Love is the most profound aesthetic experience in a person’s life. Faith cannot compete. It and love tend to go their separate ways — though they do often stage reunions on battlefields, taking refuge together, as when they were first born, in men stricken with fear, nothing more than the terrified playthings of God.
“Where, where are now the great reports
Of those huge haugthy earth-born giants?
Where are the lofty tow’rs and forts
Of those proud kings bade Heav’n defiance?
When them I to my mind revoke,
Methinks I see a mighty smoke
Thick mounting from quick-burning matter
Which in an instant winds do scatter.”
Joshua Sylvester | “Fuimus Fumus”