Responsibility to God seems like the faint shadow of a vaguely remembered dream.

The voice of conscience is in the ear like the far-off murmuring of the sea.

The soul is sordid and the finer senses indurated.

The angel of the better nature is bondslave to the worst.

Then enters some element that nurtures the nobler impulse.
Some misfortune, earthquake-like, cleaves through the hard crust.