Yet Not With All Of Me Am

Cold Love’s The Loveliest Love Of All. So Clear, So Crisp, So Empty. In Short, So Civilized.

Through Her, In Microcosm, The Wide Earth Sobbed. The Starglobe Sank In Her; The Colours Faded. The Death-dew Rose And The Wild Birds In Her Breast Climbed To Her Throat And Gathered Songless, Hovering, All Tumult, Wing To Wing, So Ardent For Those Climes Where All Things End.

This Tower, Patched Unevenly With Black Ivy, Arose Like A Mutilated Finger From Among The Fists Of Knuckled Masonry And Pointed Blasphemously At Heaven. At Night The Owls Made Of It An Echoing Throat; By Day It Stood Voiceless And Cast Its Long Shadow.

It Was Not Certain What Significance The Ceremony Held... But The Formality Was No Less Sacred For It Being Unintelligible

Countless Candles Dribbled With Hot Wax, And Their Flames, Like Little Flags, Fluttered In The Unchartered Currents Of Air. Thousands Of Lamps, Naked, Or Shuttered Behind Coloured Glass, Burned With Their Glows Of Purple, Amber, Grass-green, Blue, Blood Red And Even Grey. The Walls Of Gormenghast Were Like The Walls Of Paradise Or Like The Walls Of An Inferno. The Colours Were Devilish Or Angelical According To The Colour Of The Mind That Watched Them. They Swam, Those Walls, With The Hues Of Hell, With The Tints Of Zion. The Breasts Of The Plumaged Seraphim; The Scales Of Satan.