Albion Quotes

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

We become what we behold.

Knowledge is a burden--once taken up, it can never be discarded.

What makes you so certain?" "But I am not certain," I told him. "Nothing is certain. You want certainty?" "Yes!" "Then you want death.

The path is revealed in the treading.

There is so much more to this world then outward appearances. Our society basks in the illusion of normalcy every day, and hides from the truth every night.

To friends! Life belongs to those who love, and where love reigns is man truly king!

Unbelievers enjoy the security of their unbelief; there is great confidence in ignorance.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite & flatterer..

Arise you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy! Arise and drink your bliss, for every thing that lives is holy!

She smiled like a story entering the mind of a cat.

«Abbiamo sbagliato. Ma non puoi passare la vita aspettando di essere aiutato, guidato, o raccolto, se cadi. Perché provvedere a se stessi è una scelta e, mi dispiace, Marco, ma ci si salva da soli».

Ah I can see that.... You can see anything once you've been told it's there to see

The question is not: do we believe in God? but rather: does God believe in us? And the answer is: only an unbeliever could have created our image of God; and only a false God could be satisfied with it.

You look nice in those old slacks, but in the raw you are Beauty herself.

Tis long since I beheld that eye Which gave me bliss or misery; And I have striven, but in vain, Never to think of it again: For though I fly from Albion, I still can only love but one. As some lone bird, without a mate, My weary heart is desolate; I look around, and cannot trace One friendly smile or welcome face, And ev'n in crowds am still alone, Because I cannot love but one. And I will cross the whitening foam, And I will seek a foreign home; Till I forget a false fair face, I ne'er shall find a resting-place; My own dark thoughts I cannot shun, But ever love, and love but one.

The interesting thing about the New Albion was that it was so completely modern in spirit. There was hardly a soul in the firm who was not perfectly well aware that publicity - advertising - is the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced. In the red lead firm there had still lingered certain notions of commercial honour and usefulness. But such things would have been laughed at in the New Albion. Most of the employees were the hard-boiled, Americanized, go-getting type to whom nothing in the world is sacred, except money. They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket. And yet beneath their cynicism there was the final naivete, the blind worship of the money-god.

As I understand it, the Celts venerated all sorts of plexus-type things: the seashore, dawn, dusk, the edge of the forest - anything that was neither here nor there, so to speak.

Literature is what you write when you think you should be saying something. Writing begins when you'd rather be doing anything else: and you've just done it.

People," she sneered, "were not meant to be as happy as you make them." … "People were meant to be as happy as you make them.

They accumulate A world in which Man is by his nature the enemy of Man

Kingship wrought of Infinite worship, Quick-forged by the Swift Sure Hand; Bold in Righteousness, Valiant in Justice, A sword of honor to defend the clans of Albion!

It is the poor man who clenches so tightly to the gold he is given - for fear of losing it. The man of wealth spends his gold freely to accomplish his will in the world. It is the same with life.' Suddenly ashamed of my conspicuous poverty, I lowered my eyes. But Scatha placed a hand beneath my chin and raised my head. 'Cling too tightly to your life and you will lose it, my Reluctant Warrior. You must become the master of your life, not its slave.

Apart from pleasure, beauty also kindles imagination, hope and encouragement. If beauty ceased to exist, we would, in a very real sense, cease to exist--for we would be no longer who we are.

I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel.

It is right to pay heed to the stories of our people, for that is how we learn who we are and what is required of us in this life and the life beyond.

I want to buy me a hat with a golden feather & a book with the confessions of God in it

You will protect with the last drop of someone else's blood what was never yours.

I have forgotten my mask, and my face was int it.

I tell you the truth, a man may not make himself king; only the blessing of him who holds the kingship can elevate a man to that high place. For sovereignty is a sacred trust that may not be bartered or sold; still less may it be stolen or taken by force.

A king is a king, but a bard is the heart and soul of the people; he is their life in song, and the lamp which guides their steps along the paths of destiny. A bard is the essential spirit of the clan; he is the linking ring, the golden cord which unites the manifold ages of the clan, binding all that is past with all that is yet to come.

