My brother, dear poor little man of God, by means of great sadness and tribulation, of sickness, of leprosy, and of many other miseries, one gains the kingdom of heaven, where there is no sickness or sorrow, and all is pure and white, without stain, more brilliant than the sun.  You will go there, if it pleases God.  In the meantime, be a good Christian, bear with patience the adversity, and God will be merciful to you.

Sprinkled with Holy Water, in the strength of the Most High, the one spoken to stood, the leper, before the priest.  The leper would enter San Lazzaro d’Arce.  Dedicated to St. Lazarus, one raised from the dead, the hospital housed a large community of pitiful men and women condemned to suffer amongst one another, lepers never able to be a part of the world again.  Here is my perpetual resting place.  Here I shall live.  This is my vow.

In the lands surrounding the leper hospital all existed within anxiety.  Those of a healthy state shared in their own trouble, for all of time and the existence of man suffered in some way or another.  Tension regarding loyalties in social rank persisted.  The maggiori (lords) and minori (common people) were conflicting, making and demanding acquiescence from one another, the imposing of social wills, opposing camps needing to be right, superior in conviction.  Assisi, the city—the commune, centered the common people, gathering them into a united front, however they were no longer so common.

Wealth poured into the commune through mercantile trade, especially in connection with trade fairs occurring in Champagne, France.  The exchange of goods, ideas, and customs broadened the minds, means, and ways of the merchants participating.  The commune as a whole benefited ideologically and materialistically.  The commune was no longer the poor, in fact, in wealth they surpassed the feudal lords.  The lords struggled for cash and goods, while the common man relished in abundance.  In ideals, they felt the strength to stand alone, abhorring the feudal system as well as the rule of the emperor and the church—eye to eye, tooth for a tooth, equal and persistent in life and choice.

Politically, they no longer desired to be pawns.  Autonomy was their determined aspiration.  The church was necessary for faith and salvation, however governing was for the people.  In principle, the emperor, especially a foreign one, possessed no power, unwarranted in ruling over judicial matters. Might could force subservience, yet it could not change minds seeking freedom and expression undergoing the transformation of materialistic independence.  Warfare, a seemingly constant, demanded vigilance.  Revolution, ripe for explosion, created fear within the established order the feudal lords traditionally depended upon.  The lords diminished in influence as their coffers dwindled and the merchants surpassed them in wealth.  Towers of defense and ramification once the pursuit of nobles now witnessed merchants constructing social statements of residing permanence, buildings reaching to the sky declaring strength and the ability to defend on a nation building level.

Neighboring city states presented factions for confrontation.  Consortiums based upon noble families, ranks expanding beyond with demand, loyalty, and superior breeding, meant unified elite fighting forces.  The nobles maintained refined fighting forces, knighthood the ultimate vocation.  The bands of noble knights, chivalry parading, talked of a life of honor and servitude, yet in reality they presented others with marauding, the infliction of will, and brutality.  When a damsel of beauty and poor upbringing witnessed the coming of a band of knights and their consorts, she did not repose within security, feeling protected and invested.  Rather, she hid, fearing she would be raped and her brothers killed.  The chivalric codes was spoken of, mythologized, yet men were men.  The noble knights reveling in Italian, Frank, and Germanic lands spread chaos, a state of constant aggressiveness: One in blood and war.  Within the feudal system, the nobles and their young men were not perceived as protectors, rather aggressors.  If they were not knights they were spoiled university students plaguing the cities.  University students, enjoying the rights of clerics, roamed the streets free from legalities, safe from prosecution from minor crimes.  University students could steal and carouse with impunity.  Striking a student was recognized as the equivalent of striking a religious, excommunication and imprisonment the consequence.  Students took advantage of their status, agitating others.  The young adults of the nobles lived their lives harassing the common order and those subsisting upon employment.  In their current state, the nobles possessed a weakening and unfavorable societal position.  Emperor Barbarossa gave the nobles a reprise, yet they were intelligent enough to realize the inevitable.  Their time of lording diminished.  The world changed.  Rome was once the grandest of all civilizations and now there was Italy.  Only a short time separated the nobles from days of reckoning.  Constructed towers within the city and castles surrounding provided gathering fortifications for defense, however the commune’s wealth, based upon money, materialized mightier.  Power fleeting, the feudal lords saw men of their rank deserting to the affluence of the commune.

