Silence is like a flame, you see?

First there was light, and then there was no-light. First there was heat, and then there was no-heat. And — First there was love, and then there was no-love. But in its place did not come the absence of love, the emptiness that the going of light and heat had left. Another moved in to take its place. In its place came hate.

A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth — the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Warmth from the sun is the fertile agent. The same is true in spiritual and heavenly affairs, which are typically represented in the Word by objects found in nature and human culture.

Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

I'm a fire without a flame, desert with no rain...

The sun gave light, but no warmth. Like a stepmother, as they say in Kasrilevke.

Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.

The fire of Love cooks me

"The Letter"

Little cramped words scrawling all over
the paper
Like draggled fly's legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncertain window and the
bare floor

Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing
in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth,
virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart
against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.

Amy Lowell, Selected Poems of Amy Lowell. Edited by Melissa Bradshaw. (Rutgers University Press November 30, 2002)

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul; he that wants it hath a maimed mind, and with Jacob sinew-shrunk in the hollow of his thigh must needs halt. Nor is it good to converse with such as cannot be angry, and with the Caspian sea never ebbe nor flow. This Anger is either Heavenly, when one is of∣fended for God: or Hellish, when offended with God and Goodnes: or Earthly, in temporal matters. Which Earthly Anger (whereof we treat) may also be Hellish, if for no cause, no great cause, too hot, or too long.

Anger is loaded with information and energy.

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

"The Letter"

Little cramped words scrawling all over
the paper
Like draggled fly's legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncertain window and the
bare floor

Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing
in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth,
virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart
against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.

Amy Lowell, The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Edited by Melissa Bradshaw. (Rutgers University Press November 30, 2002)