A magic of suspense

I was alone, and I lay on my sofa, drawn across a large open window at the top of the school-house, in a room which was used as a study by the boys who were 'going up for examination'. I gazed down on a labyrinth of garden sloping to the sea, which twinkled faintly beyond the towers of the town. Each of these gardens held a villa in it, but all the near landscape below me was drowned in foliage. A wonderful warm light of approaching sunset modelled the shadows and set the broad summits of the trees in a rich glow. There was an absolute silence below and around me; a magic of suspense seemed to keep every topmost twig from waving.

Over my soul there swept an immense wave of emotion.

Edmund Gosse (in Father and Son)

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We don't abandon our pursuits because we despair of ever perfecting them (Epictetus)

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