The sacred pledge of Heav'n
   All things revere,
   Each in his sphere,
Save man for whom 'twas giv'n.

Die Bilder der Vergangenheit sind nicht verlassen
Von der Natur, als wie die Tag’ verblassen
Im hohen Sommer, kehrt der Herbst zur Erde nieder,
Der Geist der Schauer findet sich am Himmel wieder.

[What images once were, they were not banished
by Mother Nature, like her days that paled and vanished
amid high summer: When descends the autumn's power
the sky will show it as the spirit's shower.]

🍂 Hölderlin, excerpt from Der Herbst.

“Engage (Your) Vying in Exuberance until You Come to the Graves” . . .

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien[Letter 75, to Christopher Tolkien, 7 July 1944]

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien[Letter 69, to Christopher Tolkien, 14 May 1944]

"And the stupor of death will come in truth" . . .

If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.

[Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.12]

"[...] When a man feels great pleasure or fear or pain or desire, he suffers not only the evil that one might think (for example, being ill or squandering money through his desires), but the greatest and worst of all evils, which he suffers and never counts."

"What is that, Socrates?" asked Cebes.

"That the soul of every man suffers this double compulsion: At the same time as it is compelled to feel great pleasure or pain about anything, it is compelled also to believe that the thing for which it specially feels this is most clearly real and true, when it is not."

[Plato, Phaedo]

Being no longer human, why should I
Pretend humanity or don the frail attire?
Men have I known and men, but never one
Was grown so free an essence, or become
So simply element as what I am.
The mist goes from the mirror and I see.
Behold ! The world of forms is swept beneath —
Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace —
And we that are grown formless, rise above
Fluids intangible that have been men.
We seem as statues round whose high-risen base
Some overflowing river is run mad,
In us alone the element of calm.

[Ezra Pound, Paracelsus in Excelsis]

Such being the condition, temporal and spiritual, of the world at our Epoch, can we wonder that the world "listens to itself", and struggles and writhes, every where externally and internally, like a thing in pain?
Nay, is not even this unhealthy action of the world's Organization, if the symptom of universal disease, yet also the symptom and sole means of restoration and cure? . . . Innumerable 'Philosophies of Man', contending in boundless hubbub, must annihilate each other, before an inspired Poesy and Faith for Man can fashion itself together.