Alberto stood aside from the confrontation.  His indifference bred from experience. The Lords he would never fight for, even if his service to Barbarossa profited them he felt no attraction to their coalitions.  He never saw Barbarossa as the emperor.  He was Barbarossa, an effective warlord leading to plunder and pillage.  He provided courageous, intelligent leadership in regards to warring.  Politics played no part.  There was no desired end for Alberto.  Simple savagery and self-betterment were his concerns, the blocking of an internal raging his concern.  Loyal to the death, cynical in mind, wounded at heart, he developed no higher ideals.

The commune he despised for various reasons.  They were now the wealthy.  He grew up an outcast and poor, an underbelly to a class system that only deepened with the emergence of the merchants as powerbrokers.  The pending civil war elicited no emotion or loyalty.  Only men of wealth and means were able to have the time and resources to desire a war of consequence.  The humble suffer when the mighty disagree.  He preferred war for war’s sake.  Cursed be he who does not want war and hardships, through which one knows his true friend.  In his heart, he desired war for all the poor, those who knew life as he did as a child.  It gave release, emancipation and it kissed him.  War established his manhood and identity.

To raise a sword for the benefit of one’s self-empowerment, to rise above the constraints of the frustrations of being downtrodden, war provided dreams for the poor.  War provided opportunity, the expelling of human misery, the expression of wrath, the releasing of the anger life inflicted.  It was the splendor of a crusade.  Even if in truth most never attained wealth, the dream they could carried them.  O love of far-away land.  For you my whole heart is yearning.  Booty and materialistic splendor, to shed blood, to fear the shedding of one’s own blood, to be pushed beyond limitations, transformed one.  Poverty destroyed through boredom and stagnation, demoralizing a man, stripping him of dignity.  Familiarity bred the most horrible of content.  All life led to penance, yet war held out a hand of chance for adventure and worldly gain.  Like a dice game, fate could be rolled.

For the time being, Alberto gathered himself, a time of stillness and internal healing at hand.  A reason for the season, he contemplated not, yet for the first time in his adult life he moved away from war, a reprieve sought.  A time of waiting at Lazzaro d’Arce, the leper hospital dedicated to St. Lazarus, watching his mother die, would provide the environment to stay within himself.  It confirmed his conviction to have nothing to do with the coming civil war.  He wanted to be with his mother as she died.  In his heart, he chose nothing except his concern for his mother, over the possibility of everything.  Opening his sin laden heart, the existence of the lepers broke his already polluted heart.  Forgotten, removed from care, the lepers survived equal to the rats infesting their dwellings.  Rats were everywhere at St Lazarus.  The dead tossed aside for consumption of rats.

An awful incident upon his first days amongst the lepers magnified his disgust, putting into action efforts to assist.  There was a garbage dump located near the rear of the building.  Dug underneath the adjacent building, a space allowed the most awful of squealing, a horde of rats constantly sounding.  The unholy sound disturbed Alberto tremendously, forcing him into action.  Going into warring mode, he deconstructed obstructing structures to reveal a dozen or so rats grown together by their tails, entwined by an unnatural birthing together, a merging of many into an entity of one, a constant struggle for movement.  Forcing the unnatural living, squealing mass out into the light of the sun, prodding and dragging it, he performed a merciful execution.  Dossing the rats with pitch, he torched the horrendous horde.

A handful of lepers witnessed the crucifying of the rats.  Alberto allowed the quenching of boredom and insanity amongst the ill.  Following him was a constant gathering of the dying.  “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”  He did what he could while spending time with his mother.  He built refuge shelters, fire pits, water crafts for leisure, carts they could tote each other around in, conveniences the lepers could utilize, able to spend time away from the dismal hospital.  Alberto, a capable craftsman, even furthered his abilities with the assistance of Ricco.