The question is not: do we believe in God? but rather: does God believe in us? And the answer is: only an unbeliever could have created our image of God: and only a fake God could be satisfied with it.

Wolsey sits with his elbows on his desk, his fingers dabbing his closed lids. He takes a great breath, and begins to talk: he begins to talk about England. You can’t know Albion, he says, unless you can go back before Albion was thought of. You must go back before Caesar’s legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground where one day London would be built. You must go back to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers; beside which, he says, the match with Anne looks less unusual. These are old stories, he says, but some people, let us remember, do believe them.

Siete fatti dello stesso materiale con cui si forgiano le leggende

People don't want to be healed. They want a nice juicy wound that will show well when they put neon lights around it.

Imagination, the real and eternal world of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow. What is the life of Man but Art and Science?

What is a 'thing'? All is movement, a flowing. How stupid it is to speak of the 'mind'. There is a body; there is a mind: they are mixed up together. Shakespeare with a hole in his sock will not write the sonnet of a Shakespeare with socks intact.

We call it Albion. It is the English-speaking world. The one where they kill babies in the womb, right?” And here I was hoping we’d be famous for the Moonshot, or democracy, or the Beatles, or something.

The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon "Grand Tours" of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship.

«Credimi, Marco, il finale di questa storia non può essere riscritto»

It is the kind of stoicism which had been seen as characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry, perhaps nowhere better expressed than in 'The Battle of Maldon' where the most famous Saxon or English cry has been rendered - 'Courage must be the firmer, heart the bolder, spirit must be the greater, as our strength grows less'. That combination of bravery and fatalism, endurance and understatement, is the defining mood of Arhurian legend.

Dear Mama, I am most certainly not dead. Thank you for your tender concern. I will try to write more often so you don’t have to worry so between letters. (Because a week’s silence surely means I have fallen prey to a wasting illness or been murdered in these boring, gray streets.) School is going well. I am excelling in all of my classes. (Apparently, some things never change, and girls are not challenged in Albion in the same way they weren’t on Melei.) My professors are all intelligent and kind. (Kind of horrible.) None stand out. (I refuse to mention him by name, no matter how many obviously “subtle” questions you ask.) The other students are also quite focused on their schooling, and none of us has much time for socializing. Boys and girls attend separate classes as well, so no, I have not met many interesting young men. (I am neither courting nor being courted. Please stop hoping.) Tell Aunt Li’ne thank you for the mittens. They are very much appreciated in this cold, damp climate I am so unused to. And please tell the sun hello and I miss her very much! I also miss you, of course. (I do. Very much.) All my love, Jessamin

The British are entitled always to mistrust other people but others are not entitled to mistrust the British. That is why England is known or was known abroad as 'Perfide Albion', because the British have two standards, one for themselves and one for other people.

That was on the pillar stone on Ynys Bainail," I said, indicating the carving. "What does it mean?" "It is Mor Cylch, the maze of life," Tegid told me. "It is trodden with just enough light to see the next step or two ahead, but not more. At each turn the soul must decide whether to journey on or whether to go back the way it came." "What if the soul does not journey on? What if it chooses to go back the way it came?" "Stagnation and death," replied Tegid with mild vehemence. He seemed irritated that anyone would consider retreating. "And if the soul travels on?" "It draws nearer its destination," the bard answered. "The ultimate destination of all souls is the Heart of the Heart.

The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, engenders a strange timelessness. It is as if the little bird which flew through the Anglo-Saxon banqueting hall, in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, gained the outer air and became the lark ascending in Vaughan Williams's orchestral setting. The unbroken chain is that of English music itself.

Flowers alternate with her eyes as we journey through these prodigal catacombs

To friends! Life belongs to those who love, and where love reigns is man truly king!

it has been observed that Londoners became more extravagant in the presence of Charles Dickens, so that they might appear more Dickensian, so

Knowledge is a burden – once taken up, it can never be discarded.

We never let go of a belief once fixed in our minds" quoted by an Appalachian women with an air of pride.' (This quote explains a lot about my family)

The shame – I shouldered The pain – I soldiered The fame – I'm over it Although the whole lot of you are sold on it

Everyone promised him that rural New Albion would be as cozy as a knit blanket, the people warmer than in the city and their bonds thicker.

