From The Philosophy of Solitude (1933), by John Cowper Powys.

As you walk along–with your eyes on the ground–you think of the whole strange rondure of this terraqueous globe and the spirit within you voyages with it through immeasurable space. It is twilight perhaps; and all around you there is that indescribable blue light which, like the blue robe of the Mother of God, the city wears at this season and this hour. But you still keep your eyes upon the ground; for you can feel the presence of that blue light in a certain mystical taste.

There is an indescribable sadness in this air as you breathe it in, as of a lingering incense in a vast empty temple; for the Autumn is beginning, though it is still only August. But this sadness is far sweeter to you than all the gaieties of all the places of pleasure in the world! This air which you taste in your mouth is indeed the very atmosphere of the earth, and into it have passed all the subtle, gentle thoughts of the men and women of the old time who in their day slipped out, just as you have done, to get a breath of air after their day’s work!

Work, work, work! Thus do the days of the years of our life pass by. But it is this daily half-hour–our very own out of all the rest–that makes it worth it to us that we were born at all.

And as we walk on, avoiding the people and still staring at the ground, the mute expectancy of all this vast mass of mineral substance beneath us, all this “thick rotundity” of Inanimateness between us and our antipodes, steals over us like a spell. Can it be that this huge mineral body–covered with its green pastures, its grey seas, its yellow deserts, its white mountain-ridges, and now with this strange blue light–is absolutely devoid of anything corresponding to what in us is consciousness?

And as we think of this–as we have done every day for the last five, ten, fifteen years!–the rare ecstasy we are always seeking begins slowly to tremble through our being. Is it–can it be–the response of all this vast orbic volume of Not-Self to the cravings and longings and fumblings of the Self, this quivering ecstasy that trembles through us?

From The Philosophy of Solitude (1933), by John Cowper Powys.

It is a pitiful degeneracy in our modern life that we are not more often transported out of ourselves by the eternal things that surround us.

Consider the wind! One of the best tests you can apply to yourself as to whether you are lost to the primeval grandeur of the world, taking it all for granted, is to note your attitude to the arbitrary motions of the wind. Do you take the wind for granted? Do you only notice it at all if it is wildly furious, madly violent, bitterly freezing? Or, on the other hand, is the least breath of it upon your face like the touch of the remote Past? Do you never feel it without thinking what a miraculous phenomenon it is, this invisible and yet most living presence, as it moves over the city, over the land, over the sea? Nothing can excel the wind in awakening from the depths of our natures those far-away memories which seem to carry with them the very essence of life.

The potency of memory is that it winnows and purges reality of its grossness, of its dullness, of its poisonous hurtings. Memory seems to retain, in great hushed vases and urns, at the bottom of its being, essences that have the power of redeeming all. And the wind stirs up these essences until their fleeting perfumes mount to our heads and fill us with an indescribable transport.

From A Philosophy of Solitude (1933), by John Cowper Powys:

The whole trend of our present-day ideas is pitifully wrong. It is all heading in the direction of more and more unhappiness. To tell us “to keep on smiling” as the preachers do, is enough to make us howl like the damned.

Optimistic catchwords combined with the torture of gregariousness are more than the strongest nerves can stand. All this feverish social laughter takes on a theatrical ghastliness, to an eye that has learnt to read the heart. The thing becomes a Mask of Horror, as if the anonymous corpses from the death-slabs of the Morgue were to rise up and mock and mow at us!

The only thing to do is to detach yourself at one stroke from all these agitating too-human interests. Earn your living. Stop competing and self-pitying; and live–even in the midst of all your friends–as if the streets were the Desert and you were alone with the over-arching sky.

From the old great writers of calmer ages, from the race-memories brought to us out of the air, from the ineffable essences of our own gathered-up moments of vision, there can be created, if we bend ourselves to the task, a magic circle around us which none of these invaders can cross. Life is too short, its sublime and tragic grandeur too deep, that we should turn from it to such bagatelles as these crowd-fashions.