Sir T. Matter grown anxious: that is very man.
St. J. Therefore the player's is an envied lot:
No other artist so intensely lives
In the world's consciousness.
Sir T. But after death?
St. J. Dread nothing that can happen after death:
The world will cease: live in that thought, that mood,
Upon the eternal moment.
Sir T. But to mark
The world before one dies!
St. J. The inmost hope
Of all men! I believe that you and I
Could orientate the world's imagination;
And that would make a mark.
Sir T. Tell me of that!
The whole thing stirs me: tell me more of that!
First have I grasped your meaning? All the past,
Religion, drama, art is dead to us,
Because we know that all is Matter, all
Imagination, beauty, passion, power
Through time and times and changing suns and orbs
From spacious nebula to nebula.
This is the freedom of the Universe
Wherein imagination must delight,
Now that Olympus, Asgard, Heaven and Hell,
Gods, God and separate soul are dead and done.
St. J. My meaning; yes. Material Heaven and Hell,
Olympus, Hades, Asgard, Nifelheim
Are Matter's memories of pellucid fire
It once was and will be, an evidence
Of our material nature wrapped in myth
Unconsciously. Imagination lives
In Matter, being itself material power,
Irradiant, telepathic, magical,
Imponderable as lightning or the light,
Ethereal essence of the Universe.
To free this power from twenty centuries
Of God and Sin; endow it with its own,
The infinite Universe; to launch the world
In space again upon a virgin track
As though the foul old rut and blood-drenched way
Had never been! Oh, Tristram! Help me—you!
It can be done!
Sir T. How can I help you, Gervase?
St. J. I want your stage. A while ago you said
A people has a drama only once:
From "Gorboduc" to "The Tempest" fifty years;
And nothing since. The deadly truth of that
Perturbed me; and I feared my eastern work—
A play I made wherein dynamic art
Of Matter rives asunder all the scale
Of being; restrings the lyre, and sets the tune
Anew: I feared this work was wasted; now,
Having thought it out—even while we talked, my mind
Was labouring with it—that foolish fear is dead.
Twice in the past transcendent drama flowered,
A people's crowning glory. First in Greece:
A mighty triad and a rhythmic scroll,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.