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| In the garden at Monk's House |
The
bomb did not fall. But during those seconds of suspense all thinking stopped.
All feeling, save one dull dread, ceased. A nail fixed the whole being to one
hard board. The emotion of fear and of hate is therefore sterile, unfertile.
Directly that fear passes, the mind reaches out and instinctively revives
itself by trying to create. Since the room is dark it can create only from
memory. It reaches out to the memory of other Augusts--in Bayreuth, listening
to Wagner; in Rome, walking over the Campagna; in London. Friends' voices come
back. Scraps of poetry return. Each of those thoughts, even in memory, was far
more positive, reviving, healing and creative than the dull dread made of fear
and hate.
“Thoughts on Peace in an Air
Raid” (1940)
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