Mervyn Peake Is A Finer Poet Than

Countless Candles Dribbled With Hot Wax, And Their Flames, Like Little Flags, Fluttered In The Unchartered Currents Of Air. Thousands Of Lamps, Naked, Or Shuttered Behind Coloured Glass, Burned With Their Glows Of Purple, Amber, Grass-green, Blue, Blood Red And Even Grey. The Walls Of Gormenghast Were Like The Walls Of Paradise Or Like The Walls Of An Inferno. The Colours Were Devilish Or Angelical According To The Colour Of The Mind That Watched Them. They Swam, Those Walls, With The Hues Of Hell, With The Tints Of Zion. The Breasts Of The Plumaged Seraphim; The Scales Of Satan.

When He At Least Reached The Door The Handle Had Cease To Vibrate. Lowering Himself Suddenly To His Knees He Placed His Head And The Vagaries Of His Left Eye (which Was For Ever Trying To Dash Up And Down The Vertical Surface Of The Door), He Was Able By Dint Of Concentration To Observe, Within Three Inches Of His Keyholed Eye, An Eye Which Was Not His, Being Not Only Of A Different Colour To His Own Iron Marble, But Being, Which Is More Convincing, On The Other Side Of The Door.

His Was Not The Hatred That Arises Suddenly Like A Storm And As Suddenly Abates. It Was, Once The Initial Shock Of Anger And Pain Was Over, A Calculated Thing That Grew In A Bloodless Way.

Cold Love’s The Loveliest Love Of All. So Clear, So Crisp, So Empty. In Short, So Civilized.

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.