Heart of stone

“ It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble, and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine. ”

“ Oh, folks! Oh, folks! yourselves of stones,
My heart take, with grief raving,
And what I have not sung before
Use for the stone’s engraving!
You trusted not in my pure love
And scorned my word and letter—
Now if the stone will speak to you,
You’ll understand it better. ”

“ Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone under his foot has, for carelessness, nothing in it but stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart, and the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any other lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. ”

“ But since men see more with the eyes than soul,
Still I in stone shall utter this great dole;
Still, eager that men hunger by thy presence,
I shall to marble carry this regret
That in my heart like a great star is set.
Thus, even in stone, our love shall stand so great
In thy statue of us, like a god's fate,
Our love's incarnate and discarnate essence,
That, like a trumpet reaching over seas
And going from continent to continent,
Our love shall speak its joy and woe, death-blent,
Over infinities and eternities. ”

“ For the romance of that journey, it concerned only the man and woman to whom it was as wine and meat to the starving. Is not love more than legend, and a human heart than all the beasts of the field or any joy of slaughter?
THE STONE The Stone hung on a jutting crag of Purple Hill. On one side of it, far beneath, lay the village, huddled together as if, through being close compacted, its handful of humanity should not be a mere dust in the balance beside Nature's portentousness. ”

“ No doubt the men who first balanced one stone over two others must have looked with astonishment at the work of their hands, and have worshiped the stones they had set up. This element of mystical wonder and awe lasted long through the ages, and is still felt when work is done in the old way by keeping close to nature, necessity, and faith. From the first, ideas of sacredness, of sacrifice, of ritual rightness, of magic stability, of likeness to the universe, of perfection of form and proportion glowed in the heart of the builder, and guided his arm. ”

“ And all about me weeping, sighs,
⁠Lamenting, rose and fell.
How queerly they prepared your bed;
⁠With stone upon your grave.
They asked me that I write a verse
⁠For you there to engrave.
O people, people made of stone
⁠Here, take my heart instead. ”

“ He will take away this heart of stone out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. He will keep your heart securely for you, if you will only give it fully to Him.
Questions.—Does the stone have any feeling? Are our natural hearts like a stone? Can a human heart that is insensible like a stone be conscious of God's love? Who offers to give us a heart that will be conscious of God's love? Who wrote the book picturing the human heart like a city? Who is trying to capture this city? Through what gates does Satan try to enter? ”

“ And in looking on that shattered rock—fallen from its primeval elevation—with its flowery but fatal charms, the home and nest of the adder, where nothing grew but poisoned beauty, and nothing dwelt but a poisoned brood, it seemed to us an emblem of that heart which the text describes as a stone, which experience proves is a habitation of devils, and which the prophet pronounces to be desperately wicked. I have already explained why the heart is described as a stone. It is cold as a stone; hard as a stone ”

“ I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown. ”

“ Just think! some night the stars will gleam Upon a cold, grey stone, And trace a name with silver beam, And lo! 'twill be your own. That night is speeding on to greet Your epitaphic rhyme. Your life is but a little beat Within the heart of Time. A little gain, a little pain, A laugh, lest you may moan; A little blame, a little fame, A star-gleam on a stone.
The Lunger
Jack would laugh an' joke all day ”

“ And ah! wise Age, experienced and deep, where Youth is all untaught, and Prime but a little more scholar-wise, and Middle Age but a beginner at the book.... For you Love is the jewel in the matrix of the stone; the sacred lamp that burns unquenched within the sealed-up sepulcher; the flame that glows in the heart’s core the more hotly that snows of years lie on the head, and the icy blood creeps sluggishly through the clogged arteries; the sustenance and provender and nourishment of Life no less than the hope that smiles dauntlessly in the face of Death. ”

“ Now this rock is a human soul, hardened on account of its negligence, and converted to stone because of its wickedness; for no one receives from God a heart created of stone, but it becomes such in consequence of wickedness. ”

“ The fountain-head and spring of life!
Sing, steady, exultant walls, in strains hallowed and touched with
fire,
Sing that the Lord shall build us all together.
As living stones build us, cemented together.
May He who knoweth every pleasant thing
That our sires forewent to teach the peoples law and truth,
Who counted every stone blessed by their consecrated hands,
Grant that we remain liberty-loving, substantial, elemental,
And that faith, the rock not fashioned of human hands,
Be the stability of our triumphant, toiling days. ”

“ No, my heart is turn'd to stone: I strike it, and it hurts my hand. ”

“ Howbeit, because it were neither right nor honesty, that any man should look for more than he deserveth, I will that all the world wit it on the other side, that whoso be so deeply grounded in malice, to the harm of his own soul, and other men’s too, and so set upon the sowing of seditious heresies, that no good means that men may use unto him can pull that malicious folly out of his poisoned, proud, obstinate heart, I would rather be content that he were gone in time, than overlong to tarry to the destruction of other. ”

“ But if, in the midnight of sorrow, God reveal Himself to us as He revealed Himself to the patriarch, even that stone will become to us as a Bethel. Does it bear the dear name of our dead—no, rather a name that is written, we trust, in God's Book of Life! Above the stone rises the ladder of light; its foot may rest in the grave, but its summit is hidden in the radiance of Heaven. ”

“ I shall be set free from the stone
If some one drowns for me in the sea,
I shall have life, life of my own,—
For life I ache.
I long for the singing blood,
The stone is so still and cold.
I dream of life, life is good. ”

