Melancholia

Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Johannes der Täufer, 1631

Whereas, if I sinke in this sorrow, in this dejection of spirit, though it were Wine in the beginning, it is lees, and tartar in the end; Inordinate sorrow growes into sinfull melancholy, and that melancholy, into an irrecoverable desperation.

John Donne, Sermon preached upon Trinity-Sunday, 1621

Early Morning

Early Morning - Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)

"Neo-Platonism may be compared to an underground river that flows through European history, sending up, from time to time, springs and fountains; and wherever its fertilizing stream emerges, there imaginative thought revives, and we have a period of great art and poetry."

Kathleen Raine, Blake and Antiquity, 1979