I know not if it is owl or flittermouse; I could fancy it was
a black cherub, an infernal cherub of darkness, not with the wings
of a bird and the head of a baby, but with the head of a goblin
and the wings of a bat. I think, if there were light enough,
I could sit here and write some very creditable creepy tale,
about how I went up the crooked road beyond the church and met Something--
say a dog, a dog with one eye. Then I should meet a horse, perhaps,
a horse without a rider, the horse also would have one eye.
Then the inhuman silence would be broken; I should meet a man
(need I say, a one-eyed man?) who would ask me the way to my
own house. Or perhaps tell me that it was burnt to the ground.
I could tell a very cosy little tale along some such lines.
Or I might dream of climbing for ever the tall dark trees above me.
They are so tall that I feel as if I should find at their tops the nests
of the angels; but in this mood they would be dark and dreadful angels;
angels of death.

Only, you see, this mood is all bosh. I do not believe in it
in the least. That one-eyed universe, with its one-eyed
men and beasts, was only created with one universal wink.
At the top of the tragic trees I should not find the Angel's Nest.
I should only find the Mare's Nest; the dreamy and divine nest
is not there. In the Mare's Nest I shall discover that dim,
enormous opalescent egg from which is hatched the Nightmare.
For there is nothing so delightful as a nightmare--when you know
it is a nightmare.

That is the essential. That is the stern condition laid upon
all artists touching this luxury of fear. The terror must
be fundamentally frivolous. Sanity may play with insanity;