How to Bathe Your Mind in Eternity

From Advice to a Young Poet (1949), by Llewelyn Powys.

I will first try to indicate why I told you to go to the sea every day. We are all in danger of being trapped in our environments–a poet is saved from this by his appreciation of the mysteries of earth life–if you every day meditate even for a moment on the beauty and mystery of the sea–you bathe your mind in Eternity. The smell of it, the sound of it, the sight of it should enable you to forget the bath machines and all modern vulgarities and realize that you are looking at what Homer looked at and all the long line of great poets, “Sophocles long ago heard it on the Aegean”. It should become to you a symbol of release and an elixir for the imagination and you should never pass it by with philistine apathy.

P. S. If you don’t have close access to the sea, anything other natural manifestation which is vast or sublime will also work: clouds, mountains, stars, prairie . . .