Excerpt from The Travail of a Soul Threads of daily existence, and so shot o'er the colorless fabric of earthly experience that care and sorrow are made tribute to the majesty of thy serene beauty, and doubt and tears abide not in thy magic presence. Wert thou, then, sweet Aphrodite, moulded indeed by the hand of man? Was ever in Arcadya form so spotless fair, a smile so radiant or lips so divinely tender? Could the blue Aegean fashion thee in this imperial loveliness as fable says, or imprint of Jove's finger call thee into being? No, no; only the heart and brain of man hath shaped from dull clay the Beautiful expressed in thee. Only the tremulous outpouring of a human soul could have so wrought the transcendent image of mortal love and aspira tion; a witness unto the ages of the truth and power of Love. Not fire nor sword, not vengeance nor despair, is embodied in thee, but that supreme emotion whence issues all that most dignifies and sweetens life, the dream within the dream, all beauty of material insight permeated by the living miracle of Love. Thou art of earth we know. Faint sem blances of thy perfection we have looked upon, and in our thoughts the hope doth linger that thy form is but a happy antitype of some breathing image dwelling upon that sacred Melian shore. Yet some thing awes us as we gaze on thee and whispers that a seraph from heaven once hovered o'er thy creator and guided his unconscious hand.akes me pure, for grief doth fold All thoughts in its dark mantle. Even the fires That kindled in me passionate desires No more my heart in anxious thraldom hold. And with this secret pain I must grow old: That my sweet hopes must mount fate's lurid pyres, And other fingers sweep love's sacred lyres While in my soul the breath divine is cold. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.