Pure music is the true white magic, as black magic is music
mixed with clay by human hands. Naked Beauty alone may mix music with
clay in Its own image and likeness. Even poetry fails save in so far
as it echoes the pure natural truths of music. And all creation may
flow from a flute if the player breathes a prayer. Some day we shall
have the great opera of the Incarnation and Redemption. It is the
ideal goal of music, and so of all art. But it demands the poet, the
painter, and the sculptor, too, for its actors shall be immortal
statues and a living chorus singing the passion of the race against
the supreme dawn and the supreme sunset. But its greatest moments will
be silence. Christ and His Mother will live this silence in the glory
of transfigured stone, and the drama will be played in the open with
the stars above as orchestra, to which the human music will be but a
beautiful echo. To this Wagner and Craig point the way. I read
Patmore's _Two Infinities_ today with bewilderment and emphatic
disagreement. It seems absolutely lacking in vision, provincial,
almost challenging Creation. And yet it is essentially true. Christ
was a man of golden mediocrities. He speaks of the lilies of the
field, but never of stars or of planets. And St. Francis perhaps hints
at the solution. To him brother Wind and brother Fire and brother Worm
are alike and equal, for he sees them in the light of infinity. But
all are wonderful, and we must not sneer at the stars.
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