Only Connect

Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him

to the building of the rainbow bridge
that should connect the prose in us
with the passion.


Without it we are meaningless fragments,
half monks,
half beasts,
unconnected arches that have never joined into a man.

With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve,
glowing against the gray, sober against the fire.


Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.


Only connect the prose and the passion,
and both will be exalted,
and human love will be seen at its height.


Live in fragments no longer.


Only connect,
and the beast and the monk,
robbed of the isolation that is life to either,
will die.




E M Forster
Howards End (1910)