“The clock that Issac was making now he did not visualize in his shop window because is was so much a part of him that he could have as easily visualized his eyes or brain or hands in the window as this clock. He did not think about its future because it was the future. He did not consciously tell himself that it was his eternity but he had a confused idea that the dark would not entirely get him while the pulse beat on in this clock.”

“Standing before the solid oak table which was sacred to his clock alone his heart beat high with joy at what he saw. No one else would have seen anything except a confused jumble of mechanism, but Issac saw his clock as it would be. He saw the accomplished thing and knew that he would make it, and that it would be his masterpiece. Like all creators he knew well that strange feeling of movement within the spirit, comparable only to the first movement of the child within the womb, which causes the victim to say perhaps with excitement, perhaps with exasperation or exhaustion, ‘There is a new poem, a new picture, a new symphony coming, heaven help me.’ The movement had been unusually strong when he first knew about this clock.”

Elizabeth Goudge:  "The Dean's Watch"