When, without the bitterness of impotent rebellion, we have learnt both
to resign ourselves to the outward rule of Fate and to recognize that
the non-human world is unworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at
last so to transform and refashion the unconscious universe, so to
transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new image of shining
gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the
world--in the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the
events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of Death--the
insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of a beauty which
its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery
over the thoughtless forces of Nature. The more evil the material with
which it deals, the more thwarting to untrained desire, the greater is
its achievement in inducing the reluctant rock to yield up its hidden
treasures, the prouder its victory in compelling the opposing forces to
swell the pageant of its triumph. Of all the arts, Tragedy is the
proudest, the most triumphant; for it builds its shining citadel in the
very center of the enemy's country, on the very summit of his highest
mountain; from its impregnable watch-towers, his camps and arsenals, his
columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls the free life
continues, while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair, and all the
servile captains of tyrant Fate, afford the burghers of that dauntless
city new spectacles of beauty. Happy those sacred ramparts, thrice happy
the dwellers on that all-seeing eminence. Honor to those brave warriors
who, through countless ages of warfare, have preserved for us the
priceless heritage of liberty, and have kept undefiled by sacrilegious
invaders the home of the unsubdued.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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