Alarms and Discursions

Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused abbey I found halfsunken in the grass the grey and goggleeyed visage of one of those gravenmonsters t... » 

Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused abbey I found halfsunken in the grass the grey and goggleeyed visage of one of those gravenmonsters that made the ornamental waterspouts in the cathedrals of the MiddleAges. It lay there scoured by ancient rains or striped by recent fungus butstill looking like the head of some huge dragon slain by a primeval hero. Andas I looked at it I thought of the meaning of the grotesque and passed intosome symbolic reverie of the three great stages of art. G.K. Chesterton «