Lady S. Dead sin, it cannot now commit.
Sir T. Now Gervase; put your message to the test.
St. J. There is no sin. Be silent, Martha! Fear,
Despondency, decay, the will to die
Should neither speak nor think, but fling themselves
Upon the Universe. Be silent! Let
My meaning touch your nerves. Attempt not
Apprehension: feel what I say.—This sense
Of sin is ignorance only; every voice
Must thunder that, and every intellect
Record it, every heart delight to hoard
The knowledge till the tissue of the world,
Engrained with truth, be guiltless in conceit
As in effect it is. Here we are left
Unfriended on the surface, far from home;
And that imagination which we are,
Betrayed and lost on this outlandish earth,
Believes itself to blame; but neither man
Nor Matter's answerable: the Universe
Is a becoming, a passion and a pain,
A rapt imagination. Purge yourself
Of God, of Heaven and Hell, of soul and sin,
Of small humanities, fantastic moods,
Putridities of spirit, posies, myths;
For all these dreams will leave you when you die.
Be Matter pure as flame.
Lady S. My soul, my soul!
It springs from God: there once was God.
St. J. No God:
God hitherto has been the world's excuse,
The shadow of man that tripped him everywhere,
A phantom cul-de-sac in the Universe,
A dog in the manger. Men need no excuse:
If they must be, they must be what they are.
Lady S. And what are they?
St. J. I told you: Matter, once
Inherent in the nebula that cooled,
Contracted, and became the sun and us.
Out of the bowels of the earth we rise:
Though in that thought at home and happy enough,
Yet there imagination feels itself
The merest parvenu when it recalls
Incalculable ages throbbed away
Within the glistering fire diaphanous
That filled the deep conceiving womb of space;
And on the earth, upon the surface here,
No longer than a week-end visit seems
Its spectral period hitherto, beside
That sojourn in the cooling globe, and date
Without beginning in the pristine fire.
Lady S. I feel a meaning, Gervase, I feel a power
More beautiful than God. How stale God seems
Upon a sudden and how ugly!
St. J. Of a truth
God is an ugly dream, whate'er it meant
At one time.
Lady S. Who made us then?