Meditation The Art Of Ecstasy Quotes

Ever since his first ecstasy or vision of Christminster and its possibilities, Jude had meditated much and curiously on the probable sort of process that was involved in turning the expressions of one language into those of another. He concluded that a grammar of the required tongue would contain, primarily, a rule, prescription, or clue of the nature of a secret cipher, which, once known, would enable him, by merely applying it, to change at will all words of his own speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, in fact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical precision what is everywhere known as Grimm's Law—an aggrandizement of rough rules to ideal completeness. Thus he assumed that the words of the required language were always to be found somewhere latent in the words of the given language by those who had the art to uncover them, such art being furnished by the books aforesaid.

MARSYAS: There are seven keys to the great gate, Being eight in one and one in eight. First, let the body of thee be still, Bound by the cerements of will, Corpse-rigid; thus thou mayst abort The fidget-babes that tease the thought. Next, let the breath-rhythm be low, Easy, regular, and slow; So that thy being be in tune With the great sea's Pacific swoon. Third, let thy life be pure and calm Swayed softly as a well-to-live be bound To the one love of the Profound. Fifth, let the thought, divinely free From sense, observe its entity. Watch every thought that springs; enhance Hour after hour thy vigilance! Intense and keen, turned inward, miss No atom of analysis! Sixth, on one thought securely pinned Still every whisper of the wind! So like a flame straight and unstirred Burn up thy being in one word! Next, still that ecstasy, prolong Thy meditation steep and strong, Slaying even God, should He distract Thy attention from the chosen act! Last, all these things in one o'erpowered, Time that the midnight blossom flowered! The oneness is. Yet even in this, My son, though shalt not do amiss If thou restrain the expression, shoot Thy glance to rapture's darkling root, Discarding name, form, sight, and stress Even of this high consciousness; Pierce to the heart! I leave thee here: Thou art the Master. I revere Thy radiance that rolls afar, O Brother of the Silver Star!

We do not see the grey working day, the cap and gown, the note-books, the feet burning from the pavements of picture galleries, but things ' that set the spirit free for a moment,' ' stirring of the senses/ ' strange dyes,' ' strange colours and curious odours,' ' work of the artist's hands,' ' passionate attitudes.' It is not the style of ecstasy such as can be seen in Jefferies' Story of My Heart, or Sterne's Journal to Eliza, or Keats' last letter to Fanny Brawne. Hardly does it appear to be the style of remembered ecstasy as in Traherne's Centuries of Meditation or Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. It is free from traces of experience. All is subtilised, intellectualised, ' casting off all debris.' It is a polished cabinet of collections from history, nature, and art ; objects detached from their settings but almost never without being integrated afresh by Pater's careful arrangement, whether they are pictures, books, landscapes or personalities. It fulfils Pater's own condition of art by putting its own ' happy world ' in place of ' the meaner world of our common days.

The Platonists say of God that he is visible, and invisible, by reason of his excellency and abundance of light. God may be praised well by many words but better by few, and best of all by none, but by silence. Admiration and ecstasies of love and indefatigable desire after everlasting enjoyments of him in silence is admirable.