I heard a small sad sound, And stood awhile among the tombs around: “Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are you distrest, Now, screened from life’s unrest?” But that our future second death is near; When, with the living, memory of us numbs, And blank oblivion comes! “These, our sped ancestry, Lie here embraced by deeper … Continue reading The To-Be-Forgotten — Thomas Hardy
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A Reflection on Dante’s Warning Against False Charity
‘If a thief helps a poor man out of the spoils of his thieving, we must not call that charity.’— Dante There are lines in Dante that feel less like poetry and more like a divine diagnosis — a sudden flash of God’s own X-ray slicing through human pretence. This is one of them. It’s … Continue reading A Reflection on Dante’s Warning Against False Charity
Casting the Runes: The Polite Horror of the Learned Damned
Some stories don’t so much frighten as warn. They creep into the mind like a chill beneath the door, whispering that intellect is no armour against the irrational. M. R. James’s Casting the Runes is one of these — a genteel little ghost story that begins with a letter of complaint and ends with damnation … Continue reading Casting the Runes: The Polite Horror of the Learned Damned
The Room in the Tower: A Dream with Teeth
For years I dreamt of a house that hated me. It wasn’t merely haunted — it was hostile. Its walls bowed with resentment, its staircase groaned in complaint, and the air inside was the colour of rot. Every visit was the same: I would wander through its ruined corridors, knowing instinctively that one door was … Continue reading The Room in the Tower: A Dream with Teeth
The Devil in the Duomo: Reflections on the Monster of Florence
They say every paradise has a pit beneath it. Florence, for me, has always shimmered like a painted heaven — that impossible marriage between reason and rapture. As a child, I was bewitched by her domes and frescoes, the polished glow of Botticelli’s Venus, and the ghostly gaze of Savonarola who once tried to burn … Continue reading The Devil in the Duomo: Reflections on the Monster of Florence
Wording 