e poetry which may
and should exist in naturalistic drama, can only be that of perfect
rightness of proportion, rhythm, shape--the poetry, in fact, that lies in
all vital things. It is the ill-mating of forms that has killed a
thousand plays. We want no more bastard drama; no more attempts to dress
out the simple dignity of everyday life in the peacock's feathers of
false lyricism; no more straw-stuffed heroes or heroines; no more rabbits
and goldfish from the conjurer's pockets, nor any limelight. Let us have
starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our own self-respects.
1909.

MEDITATION ON FINALITY

In the Grand Canyon of Arizona, that most exhilarating of all natural
phenomena, Nature has for once so focussed her effects, that the result
is a framed and final work of Art. For there, between two high lines of
plateau, level as the sea, are sunk the wrought thrones of the
innumerable gods, couchant, and for ever revering, in their million moods
of light and colour, the Master Mystery.

Having seen this culmination, I realize why many people either recoil
before it, and take the first train home, or speak of it as a "remarkable
formation." For, though mankind at large craves finality, it does not
crave the sort that bends the knee to Mystery. In Nature, in Religion, in
Art, in Life, the common cry is: "Tell me precisely where I am, what
doing, and where going! Let me be free of this fearful untidiness of not
knowing all about it!" The favoured religions are always those whose
message is most finite. The fashionable professions--they that end us in
assured positions. The most popular works of fiction, such as leave
nothing to our imagination. And to this craving after prose, who would
not be lenient, that has at all known life, with its usual predominance
of our lower and less courageous selves, our constant hankering after the
cosey closed door and line of least resistance? We are continually
begging to be allowed to know for certain; though, if our prayer were
granted, and Mystery no longer hovered, made blue the hills, and turned
day into night, we should, as surely, wail at once to be delivered of
that ghastliness of knowing things for certain!

Now, in Art, I would never quarrel with a certain living writer who
demands of it the kind of finality implied in what he calls a "moral
discovery"--using, no doubt, the words in their widest sense. I would
maintain, however, that such finality