The Unknown Sea

The Unknown Sea

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The Unknown Sea by Clemence Housman

Published:

1898

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The Unknown Sea

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'The Unknown Sea is a novel, but it is like no other novel. It is the most exquisite allegory that has been written for a long time. In the unhappy and ascetic passion of Christian the fisherman for Diadyomene, the maiden of the sea, we may read obscurely the secular struggle of spirit and flesh. But the allegory may be what it will. The story is justified of itself, and has a certain palely imaginative quality that is of a strange delicacy.'--Newcastle Chronicle.

Book Excerpt

asked of our charity.'

The boy's face flamed, understanding how he was rebuked. Thanks stumbled on his tongue, and no word to excuse could come; so the wicket closed upon his silence.

Not so closely but that the Monitress could look again, to sigh over that creature of gross wants with angel-bright hair. Surprised, she saw that he was instantly away, and mounted high by the three stone saints. She saw that he touched their feet reverently, that he knelt down, crossed himself and prayed, in a very seemly fashion. She went away, of her charity in prayer for his soul.

He stood there still, after his prayer was finished, and his bread, and looked over the sea long and earnestly; for from that high ledge he saw away to the Isle Sinister, encompassed with its network of reefs; the tide running low showed them in black lines, outspread like a map below.

An audacious design he revolved, no less than to achieve the Isle Sinister yet. The long lines of reefs forbade his boat, but him they fa