22 DECEMBER 1939, Page 17

RELEASE FROM PASSION THE urgency of body drops away and

relaxes ;

No longer it levies its taxes upon the soul. The joys of common living, exempt from toll, no longer pay Their heavy duty but enter whole, Entire in their own beauty.

They, while the fit is on, subordinate, must assume The scarce-sane joy, the bright but borrowed plume that body flies. They pay with peace for their intensities. Passions inflate Common experience, but quiet dies In the crackle of taut sense.

The intense life of love is its own meaning, but, men find, Untranslatable into the common kind. Now it is faded, Nature no longer comes dressed up and paraded. The sky is leaning Over the heart's sweet peace that, all unaided, Enters singing and will not cease.

JULIAN HUXLEY.