He trusted the cosmos – but not necessarily the powers that held sway on earth.

Kindness and pain, joy and suffering are twins in this fallen world.

Poetry of World War I, at least in its lyrical mode, was itself the last flowering of the Age of Innocence that preceded the war, that the horrors of the trenches sparked the final blossoming, as friction gives rise to fire; that the daily nightmare unfolding before the soldiers sharpened their sense of beauty, prophecy, and mission.

Self-deprecation is the appropriate response of any new convert, as he matches his stained soul against the purity of God.

The unavoidable harshness of life surprised none of them, for they were Christians one and all, believing that they inhabited a fallen world, albeit one filled with God's grace.