Cursed be the kingdom, unfortunate the republic, desolate the city and home from whence the ass is banished, removed, and driven away! Woe to the senses, conscience, and soul where there is no participation in asininity!

Giordano Bruno, The Cabala of Pegasus

Consider also:

  1. “I must have listened to the voice of hell. The earthly horror wove its serpent spell Against the Beauty of the World: I heard Desolate voices cry the doleful word “Unready!” All the soul invisible Of that vast desert echoed, and concurred. The voices died in mystery away.”
  2. “To those deep persistent questionings which present themselves to every thinking mind, What am I? Whence come I? Whither go I?, Masonry offers emphatic and luminous answers. Each of us, it tells us, has come from that mystical ‘East,’ the eternal source of all light and life, and our life here is described as being spent in the ‘West’ (that is, in a world which is the antipodes of our original home, and under conditions of existence as far removed from those we came from and to which we are returning, as is West from East in our ordinary computation of space).”
  3. “I would not have her love a thing so vile, I would not link her life with such as mine! O cursed sin, to leave my soul too high To cheat the shrine! I drave Love forth, Love lingered yet awhile So that I might not quite win Hell before I die.”
  4. “Again the cursed cry: ‘What quest is this? Is it worth heaven in thy lover’s kiss? A queen, a queen, to kiss and never tire! Thy queen, quick-breathing for your twin desire!’ I shudder, for the mystery of bliss; I go, heart crying and a soul on fire!”
  5. “Where am I? Seven days my spirit fell, Down, down the whirlpools and the gulfs of hell: Seven days a corpse lay desolate–at last Back drew the spirit and the soul aghast To animate that clay–O horrible! The resurrection pang is hardly past. Yet in awhile I stumbled to my feet To flee–no nightmare could be worse to meet. And, spite of that, I knew some deadlier trap Some worm more poisonous would set–mayhap!”

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