The condition of the lepers was appalling; the horrendous physical suffering equaled by the mental torment.  Demented and enraged, the majority of the lepers existed completely insane, the intensity of sickness extending internally, thought life ravaged, stream of consciousness being overwhelmed.  His mother appeared beyond recognition, for no one can lay another foundation, but that which has been laid, which is Christ Jesus.  Her eyes possessed a blankness, utter defeat existing within.  It could have been another for all the familiarity physical detail provided and the emptiness of personality presented.  Her body was ravaged.  Her mind deflated, yet something deep could not be extinguished.  She recognized him; however he did not recognize her, praise comes not from mortals but from God.  In his heart, mind to God, he instinctually knew it was her.  The love attempting to emerge could not be mistaken.  Her leprosy attacked her vocal chords, disabling her ability to speak, yet absent words, she spoke with a heart blinded by the possibility of light at the end of a tunnel dark for horrible days.  The woman he knew as a child was not the woman inside the leper’s grey robe.  During the ecclesiastical rite introducing her to the life of a leper, to the death of her former self, do not possess gold or silver or money or carry on their journey a wallet or a sack, nor bread, nor a staff, nor to have shoes, nor two tunics, she was disheartened, yet he recognized her.  His mother dying to her former self was the orphaning of himself.  He recalled the time clearly.  The day his mother was left with was the promise of the Kingdom of God and penance, and nothing else, absolute suffering in the meantime.

As a child, he had no idea his mother was ill.  His own life was complicated enough.  Raised alone by his mother, it was becoming obvious others wanted nothing to do with him.  Children were forbidden to play with him.  Adults stared with a strange contempt.  His size proved awkward as he towered over children his age.  Words penetrated his reality, forcing him to understand he was the bastard child of a priest.  Innocence extracted through social interaction, he always had his mother, as she had no one herself.

Isolated, poverty impenetrable, there were good times.  Behind closed doors, they enjoyed laughter, and my spirit rejoices with God my savior.  He was a natural clown, overflowing with joy, always doing funny things for his mother and she would roar with laughter at his antics.  It was so natural for them always to be together, sleeping as one night after night.  He took off the shoes from his feet.  She was a good reader, teaching well, telling stories.  The Bible and chivalry were themes filling his head, being a knight, honor and glory, damsels and treasures.  Prayers and deeds of bravery were dreamed awake and asleep.  His mother shared in his enthusiasm for life, calling him her knight in shining armor.

Ruination came the day his mother was forcefully taken away.  It was one of the reasons he could not support the commune.  Their harsh legislation demanding the official hunting down of lepers, crucify the flesh with its vices and sins, declaring it lawful for anyone to physically, even fatally, accost lepers, a blazing with fire, he could not respect.  How could he forget the night their door was busted down?

Sleeping soundly, looking up to heaven, the explosion of the door of their small one room living space being broken down violently awoke him.  Screams, torches and men poured into their living space. One was loud and leading, a vocal vigilante leader, self-righteous and screaming.  Alberto attempted to rise in order to defend his mother however two men took him down, sternly pinning him.  Shouts of ‘leper’, and ‘apprehend her’, confused him.  He watched the obssessed leader take command of his home.  The man, a piece of cloth covering his face, began to preach, moving in on his mother.  The man stripped his mother of her garment, holding a torch for the better viewing of her body.  Turning back to the crowd, he declared her a leper.  The crowd pushed back as a rope was thrown around his mother.  Harshly, she was dragged from their diminutive home.  He was left alone with bafflement and tears.

“May the Lord give you peace.”

All this gave him plenty to do, and it all made sense as long as he was working on his St. John. It took a long time. The last delicate shapings of face and hands were done in solemn, patient concentration. He finished the statue in a small wooden shed behind the assistants’ workshop. Then the hour of morning came when the work was finished. Goldmund fetched a broom, swept the shed meticulously clean, gently brushed the last sawdust from his Saint’s hair, and stood in front of his statue for a long time, an hour or longer, filled with the solemn feeling of a rare and great experience which he might perhaps know one more time in the course of his life or which might remain unique. A man on the day of his wedding or on the day he is knighted, a woman after the birth of her first child might feel such emotions in the heart: a deep reverence, a great earnestness, and at the same time a secret fear of the moment when this high, unique experience would be over, classified, swallowed by the routine of the days.