“ The story without a suspicion of rhyme, And dim with the mists of the morning of Time, Is told of a goddess, who, wandering alone, Did go and sit down on the Sorrowful Stone. We find our Gethsemane somewhere, though late; The Angel of Shadows throws open the gate. We creep with our burden of pain, to atone, For all of life's ills, to the Sorrowful Stone. Above is the vault of the pitiless stars; The trees stretch their arms all blackened with scars; The gales of lost Paradise are faintly blown To where we sit down on the Sorrowful Stone. ”

“ Then a spring of hope like the sparkle of a star flashed into the clouding of my mind, for this is the stone [1] which we call the 'Eye of God.' It is stronger and keener of edge than any flint, luckier to man than mother's milk, and harder than steel of the Genoese. ”

“ Only your whole soul is full of worship, peace, and joy. I could hardly keep from falling on my knees. Look at the fine engravings, and study it all out as well as you can; still you can form no adequate idea of the effect of those endless arches, of the exquisite carving in stone, of the flowers, strange figures, and in short every wild, every grotesque thing that you can or cannot imagine. Well has it been called a great poem in stone,—such grace, such aspiration, such power, such harmony. ”

“ The world has no greater thing; if any one have this with him he will be given whatever he asks for; it also assuages the wrath of kings and despots, and whatever the wearer says will be believed. Whoever bears this stone, which is a gem, and pronounces the name engraved upon it, will find all doors open, while bonds and stone walls will be rent asunder.56
Carbuncle
The carbuncle was recommended as a heart stimulant ”

“ The prize is winning Christ, and in Christ Jesus is all the Godhead bodily, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is the crown which is immortal, eternal and full of glory. Truly I was full of the Holy Ghost, entered into the holy city and had right to the tree of life, which the leaves thereof are for the healing of the nations. Holiness belongs to the heart, not to days, months, or years. The people of God are to be the holy in all their actions and thoughts; they are saved from following sin by having the spirit of Christ.
Christian reader, I know you must read this with mingled emotions ”

“ Or you, who unveil from its marble tomb that figure of a chained and stainless woman, whose atmosphere is as a nun's veil, whose sad divinity is a crown,—do you dare imagine that the holy despair you have imaged, the pause of a saint's resignation and a martyr's courage, is but the outline and the faultless contour of a stone? ”

“ If we fancy that this or the other rock or this or the other tree is gazing at us like a gigantic being with thoughtful earnest eyes, so again, on the other hand, this or the other group of fantastically attired men resembles some remarkable stone which has been endowed with life; all Nature, breathing and moving in harmonious unity, lends accents to the sublime thought which leapt into existence in your mind. ”

“ Therefore, All's Well, my delightful All's Well, let us talk no more of the dreadful adventure. But all the same let us recall certain episodes which were beautiful and picturesque. For instance, Maguennoc's garden with the gigantic flowers; you will remember it as I shall, won't you, All's Well? And the legend of the God-Stone, the idyll of the Celtic tribes wandering with the memorial stone of their kings, the stone all vibrant with radium, emitting an incessant bombardment of vivifying and miraculous atoms; all that, All's Well, possesses a certain charm, doesn't it? ”

“ Heavenly spirits heaved the aged stone from the gloomy grave; angels sat by the slumberer, bodied forth, in delicate forms, from his dreams. Waking in new God-glories, he clomb the height of the new-born world ”

“ The marble is pliant at her magic touch, and seems to breathe a pious life. The chiselled stone is instinct with a living soul, and stands there, silent, yet full of hymns and prayers; an embodied aspiration, a thought with wings that mock at space and time. ”

“ Every stone I touch is angry, and keeps talking to me and upbraiding me. The voices I hear are the voices of all the stones I have ever worked with in my life. But they needn’t fret themselves. The end will surprise even them. ”

“ With all his art and knowledge he had now
Portrayed the suffering Savior's image there—
Yet could the marble not with life endow.
He could not make it live, for all his care—
What is not flesh knows not to suffer pain;
Cold stone can none but stone's cold likeness bear.
Beauty and due proportion though it gain,
The chisel's marks will never disappear
And nature wake, howe'er his prayer may strain:
"Ah, turn not from me, Nature! ”

“ The earth cried out for labor, and they gave it.
But ever as they saw the budding spring,
Ever as they cleared the stubborn field,
Ever as they piled the heavy stones,
In mystic vision they saw, the eternal spring;
They raised their hardened hands above the earth,
And beheld the walls that are not built of stone,
The portals opened by angels whose garments are of light ”

“ On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in the sight of a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it aside in some, to him, sacred place, and believe the stone itself to be a kind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it. ”

“ To gaze in other lands,"
bend not upon us, living and loving mortals, that stony stare of death,—lest we too, as smit with the basilisk, be turned into monumental stone, and all the dear grace and movement of life be lost forever! ”

“ This dream of stone enters into the soul and sinks into it, into the innermost depths of it, into the soul’s soul, into what is innermost in the soul itself, and it bears our soul along with it into the underlying substance of all souls, fugitive waves submerged in the sea of souls. ”

“ Oh, how little we know of the depths of the ages gone, how wide, how profound and deep is the knowledge we seek; a monument of stone, a stone bowl, a broken symbol, a hallowed unknown spot, a lodge of ruins, all this makes a golden page glittering with diamonds that trills the emotions with mysterious longings for truth and light in the depths unknown. ”

“ A beam from the everlasting sun of God.
Rude and unresponsive are the stones;
Yet in them divine things lie concealed;
I hear their imprisoned chant:—
"We are fragments of the universe,
Chips of the rock whereon God laid the foundation of the world:
Out of immemorial chaos He wrought us. ”