A peculiarly moving lyric seemed to him to be an analogy for an unburdening of the heart, and in this way a nostalgia for a lost state of truthfulness. He was always surprised to find how widely shared the compelling quality of these lyrics was. It was not a simple form of beauty but a difficult one, invested with a strenuousness of feeling, a moral quality, or rather a fulfilled need, that seemed rare by nature. It was also often an ephemeral thing whose whole complexion and power to move would change with the times. Deep truthfulness as a shared ideal was much more problematic than beauty, since truth is related to ideas and shared ideas are an index of error, truth being no business of the heart. It was "spilt religion" looking towards a parallel and invisible reality in which there are no secrets, in which all hearts are open ... but that's not all, in which there is judgement as well. The lyric was thus a plea and a prayer.