It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion.

Mabel swallowed before continuing, not in a nervous way as Albion had, but more in the casual swagger of a cannibal speaking to dinner.

Lord. As Blake brought out so beautifully in his poem “Jerusalem”: “. . . Babel mocks, saying there is no God or Son of God; That Thou, O Human Imagination, O Divine Body of the Lord Jesus Christ art all A delusion; but I know Thee, O Lord, when Thou arisest upon My weary eyes, even in this dungeon and this iron mill. . . For Thou also sufferest with me, although I behold Thee not. . .” . . .And the Divine Voice answers: “. . . Fear not! Lo, I am with you always. Only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death Thy Brother who sleepeth in Albion.

Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift. which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man. is not so in the sight of our kind God.

The Albion was a spacious pub, built in the days when a public house with any pretensions to gentility had to have fourteen foot ceilings, brass taps and a polished wooden bar you skate down. ... Bert, in his reflective moments, considered that if heaven didn't have a well-appointed pub where a man could sit down over a beer for a yarn with the other angels, then he didn't want to go there.

Doesn’t private vice make a man unworthy of public office?” And now kindly Mrs. Albion looked at Mercy with genuine astonishment. “Well,” she laughed, “if it did, there’d be no one to govern the land.

Bitter the day of birth, for death is its companion. Yet, though life be cold and cruel, we are not without a last consolation. For to die in one world is to be born into another. Let all men hear and remember!

There are two kinds of Fools. The real Fool is the most sincere of mortals: the Court Fool and his kind—the trifling, jesting buffoon—but simulate the family virtue, and steal the family name, for sordid purposes.

Earth and sky, rock and wind, bear witness! By the power of the Swift Sure Hand, I claim this ground and sain it with a name: Bwgan Bwlch! Power of fire I have over it, Power of wind I have over it, Power of thunder I have over it, Power of wrath I have over it, Power of heavens I have over it, Power of earth I have over it, Power of worlds I have over it! As tramples the swan upon the lake, As tramples the horse upon the plain, As tramples the ox upon the meadow, As tramples the boar upon the track, As tramples the forest host of heart and hind, As tramples all quick things upon the earth, I do trample and subdue it, And drive all evil from it! In the name of the Secret One, In the name of the Living One, In the name of the All-Encircling One, In the name of the One True Word, it is Bwgan Bwlch, Let it so remain as long as men survive To breath the name.

I'm afraid you made a serious mistake today." "Sire?" "You proved yourself extraordinarily capable, Captain," Albion said. "I can hardly let something like that go unremarked." "I don't understand, sir," Grimm said, frowning. "Captain, your clarity of thought in the face of unexpected disaster is a rare quality. It's a poor reward for such heroism, but I'm afraid that I must insist upon continuing to use you for the good of my Spire.

This hostility to unnatural sex had a demographic consequence of high importance. Puritan moralists condemned as unnatural any attempt to prevent conception within marriage. This was not a common attitude in world history. Most primitive cultures have practiced some form of contraception, often with high success. Iroquois squaws made diaphragms of birchbark; African slaves used pessaries of elephant dung to prevent pregnancy. European women employed beeswax disks, cabbage leaves, spermicides of lead, whitewash and tar. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, coitus interruptus and the use of sheepgut condoms became widespread in Europe.14

This is a brave night to cool a courtezan. I'll speak a prophecy ere I go: When priests are more in word than matter; When brewers mar their malt with water; When nobles are their tailors' tutors; No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors; When every case in law is right; No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; When slanders do not live in tongues; Nor cutpurses come not to throngs; When usurers tell their gold i' the field; And bawds and whores do churches build; Then shall the realm of Albion Come to great confusion: Then comes the time, who lives to see't, That going shall be used with feet. This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.

