Loaves of bread...
honey in the honeycomb...
summer haystacks...
the flames of candles...
the flight of birds...
the darting of shoals of fish...
the shadows of clouds...
the rising and sinking of the sun...
old buildings, old rituals, old mythologies...
the annual procession of the seasons...
weeds and shells at the ocean’s edge,
wet pebbles and the thin black windrow...
rain on roofs...
thunder on horizons...
murmuring of brooks, sweetness of grass...
sadness of stirred leaves...
the deep symbolic meaning of such objects as a plough, a sword, a grindstone a windmill, a boat, a cradle, a coffin...
the friendliness of wind-tossed smoke, arising from hearth or chimney...
the forlornness of swaying reed-tops above lonely salt-marshes...
the warmth of sun-scented leaf-mould...
the horns of goats, the spouting of whales...
frost marks in ditch-mud...
vapor-circles round misty moons...
rivers and highways that carry old legends, old memories, old tragic transactions into the unborn future…
All these things and the emanations proceeding from these things, possess some mysterious quality in common; and it would seem that this quality cannot be named by any other name than that of the poetical element in life.
John Cowper Powys
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