John Cowper Powys Championship Page: Redux Post #4 "He was drenched through and through with darkness and with peace."

It was as though he had suddenly emerged, by some hidden doorway, into a world entirely composed of vast, cool, silent-growing vegetation, a world where no men, no beasts, no birds, broke the mossy stillness; a world of sap and moisture and drooping ferns; a world of leaves that fell and fell forever, leaf upon leaf;

a world where that which slowly mounted upwards endured eternally the eternal lapse of that which slowly settled downwards; a world that itself was slowly settling down, leaf upon leaf, grass-blade upon grass-blade, towards some cool, wet, dark, unutterable dimension in the secret heart of silence!

Lying upon that rank, drenched grass, he drew a deep sigh of obliterating release. ...Ah! how his human consciousness sank down into that with which all terrestrial consciousness began!...

He was a leaf among leaves...among large, cool, untroubled leaves.... He had fallen back into the womb of his real mother... He was drenched through and through with darkness and with peace.

(From John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent, Chapter 18, "The School Treat")