Sexual intercourse was taboo on the Lord’s Day. The Puritans believed that children were born on the same day of the week as when they had been conceived. Unlucky infants who entered the world on the Sabbath were sometimes denied baptism because of their parents’ presumed sin in copulating on a Sunday. For many years Sudbury’s minister Israel Loring sternly refused to baptize children born on Sunday, until one terrible Sabbath when his own wife gave birth to twins!18 Altogether, the Puritans created a sabbatical rhythm of unique intensity in the time ways of their culture.19

Harlan that allowed them to reproduce in the New World the culture of honor they had created in the Old World. “To the first settlers, the American backcountry was a dangerous environment, just as the British borderlands had been,” the historian David Hackett Fischer writes in Albion’s Seed. Much of the southern highlands were “debatable lands” in the border sense of a contested territory without established government or the rule of law. The borderers were more at home

Many activities were forbidden on the Sabbath: work, play, and unnecessary travel. Even minor instances of Sabbath-breaking were punished with much severity. The Essex County Court indicted a man for carrying a burden on the Sabbath, and punished a woman for brewing on the Lord’s Day. When Ebenezer Taylor of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, fell into a forty-foot well, his rescuers stopped digging on Saturday afternoon while they debated whether it was lawful to rescue him on the Sabbath. Other

In 1907, Haber was the first to obtain nitrogen, the main nutrient required for plant growth, directly from the air. In this way, from one day to the next, he addressed the scarcity of fertilizer that threatened to unleash an unprecedented global famine at the beginning of the twentieth century. Had it not been for Haber, hundreds of millions of people who until then had depended on natural fertilizers such as guano and saltpetre for their crops would have died from lack of nourishment. In prior centuries, Europe’s insatiable hunger had driven bands of Englishmen as far as Egypt to despoil the tombs of the ancient pharaohs, in search not of gold, jewels or antiquities, but of the nitrogen contained in the bones of the thousands of slaves buried along with the Nile pharaohs, as sacrificial victims, to serve them even after their deaths. The English tomb raiders had exhausted the reserves in continental Europe; they dug up more than three million human skeletons, along with the bones of hundreds of thousands of dead horses that soldiers had ridden in the battles of Austerlitz, Leipzig and Waterloo, sending them by ship to the port of Hull in the north of England, where they were ground in the bone mills of Yorkshire to fertilize the verdant fields of Albion.

A letter from a French cleric to Nicholas of St. Albans, written c. 1178, rehearsed what was already a familiar perception: Your island is surrounded by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are affected by the nature of the element in which they live. Unsubstantial fantasies slide easily into their minds. They think their dreams to be visions, and their visions to be divine. We cannot blame them, for such is the nature of their land. I have often noticed that the English are greater dreams than the French.

Albion Park on a fierce spring morning. A mad March day of ice and fire. Thomas's feet beat a tattoo on the path. Every hair, every bristle on his chin stands on end. He is a small star-ship of blazing neurons- He is a librarian on his way to work, half-blind with sun and cold and memory.

Some people are straightforward. What you see is indeed what you get. Their words have no subtext and their hearts are open. Such individuals possess a naïveté which is both striking and humbling, and which inspires trust in others because these people are themselves trusting. They see life essentially through childlike eyes and, because of that, the more cynical members of the human race often consider them foolish and unsophisticated. Those more experienced in the ways of the world view them as easy marks, such stuff as the con-man’s wet dreams are made on. Straightforward people are very much in the minority, and in today’s world where idealism has become unfashionable and the concept of self-sacrifice unfathomable, they are in all likelihood an endangered species. For the rest of us, lying and deception is a necessary social skill. One we practice every day. Those – like myself – suckled at the breast of Perfidious Albion especially see the public expression of vulnerability as anathema. We harbour an abhorrence for emotional weakness; and we Brits are by no means the only ones. On a dog-eat-dog planet if you are to thrive, you have to be in control of yourself. Or at least appear to be.

threatened. As late as 1775, townsmen within twenty miles of the sea were urged to carry arms to church lest godless British raiding parties surprise them while at worship. After the service, the men left the meeting first—a regional folkway that continued long after its military origins had been forgotten.

