Whether in Heaven or Earth; for then the Earth
Shall all be Paradise, far happier place
Than this of Eden, and far happier days.
So spake the Arch-Angel Michael; then paused,
As at the world’s great period; and our sire,
Replete with joy and wonder, thus replied.
O Goodness infinite, Goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! ”

“ There are scenes—only momentary—so near Paradise—sights, so nearly angelic, that they touch us with a mysterious ecstasy and sorrow. In the glory and translation of the moment, the feeling of its transitoriness, and the sense of our mortal lot, cross and thrill us with a strange pain, like the anguish that mingles in the rapture of sublime music. ”

“ When such angels and mortals of time attain the presence of the Powers of Paradise, there occurs the expression of the accumulated emotions of the ages, a spectacle astounding to the angels of Paradise and productive of the supreme joy of divine satisfaction in the Paradise Deities. ”

“ It is a Heaven descended upon earth, as if the finger of God had planted the garden with trees and fruits and flowers, and his hand had watered it! One fault only can be found by the critical eye. Perhaps the scene is too flat. If the ‘verdurous wall of Paradise’ had upreared itself behind our first parents, it would have closed them in more completely, and would have given effect to the blue hills that gleam enchantment in the distance. ”

“ Paradise especially with a quite Dantesque sensibility to coloured light—physical light or spiritual, you can hardly tell which, so perfectly is the inward sense blent with its visible counter-part, reminding one forcibly of the Divine Comedy, of which those closing pages of The Republic suggest an early outline. ”

“ The shadows of the tall churches grew longer and longer, until they touched the horizon and mingled in the universal shadow; and then, slow, and soft, and wrapping the world in fold after fold of deepening blue, came the night—the night at first obscurely simple, and then with faint points here and there, and then jewelled in darkling splendour with a hundred thousand lights. ”

“ She walked round the path, looking at it all, so glad that she had come, smiling—a child in fairyland, or a spirit arrived in Paradise and finding it strange yet familiar—as Paradise should be. Perhaps, she thought, dying would be like that: a stepping out from the darkness into something vast and solemn that would slowly gather about one into well-known and transfigured shapes, into white pansies growing thickly at one’s feet. ”

“ And dwell there all my life—
With cherubim and seraphim
And holy souls of men,
To sing Thy praise, O God of hosts!
Forever and amen!
ANONYMOUS. * * * * *
PARADISE. O Paradise, O Paradise,
Who doth not crave for rest,
Who would not seek the happy land
Where they that loved are blest?
Where loyal hearts and true
Stand ever in the light,
All rapture through and through,
In God's most holy sight.
O Paradise, O Paradise,
The world is growing old;
Who would not be at rest and free
Where love is never cold? ”

“ But in order to be saved, to go to heaven—an imaginary abode in the atmosphere, a sort of ethereal paradise in the upper strata of the air that surrounds this globe, either with or without sunlight—in order to get one up there some clown of a priest will mumble off masses, a sort of ribald fustian composition that will raise your spirit or your soul right up into the pure upper strata of this terrestrial atmospheric crust. ”

“ Our passion is a secret Paradise—
Eden of lotos and the fruitful date,
With silence walled and held undesecrate
By man or prying seraph: We are wise
As any god and goddess, who have wrung
From roseal fruitage of a bough forbidden,
The happy wine we drink, we drink unchidden,
Deep in the vales where vernal leaves are young ”

“ Who prevents its dark 2 forests, ghostly and uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing the hills with frail-floretted snow, far away to the half-lighted horizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered food? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and all the animals were gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. ”

“ Suffice it, that by his lucid statements, and by changing the position of objects and lights, and by allowing me to feel the several objects and even his own sacred Person, he at last made all things clear to me, so that I could now readily distinguish between a Circle and a Sphere, a Plane Figure and a Solid.
This was the Climax, the Paradise, of my strange eventful History. Henceforth I have to relate the story of my miserable Fall:—most miserable, yet surely most undeserved! For why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? ”