The Crown of Wild Olive: also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of DrawingRuskin, John
Philosophy
The Crown of Wild Olive: also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing
Ruskin, John
Architecture; Conduct of life; Drawing -- Study and teaching; Economics; English literature -- History and criticism; War; Work
with white grenouillette; just in the very rush and murmur of the first
spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street
and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old
metal, and rags of putrid clothes; they having neither energy to cart it
away, nor decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed into the
stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in
all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in
a little pool, behind some houses farther in the village, where another
spring rises, the shattered stones of the well, and of the little
fretted channel which was long ago built and traced for it by gentler
hands, lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged bank of mortar, and
scoria; and brick-layers' refuse, on one side, which the clean water
nevertheless chastises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead earth
beyond; and there, circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant
edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the
accumulation of indolent years. Half-a-dozen men, with one day's work,
could cleanse those pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and
make every breath of summer air above them rich with cool balm; and
every glittering wave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, from
the porch of Bethesda. But that day's work is never given, nor will be;
nor will any joy be possible to heart of man, for evermore, about those
wells of English waters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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