Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow .

Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow

Like the shadow
I am
and
I am not

How slow the Shadow creeps: but when 'tis past,
How fast the Shadows fall. How fast! How fast!

Humor bridges the weight of serious reflection.

A lot of the songs have a duality about them; one part is totally sincere, and there's another part that is kind of smirking and making light of it all. Or there's a very dark streak about it.

"Between the desire
And the spasm,
Between the potency
And the existence,
Between the essence
And the descent,
Falls the Shadow.

This is the way the world ends.

from "The Hollow Man

The only place to go now is into the context. If you can find it. Between the context and the content, between the mainline and the hardline, falls the shadow.

The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story on the matter.

And round about its gray, time-eaten brow
Lean letters speak—a worn and shattered row:
I am a Shade: a Shadowe too arte thou:
I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?

Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.

When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wander a little from the truth.

I can never forget the indescribably crafty shadow that passed over Flatfish's face as he laughed at me, his neck drawn in. It resembled contempt, yet it was different: if the world, like the sea, had depths of a thousand fathoms, this was the kind of weird shadows which might be found hovering here and there at the bottom. It was a laugh that enabled me to catch a glimpse of the very nadir of adult life.