St. J. No end, and no beginning anywhere: Only eternity, eternal Matter And Matter's form, imagination--No; Not form: how metaphysic tarnishes A simple word! Only imagination, The most exalted name of Matter, wrought From flame to ice, from ice again to flame Through suns and planets, verdure, battle, blood, Degrees of being, and miracles of change. Lady S. Why should it be? What purpose can it serve? St. J. It must be, since it is; and must be _so_, Or certainly it would be otherwise. It serves no purpose, it is beautiful: That is the whole. Your children, dead, had no Beginning and will have no end. They once Were fire; that fire, transmuted into love, Distilled them from your womb, and was Itself your children: cooled again, it rests In earth, and will be limpid fire once more, When all the orbs that hang about the sun Return into its bosom, or other radiant Passion of Matter impregnate space anew. Lady S. I need not die then, since I cannot end? St. J. Oh now my brain rejoices! Terror lurked Beneath that white austerity of mine, Lest when I tried my message in the fire-- The first time: true; but with a woman, and one Whom dread of death and fancied need of death Kindles to any news and change of mood: I say, I feared lest your intense despair, That gilds my truth at once, should burn it up. But now you think there never can be need For terror, doubt, or agony of mind In presence of a sinless Universe, Where all is mystery, all imagination, All beauty, passion, power unending, all The purest Matter. Lady S. I can live; but where? Where can I find a home for this new thought? Not in the theatre, not in the church, Not in the houses or the books of men! St. J. I have a mansion in a forest-aisle Where a deep silence, intimately felt, And poignant as a perfume, like a mode Of subtle splendour evermore becomes. A green and branching honeycomb of glades, A sylvan city clusters round my house; And near it in an arbour sancro-sanct, A chapelle ardent of the forest, lies In state a famous memory. There it was The queen of the Iceni stood at bay, A desperate hind against the Roman pack, In that last battle of her overthrow. The trench she dug, the mound she reared are held By oak and beech; but in this inmost bower Beside her camp forlorn, this secret haunt Of emerald shadow, emerald light, a crypt Of living silence, sculptured boscage, turf That gathers incense from the generous earth, There on this virgin ground, a green and bronze Carpet of fragrancies and couch of state, These doomed things are enshrined. Lady S. I might begin To live again in such a woodland haven, If I were free. St. J. What freedom can you want More than the freedom of the universe? Lady S. The freedom of the Universe! St. J. Whereof My message is the charter. Lady S. But my husband? Sir T. You have no husband now. Let Gervase speak His precept of divorce.