I always preferre the works of God to the works of man. The works of God, I always felt, were given freely to anyone who could appreciate them, wheth… - Vita Sackville-West

The works of God, I always felt, were given freely to anyone who could appreciate them whether millionaire or pauper…

Henry by the compulsion of love had cheated her of her chosen life, yet he had given her another life, an ample life, a life in touch with the greater world, if that took her fancy; or a life, alternatively, pressed close up against her own nursery. For a life of her own, he had substituted his life with its interests, or the lives of her children with their potentialities. He assumed that she might sink herself in either, if not both, with equal joy. It had never occurred to him that she might prefer simply to be herself.

Why should a poet pray thus? poets scorn The boundaried love of country, being free Of winds, and alien lands, and distances, Vagabonds of the compass, wayfarers, Pilgrims of thought, the tongues of Pentecost Their privilege, and in the peddler's pack The curious treasures of their stock-in-trade, Bossy and singular, the heritage Of poetry and science, polished bright, Thin with the rubbing of too many hands; Myth, glamour, hazard, fables dim as age, Faith, doubt, perplexity, grief, hope, despair, Wings, and great waters, and Promethean fire, Man's hand to clasp, and Helen's mouth to kiss. Why then in little meadows hedge about A poet's pasture? shed a poet's cloak For fustian? cede a birthright, thus to map So small a corner of so great a world?

THAT I should live and look with open eyes I count as half my claim to Paradise. I have not crept beneath cathedral arches, But bathed in streams beneath the silver larches;