Sir T. Naked against
A godless universe, with what, by whom
Must we be clothed?
St. J. Heaven, Hell and God and Sin
Were but a symbol of the Universe,
A lie wherein to wrap the babyhood
Of man's imagination, which is itself
The Universe become self-conscious. That's
The whole; there is no more to say: with all
The Universe, which is imagination
Become in life a consciousness, in soul
Self-conscious (still I say it, and again,
And yet again it must be said): with all
The Universe itself, no symbols now,
Imagination must be clad and armed.
Sir T. The terror and the splendour of it thrill
Me through and through. I feel it: this is great;
This is the greatest.
St. J. Great and most terrible!
I shrink, I quail; the burden weighs me down;
The agony dissolves me: this is fear;
This, mystery. Legends of creation, tales—
(As if the Universe could have been made
In any sense mankind can give the word!)
Fantastic myths of virgins bearing boys,
And of a desperate God who gave his son
To die upon a tree—how foul a thing!—
Of dead men come alive, and signs and shows
Of tongues and thunders, cures and stigmata:
These are no mystery, but the quaint alarm
Of ignorance that harnessed vision against
The things that be in sterile dreams of spirit,
As banal, venomous-moral, hard and fast
As Matter is mysterious, fluent, pure,
Filling the Universe with miracle,
Filling and being the Universe itself.
Sir T. This makes my whole life horrible.
St. J. Most lives,
Confronting this, will shrivel into dust.
Sir T. I've never lived.
St. J. That is, you've never thought,
Never imagined.
Sir T. Never! A phantom life,
The actor's; spell-bound drudgery chained
And eyeless. What a ruthless tyrant public
Opinion is—an armed automaton
That fells its victims blindly! Entertain
A motley audience for a livelihood
You never make; be this, be that—a fop,
A fool, a hero, or a villain; lose
Conceit of everything except applause;
Be certain of success when self-contempt
Assures you that you play a popular part;
Be courteous to the bully, bland with fools—
The dreadful folk that haunt celebrities,
That haunt theatrical celebrities;
Be genial with the newsman—glad to see him;
Civil to greedy playwrights, artists, cads
And cadgers, leeches, lice and vampire-bats
That bleed the theatre; everybody's body;
Charity, politics, church—their humble servant;
And nightly the performance in the cage
Before the assorted multitude
Of people, people, people: this, and worse;
Then death and swift oblivion: nothing done;
Nothing at all to be remembered by:
No other noise so big as stage renown
Is silenced utterly by death.
St. J. No fame
Outlasts the world: there lives the hope of man:
Death's meaning is that consciousness shall cease,
The earth be purged of life; thus in the end
All men are equal, matter pure from taint
Of anguish; in the nebula become
Essential fire, free from solicitude.
This is the freedom of the Universe.