JOURNAL / 1525
water of the river passing the slums of the town and under its bridges swallows shooting, blue and purple above and shewing their amber-tinged breasts reflected in the water, their flight unsteady with wagging wings and leaning first to one side then the other. Peewits flying. Towards sunset the sky partly swept, as often, with moist white cloud, tailing off across which are morsels of grey-black woolly clouds. Sun seemed to make a bright liquid hole in this, its texture had an upward northerly sweep or drift from the W, marked softly in grey. Dog violets. Eastward after sunset range of clouds rising in bulky heads moulded softly in tufts or bunches of snow?so it looks?and membered somewhat elaborately, rose-coloured. Notice often imperfect fairy rings. Apple and other fruit trees blossomed beautifully.
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Feb.?1870. One day in the Long Retreat (which ended on Xmas Day) they were reading in the refectory Sister Emmerich's account3 of the Agony in the Garden4 and I suddenly began to cry and sob and could not stop. I put it down for this reason, that if I had been asked a minute beforehand I should have said that nothing of the sort was going to happen and even when it did I stood in a manner wondering at myself not seeing in my reason the traces of an adequate cause for such strong emotion?the traces of it I say because of course the cause in itself is adequate for the sorrow of a lifetime. I remember much the same thing on Maundy Thursday when the presanctified Host5 was carried to the sacristy. But neither the weight nor the stress of sorrow, that is to say of the thing which should cause sorrow, by themselves move us or bring the tears as a sharp knife does not cut for being pressed as long as it is pressed without any shaking of the hand but there is always one touch, something striking sideways and unlooked for, which in both cases undoes resistance and pierces, and this may be so delicate that the pathos seems to have gone directly to the body and cleared the understanding in its passage. On the other hand the pathetic touch by itself, as in dramatic pathos, will only draw slight tears if its matter is not important or not of import to us, the strong emotion coming from a force which was gathered before it was discharged: in this way a knife may pierce the flesh which it had happened only to graze and only grazing will go no deeper.
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May 18 [1870].?Great brilliancy and projection: the eye seemed to fall perpendicular from level to level along our trees, the nearer and further Park; all things hitting the sense with double but direct instress. 4 * *
This was later. One day when the bluebells were in bloom I wrote the following. I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it. It[s inscape] is [mixed of] strength and grace, like an ash [tree]. The head is strongly drawn over [backwards] and arched down like a cutwater6 [drawing itself back from the line of the keel.] The lines of the bells strike and overlie this, rayed but not symmetrically, some lie parallel. They look steely against [the] paper, the shades lying between the bells and behind the cockled petal
3. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ; 5. The bread wafer sanctified for Holy Communfrom the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, ion. 'Maundy Thursday': the Thursday before an Augustinian nun (1774?1824). Easter, day of the Last Supper. 4. Luke 22.39-44. 6. The forward edge of a ship's prow.
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ends and nursing up the precision of their distinctness, the petal-ends themselves being delicately lit. Then there is the straightness of the trumpets in the bells softened by the slight entasis7 and [by] the square splay of the mouth. One bell, the lowest, some way detached and carried on a longer footstalk, touched out with the tips of the petals on oval / not like the rest in a plane perpendicular of the axis of the bell but a little atilt, and so with [the] squarein- rounding turns of the petals.
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Aug. 10 [1872].?I was looking at high waves. The breakers always are parallel to the coast and shape themselves to it except where the curve is sharp however the wind blows. They are rolled out by the shallowing shore just as a piece of putty between the palms whatever its shape runs into a long roll. The slant ruck8 or crease one sees in them shows the way of the wind. The regularity of the barrels surprised and charmed the eye; the edge behind the comb or crest was as smooth and bright as glass. It may be noticed to be green behind and silver white in front: the silver marks where the air begins, the pure white is foam, the green / solid water. Then looked at to the right or left they are scrolled over like mouldboards9 or feathers or jibsails seen by the edge. It is pretty to see the hollow of the barrel disappearing as the white combs on each side run along the wave gaining ground till the two meet at a pitch and crush and overlap each other.
About all the turns of the scaping from the break and flooding of wave to its run out again I have not yet satisfied myself. The shores are swimming and the eyes have before them a region of milky surf but it is hard for them to unpack the huddling and gnarls of the water and law out the shapes and the sequence of the running: I catch however the looped or forked wisp made by every big pebble the backwater runs over?if it were clear and smooth there would be a network from their overlapping, such as can in fact be seen on smooth sand after the tide is out?; then I saw it run browner, the foam dwindling and twitched into long chains of suds, while the strength of the back-draught shrugged the stones together and clocked them one against another.
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7. Outward curvature. 9. Curved iron plates attached to plowshares. 8. Fold or crease.
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Li ^kt Verse
The Victorian era produced a remarkable outburst of humorous prose and verse from the time of Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers (1836?37) at the beginning of the period to the operas of W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan near the end. The following selections provide examples of two varieties of Victorian light verse. One, represented by Gilbert, makes lighthearted mockery of institutions such as the Court of Chancery and marriage, as well as prevalent cultural trends and styles. This burlesque mode, employed to poke fun at a host of social and political issues and figures, can also be found in the pages of Punch, a humorous and satirical magazine that began publication in
1841. Although exaggeration and absurdity are important ingredients in these writings, the comic worlds they create are still recognizably related to the ordinary world.
The other variety is a more distinctive Victorian specialty, nonsense writing, represented here by compositions by Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Originally intended for children, these playful writings have often been equally relished by adults. In the twentieth century Carroll's Alice books in particular proved especially attractive to psychoanalytically minded readers; those interested in literary parody, philosophical speculation, and linguistic and mathematical puzzles also found them an absorbing, as well as an amusing, study. Whatever critical
