contrast-thought

Updated: May 19, 2025

Then the vast sweetness of that violet night entered into his blood, filled him with that awful joy, so near akin to sadness, which the sense of the Infinite brings, when one feels the poetry of the Most Ancient and Most Excellent of Poets, and then is smitten at once with the contrast-thought of the sickliness and selfishness of Man, of the blindness and brutality of cities, whereinto the divine blue light never purely comes, and the sanctification of the Silences never descends ... furious cities, walled away from heaven ... Oh! if one could only sail on thus always, always through such a night through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicio and Carmelo sing, even though it were the same melody always, always the same song!

Lafcadio Hearn - Chita: a Memory of Last Island