O ivory, delicate hands!
O face that hovers
Between ‘To-come’ and ‘Was,’
Ivory thou wast,
A rose thou wilt be.
“For there is a real magic in the action and reaction of minds on one another. The casual deliration of a few becomes, by this mysterious reverberation, the frenzy of many; men lose the use, not only of their understandings, but of their bodily senses; while the most obstinate unbelieving hearts melt, like the rest, in the furnace where all are cast as victims and as fuel.”
Thomas Carlyle | Signs of the Times