The Otherworld does not supply the meaning of life. Rather, the Otherworld describes being alive. Life, in all its glory - warts and all, so to speak. The Otherworld provides meaning by example, by exhibition, by illustration if you will. ... Through the Otherworld we learn what it is be be alive, to be human: good and evil, heartbreak and ecstasy, victory and defeat, everything. ... where does one first learn loyalty? Or honor? Or any higher value, for that matter? ... Where does one learn to value the beauty of a forest and to revere it?' In nature?' Not at all. This can easily be proven by the fact that so many among us do not revere the forests at all - do not even see them, in fact. You know the people I am talking about. You have seen them and their works in the world. They are the ones who rape the land, who cut down forests and despoil oceans, who oppress the poor and tyrannize the helpless, who live their lives as if nothing lay beyond the horizon of their own limited earth-bound visions. But I digress. The question before us is this: where does one first learn to see a forest as a thing of beauty, to honor it, to hold it dear for its own sake, to recognize its true value as a forest, and not just see it as a source of timber to be exploited, or a barrier to be hacked down in order to make room for a motorway? ... the mere presence of the Otherworld kindles in us the spark of higher consciousness, or imagination. It is the stories and tale and visions of the Otherworld - that magical, enchanted land just beyond the walls of the manifest world - which awaken and expand in human beings the very notion of beauty, of reverence, of love and nobility, and all the higher virtues.

J. R. R. Tolkien, undisputedly a most fluent speaker of this language, was criticized in his day for indulging his juvenile whim of writing fantasy, which was then considered—as it still is in many quarters— an inferior form of literature and disdained as mere “escapism.” “Of course it is escapist,” he cried. “That is its glory! When a soldier is a prisoner of war it is his duty to escape—and take as many with him as he can.” He went on to explain, “The moneylenders, the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as possible.

Cercava colei che l’aveva chiamato. Era in quella foschia, ma non come un corpo estraneo, celato tra i vapori, piuttosto come un’entità che condivideva la sostanza stessa della nebbia. In quella ricerca il suo cuore batteva al ritmo di una necessità misteriosa. Sapeva di disperazione e di nostalgia, sebbene quel desiderio non avesse né volto né nome.

May God go with you on your journey, my wayfaring friends. A thousand angels go before you; a thousand prayers for your return. Peace! Good-night.

Wishing you the best adventures in reading and in life!

Kings come and go, but sovereignty remains. Kings are men, and men may fall to vice and corruption, but sovereignty is pure and undefiled at its source.

Knowledge is a burden—once taken up, it can never be discarded.

One of the few points of agreement between Anglican Virginians and Puritan New Englanders was their common loathing of Quakers.

To a modern mind, hegemonic liberty is an idea at war with itself.

American ideas of freedom developed from indigenous folkways which were deeply rooted in the inherited culture of the English-speaking world.

What is going to happen to the Aurorans?" "They are prisoners of war," Albion said. "I should imagine they will be set to work at the base of the Spire." Grimm tightened his jaw. "No, sir." "No?" "No, sir," Grimm said. "I've seen that place. You might as well tie a noose around their necks and stand them on blocks of ice, if you want them to die a slow death. It will be cleaner." "I'm not sure why this concerns you, Captain," Albion said. "Because they surrendered to me," Grimm said. "They gave me their parole, sir. They could have fought on with no real chance of victory, and it would have been bloody. But that surrender saved blood and lives of Albions and Aurorans alike. I will not see Captain Castillo repaid with such churlish treatment.

L’amicizia con Marco era qualcosa a cui non si era del tutto arreso. L’aveva rifiutata per troppo tempo, accettata con riserva, e una parte di lui ancora non si rassegnava all’evidenza che erano destinati a stare insieme. La loro amicizia era, in realtà, un atto di fede. Uno di quei dogmi che la logica degli atei avrebbe demolito in tre passaggi, ma in cui Deacon doveva credere.

Apart from pleasure, beauty also kindles imagination, hope, and encouragement. If beauty ceased to exist we would, in a very real sense, cease to exist – for we would no longer be who we are.

It is the poor man who clenches so tightly to the gold he is given—for fear of losing it. The man of wealth spends his gold freely to accomplish his will in the world. It is the same with life.

