It is the ill-mating of forms that has killed a
thousand plays. We want no more bastard drama; no more attempts to dress
out the simple dignity of everyday life in the peacock's feathers of
false lyricism; no more straw-stuffed heroes or heroines; no more rabbits
and goldfish from the conjurer's pockets, nor any limelight. Let us have
starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our own self-respects.
1909.
MEDITATION ON FINALITY
In the Grand Canyon of Arizona, that most exhilarating of all natural
phenomena, Nature has for once so focussed her effects, that the result
is a framed and final work of Art. For there, between two high lines of
plateau, level as the sea, are sunk the wrought thrones of the
innumerable gods, couchant, and for ever revering, in their million moods
of light and colour, the Master Mystery.
Having seen this culmination, I realize why many people either recoil
before it, and take the first train home, or speak of it as a "remarkable
formation." For, though mankind at large craves finality, it does not
crave the sort that bends the knee to Mystery. In Nature, in Religion, in
Art, in Life, the common cry is: "Tell me precisely where I am, what
doing, and where going! Let me be free of this fearful untidiness of not
knowing all about it!" The favoured religions are always those whose
message is most finite. The fashionable professions--they that end us in
assured positions.
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