A rogue's tragedy

Matter is but the eternal dressing of the imagination; the world the unconscious self-delusion of a Spirit. Everything springs from Love, and Love is the dreaming God. Two figments of that endless sweet obsession stood alone-high on a slope of Alp this time. Born of a dream to flesh, they thought they owed themselves to flesh-a sacred debt. Truth seemed as plain to them as pebbles in a brook, which lie round and firm for all their apparent shaking under ripples. There, actual to their eyes, were the white mountains, the hoary glaciers, the pine woods and foamy freshets of eighteenth century Le Prieuré. Here, actual in the ears of each, was the whisper of the deathless confidence which for ever and ever helps on love's succession. They loved, and therefore they lived.