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But that away, which hid them there, do take:

Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,

And be his Image, or not his, but He.

John Donne (The Cross).

As sculptors chisel away the marble that hides the statue within, so let “crosses” or afflictions remove the impurities which hide the Christ in us, so that we shall become His image, or not His image, but Himself.

What is experience? A little cottage made with the débris of those palaces of gold and marble which we call our illusions.

Author not traced.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;

Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

And that unrest which men miscall delight,

Can touch him not and torture not again;

From the contagion of the world’s slow stain.

He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;

Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

Shelley (Adonaïs, an Elegy on Keats, XL).

This verse is engraved on Shelley’s own monument in the Priory Church at Christchurch, Hampshire.