I Am Too Rich Already,

In The Presence Of Real Tragedy You Feel Neither Pain Nor Joy Nor Hatred, Only A Sense Of Enormous Space And Time Suspended, The Great Doors Open To Black Eternity, The Rising Across The Terrible Field Of That Last Enormous, Unanswerable Question.

The Crumbling Castle, Looming Among The Mists, Exhaled The Season, And Every Cold Stone Breathed It Out. The Tortured Trees By The Dark Lake Burned And Dripped, Their Leaves Snatched By The Wind Were Whirled In Wild Circles Through The Towers. The Clouds Mouldered As They Lay Coiled, Or Shifted Themselves Uneasily Upon The Stone Skyfield, Sending Up Wreathes That Drifted Through The Turrets And Swarmed Up Hidden Walls.

As I See It, Life Is An Effort To Grip Before They Slip Through One's Fingers And Slide Into Oblivion, The Startling, The Ghastly Or The Blindingly Exquisite Fish Of The Imagination Before They Whip Away On The Endless Current And Are Lost For Ever In Oblivion's Black Ocean.

Mervyn Peake Is A Finer Poet Than Edgar Allan Poe, And He Is Therefore Able To Maintain His World Of Fantasy Brilliantly Through Three Novels. It (gormenghast Trilogy) Is A Very, Very Great Work ... A Classic Of Our Age.

The Moon Slid Inexorably Into Its Zenith, The Shadows Shrivelling To The Feet Of All That Cast Them, And As Rantel Approached The Hollow At The Hem Of The Twisted Woods He Was Treading In A Pool Of His Own Midnight.