There was no heat in these buildings, partly because the earliest meetinghouses also served as powder magazines, and fires threatened to blow the entire congregation to smithereens. They were bitter cold in winter. Many tales were told of frozen communion bread, frostbitten fingers, baptisms performed with chunks of ice and entire congregations with chattering teeth that sounded like a field of crickets. It was a point of honor for the minister never to shorten a service merely because his audience was frozen. But sometimes the entire congregation would begin to stamp its feet to restore circulation until the biblical rebuke came crashing down upon them: “STAND STILL and consider the wonderous work of God.” Later generations built “nooning houses” or “sab-baday houses” near the church where the congregation could thaw out after the morning sermon and prepare for the long afternoon sermon to come. But unheated meetings remained a regional folkway for two hundred years.

This idea of collective liberty also was expressed in many bizarre obligations which New England towns collectively imposed upon their members. Eastham’s town meeting, for example, ordered that no single man could marry until he had killed six blackbirds or three crows. Every town book contained many such rules.4 The General Court also passed sweeping statutes which allowed the magistrates to suppress almost any act, by any means. One such law, for example, threatened that “if any man shall exceed the bounds of moderation, we shall punish him severely.” The definition of “exceeding the bounds of moderation” was left to the magistrate.

We will journey in hope, and trust the Swift Sure Hand to guide us.' 'A little guidance would not go amiss right now,' I confessed, gazing out at the trackless waste of hills and empty sky. 'Llew,' he said, 'we have ever been led.

«Mi creda, Marco, lei non ha fatto nulla di cui vergognarsi. Ma, se ha bisogno di liberarsi del suo fardello, allora io la assolvo, le lavo la coscienza. Però non pretenda mai di averne una immacolata. Lasci questa ambizione ai santi»

If I have learned anything in my time among you, it is this: true honor lives not in the skill of weapons or the strength of arms, but in virtue. Skill fades and strength fails; virtue alone remains. Therefore, let us put off all that is false. Let us prefer instead the valor of virtue, and the glory of right.

And I wondered if he knew how well, how naturally he led. Was it, in the end, so different leading men? Was it not much the same—picking out the trail, deciding the safest way, strengthening the unsure step with words of encouragement, guiding, going ahead, but not too far ahead—was not trailcraft much the same as kingcraft?

That case was not unique in the sexual history of New Haven. When a second deformed pig was born in that troubled town, another unfortunate eccentric was also accused of bestiality by his neighbors. Even though he could not be convicted under the two-witness rule, he was imprisoned longer than anybody else in the history of the colony. When yet a third defective piglet was born with one red eye and what appeared to be a penis growing out of its head, the magistrates compelled everyone in town to view it in hopes of catching the malefactor. The people of New Haven seem to have been perfectly obsessed by fear of unnatural sex. When a dog belonging to Nicholas Bayly was observed trying to copulate with a sow, neighbors urged that it be killed. Mrs. Bayly refused and incautiously made a joke of it, saying of her dog, “if he had not a bitch, he must have something.” The magistrates of New Haven were not amused. Merely for making light of bestiality, the Baylys were banished from the town.12

«Quello non sa cavarsela da solo. È l’erede di un re famoso per aver messo insieme un sacco di persone, perché evidentemente non ci saltava fuori. Dovrebbe baciarsi i gomiti perché siamo ancora qui al suo fianco, e rassegnarsi a fare quello che deve». Erek sospirò. «Mai sentito parlare di libero arbitrio, vero?» «Non se c’è di mezzo il destino»

He takes a great breath, and begins to talk: he begins to talk about England. You can’t know Albion, he says, unless you go back before Albion was thought of. You must go back before Caesar’s legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground where one day London would be built. You must go back to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers; besides which, he says, the match with Anne looks less unusual. These are old stories, he says, but some people, let us remember, do believe them.

