Kathleen’s Reviews > The Mirror & the Light > Status Update

If I had stayed in Italy I could have had a house in the hills, with white walls and a red-tiled roof. A colonnade shading its entrance, shuttered balconies against the heat; orchards, flowery walks, fountains and a vineyard; a library with frescoes depicting animals and birds, like the paintings in the chapter house at the abbey.

What does God see? Cromwell in the fifty-fourth year of his age, in all his weight and gravitas, his bulk wrapped in wool and fur? Or a mere flicker, an illusion, a spark beneath a shoe, a spit in the ocean, a feather in a desert, a wisp, a phantom, a needle in a haystack? If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone.

In Yorkshire they sing that old complaint from John Ball's day:
Now pride reigns in every place, and
greed not shy to show its face,
And lechery with never shame, and
gluttony with never blame.
Envy reigns with reason, and sloth is ever
in season.
God help us for now is the time.