What really shapes and conditions and makes us is somebody only a few
of us ever have the courage to face: and that is the child you once
were, long before formal education ever got its claws into you -- that
impatient, all-demanding child who wants love and power and can't get
enough of either and who goes on raging and weeping in your spirit
till at last your eyes are closed and all the fools say, "Doesn't he
look peaceful?" It is those pent-up, craving children who make all
the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and
discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond
their grasp before they were five years old.
-- Robertson Davies, "The Rebel Angels"
The Box, 1969 by Kendrew LaSalles
Once upon a time in the land of Hush-a-Bye,
Around about the wonderous days of yore,
They came across a sort of box, all bound with chains and
locked with locks,
And labeled, "Kindly Do Not Touch....