I began to sense a momentous glory radiating from every form that met my eye- every limb and leaf, every blade of grass ablaze with the unutterable grandeur and majesty. And it seemed to me that the world I saw before me was merely an outward manifestation of a vastly powerful, deeply fundamental reality that existed just out of sight. I might not discern this veiled reality directly, but I could perceive its effects.

exchanging practically all the British infantry and artillery in India for Territorial batteries and battalions, and the formation of the 27th, 28th and 29th Divisions of regular troops. The New Zealand contingent must be escorted to Australia and there, with 25,000 Australians, await convoys to Europe. Meanwhile the leading troops of the Canadian Army, about 25,000 strong, had to be brought across the Atlantic. All this was of course additional to the main situation in the North Sea and to the continued flow of drafts, reinforcements and supplies across the Channel. Meanwhile the enemy’s Fleet remained intact, waiting, as we might think, its moment to strike; and his cruisers continued to prey upon the seas. To strengthen our cruiser forces we had already armed and commissioned twenty-four liners as auxiliary cruisers, and had armed defensively fifty-four merchantmen. Another forty suitable vessels were in preparation. In order to lighten the strain in the Indian Ocean and to liberate our light cruisers for their proper work of hunting down the enemy, I proposed the employment of our old battleships (Canopus class) as escorts to convoys. Besides employing these old battleships on convoy, we had also at the end of August sent three others abroad as rallying points for our cruisers in case a German heavy cruiser should break out: thus the Glory was sent to Halifax, the Albion to

With what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk? With what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse? With what sense does the bee form cells? have not the mouse & frog Eyes and ears and sense of touch? yet are their habitations And their pursuits as different as their forms and as their joys. Ask the wild ass why he refuses burdens, and the meek camel Why he loves man; is it because of the eye, ear, mouth, or skin, Or breathing nostrils? No, for these the wolf and tyger have. Ask the blind worm the secrets of the grave, and why her spires Love to curl round the bones of death; and ask the rav'nous snake Where she gets poison, & the wing'd eagle why he loves the sun, And then tell me the thoughts of man, that have been hid of old.

And all the arts of life they changd into the arts of death The hour glass contemnd because its simple workmanship Was as the workmanship of the plowman & the water wheel That raises water into Cisterns broken & burnd in fire Because its workmanship was like the workmanship of the Shepherd And in their stead intricate wheels invented Wheel without wheel To perplex youth in their outgoings & to bind to labours Of day & night the myriads of Eternity. that they might file And polish brass & iron hour after hour laborious workmanship Kept ignorant of the use that they might spend the days of wisdom In sorrowful drudgery to obtain a scanty pittance of bread In ignorance to view a small portion & think that All And call it Demonstration blind to all the simple rules of life

De Britse premier David Cameron, die ondertussen al ontslag heeft genomen, gaat straks de geschiedenis in als de kinkel die pokerde en verloor. De voorstanders van een brexit met een aantal racisten als voortrekkers (stijl Nigel Farage en Boris oh nson) hebben hun slag thuisgehaad waardoor het Verenigd Koninkrijk nooit nog kan terugkeren in de EU. De leuze "Storm is raging over het Channel, the continent is isoltated" heeft het gehaald. Het fiere Albion is teruggekeerd. Dat de Briiten Europa de rug toekeerden is al bij al verstaanbaar. De EU is een grijs en onaantrekkelijk Europa gedomineerd door bureaucraten en gekenmerkt door een groot democratisch deficit. Maar win werkelijkheid stemden de Britten over een heel ander pijnpunt, over de vreemdelingenkwestie. Misleid door alle leugens die de leavers schaamteloos voor waarheid verzwendelden. Het grootste nadeel van de exit is dat Europa nu niet langer nog kan dromen van een sterk Europees leger dan zich bewapent met Europese tuigen i.p.v. Amerikaanse, en dat het nu nog meer vastzit aan de Verenigde Staten voor zijn veiligheid. En als daar Donald Trump de presidentsverkiezingen wint dan wordt de wereld waarin wij leven op slag een flink stuk gevaarlijker dan die nu, met de islamfundamentalisten, al is. Ondertussen staan in het grijze Europa al andere racisten klaar - bijvoorbeeld Geert Wilders - om een exit uit Europa te eisen. De beurzen kleuren ondertussen bloedrood. Het Britse pond verloor 16 procent van zijn waarde. Wie à la baisse speculeerde op het pond heeft zijn inleg forst zien stijgen. Een oud klant van mij belde me zopas nog op dat hij 2,5 miljoen euro play money geriskeerd heeft en dat dit er nu 20,4 miljoen zijn geworden.