the weariness
of life--from these we "would begone"--"save that to die we leave
our love alone"!

But it is not only in the fatal danger of eternal separation from the
flesh that has become to us more necessary than sun or moon, that
_the tragedy of the senses lies._ It lies in the very intensity with
which we have sifted, winnowed, tormented and refined these
panthers of holy lust. Those who understand the poetry of Keats
recognise that in the passion which burns him for the "heavenly
quintessence" as Marlowe calls it, there is also the ghastly danger of
reaction. The pitiless hands of Joy "are ever at his lips, bidding
adieu" and "veiled melancholy has her 'sovran shrine' in the heart of
all delight."

This is the curse upon those who follow the _supreme Beauty_--that
is to say, the Beauty that belongs, not to ideas and ideals, but to
living forms. They are driven by the gross pressure of circumstance
to forsake her, to leave her, to turn aside and eat husks with the
swine!

It is the same with that supreme mystery of _words_ themselves, put
of which such an artist as this one was creates his spells and his
sorcery. How, after tasting, drop by drop, that draught of "lingered
sweetness long drawn-out" of his unequalled style, can we bear to
fall back upon the jabbering and screeching, the howling and hissing,
of the voices we have to listen to in common resort? Ah, child, child!
Think carefully before you turn your candid-innocent eyes to the
fatal entrance to these mysteries! It is better never to have known
what the high, terrible loveliness of Her of Melos is than, _having
seen her,_ to pass the rest of our days with these copies, and
prostitutions, and profanations, and parodies, "which mimic
humanity so abominably"!

That is the worst of it. That is the sting of it. All the _great quests_
in this world tempt us and destroy us, for, though they may touch
our famished lips once and again before we perish, one thing they
cannot do--one thing Beauty herself, the most sacred of all such
quests, cannot do--and that is to make the arid intervals of our
ordinary life tolerable, when we have to return to the common world,
and the people and things that stand gaping in that world, like stupid,
staring idols!

But what matter? Let us pay the penalty. Let us pay the price. _Is it
not worth it?_ Beauty! O divine, O cruel Mistress! Thee, thee we
must worship still, and with thee the acolytes who bear thy censers!
For t