He saw his friend Narcissus, the guide of his adolescent years, clad in the robe and role of the beautiful, favorite disciple, stand listening with lifted face and an expression of stillness, devotion, and reverence that was like the budding of a smile. Suffering and death were not unknown to this beautiful, pious, spiritualized face, to this slender figure that seemed to be floating, to these graceful, piously raised long hands, although they were filled with youth and inner music; but despair was unknown to them, and disorder, and rebellion. The soul of those noble traits might be gay or sad, but its pitch was pure, it suffered no discordant note.

Goldmund stood and contemplated his work. His contemplation began as a meditation in front of the monument to his youth and friendship, but it ended in a tempest of sorrow and heavy thoughts. There his work was, the beautiful disciple would remain, his delicate flowering would never end. But he, the maker, would have to part with his work; tomorrow it would no longer be his, would no longer be waiting for his hands, would grow and unfold under them no longer, was no longer a refuge to him, a consolation, a purpose in his life. He remained behind, empty. And therefore it seemed to him that it would be best to say farewell today not only to his St. John but also to the master, to the city, to art. There was nothing here for him to do any more; no images filled his soul that he might have carved. The longed-for image of images, the figure of the mother of men, was not yet accessible to him, would not be accessible for a long time. Should he go back to polishing little angel figures now and carving ornaments?
He tore himself away and walked over to the master’s workshop. Softly he entered and stood at the door, until Niklaus noticed him and called out to him.

“What is it, Goldmund?”

“My statue is finished. Perhaps you’ll come and take a look at it before you go up to eat.”

“Gladly. I’ll come right now.”

Together they walked over, leaving the door open for more light. Niklaus had not seen the figure for a while; he had left Goldmund undisturbed at his work. Now he examined it with silent attention. His closed face grew beautiful and light; Goldmund saw his stern eyes grow happy.

“It is good,” the master said. “It is very good. It is your assistant’s piece, Goldmund. Now you have finished learning. I’ll show your figure to the men at the guild and demand that they make you a master for it; you deserve it.”

Goldmund did not value the guild very highly, but he knew how much appreciation the master’s words meant, and he was glad.

While Niklaus walked slowly around the figure of St. John, he said with a sigh: “This figure is full of piety and light. It is grave, but filled with joy and peace. One might think that the man who made this had nothing but light and joy in his heart.”

Goldmund smiled.

“You know that I did not portray myself in this figure, but my dearest friend. It is he who brought light and peace to the picture, not I. It was not really I who made the statue; he gave it into my soul.”

“That may be so,” said Niklaus. “It is a secret how such a work comes into being. I am not particularly humble, but I must say: I have made many works that fall far behind yours, not in craft and care, but in truth. No, you probably know yourself that such a work cannot be repeated. It is a secret.”

“Yes,” Goldmund said. “When the figure was finished and I looked at it, I thought: you can’t make that again. And therefore I think, Master, that I’ll soon go back to wandering.”

Astonished and annoyed, Niklaus looked at him. His eyes had grown stern again.

“We’ll speak about that. For you, work should really begin now. This is not the moment to run away….

MOBY DICK–Herman Melville

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.

Ahab turned.

“Starbuck!”

“Sir.”

“Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before—and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!—crack my heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board!—lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!”

THE CHASE–FIRST DAY (3 days total)

Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale’s back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons.

A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.

On each soft side—coincident with the parted swell, that but once leaving him, then flowed so wide away—on each bright side, the whale shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all who for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way thou may’st have bejuggled and destroyed before.

And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia’s Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.

With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift, the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick’s reappearance.

“An hour,” said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat’s stern; and he gazed beyond the whale’s place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze now freshened; the sea began to swell.

“The birds!—the birds!” cried Tashtego.

In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now all flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could discover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and seizing Perth’s harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and stand by to stern.

Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while yet under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat.

Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab’s head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other’s heads to gain the uttermost stern.

And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast to the oars to lash them across.

At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first to perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only slipping further into the whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways as it slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the sea.

MACBETH–Shakespeare

“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, Yet Grace must still look so.