and ugly and evil, even as Life is elsewhere.

* * * * *

And then--the Veil. It drops as drops the night on southern seas--vast,
sudden, unanswering. There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty and Tears. As
one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old,
old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding. And yet it
hangs there, this Veil, between Then and Now, between Pale and Colored
and Black and White--between You and Me. Surely it is a thought-thing,
tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not
in our little day may you and I lift it. We may feverishly unravel its
edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and
gilded top nestles close to the throne of God. But as we work and climb
we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching
and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and
fleshed through this vast hanging darkness that the Doer never sees the
Deed and the Victim knows not the Victor and Each hates All in wild and
bitter ignorance. Listen, O Isles, to these Voices from within the Veil,
for they portray the most human hurt of the Twentieth Cycle of that poor
Jesus who was called the Christ!

* * * * *

There is something in the nature of Beauty that demands an end. Ugliness
may be indefinite. It may trail off into gray endlessness. But Beauty
must be complete--whether it be a field of poppies or a great life,--it
must end, and the End is part and triumph of the Beauty. I know there
are those who envisage a beauty eternal. But I cannot. I can dream of
great and never-ending processions of beautiful things and visions and
acts. But each must be complete or it cannot for me exist.

On the other hand, Ugliness to me is eternal, not in the essence but in
its incompleteness; but its eternity does not daunt me, for its eternal
unfulfilment is a cause of joy. There is in it nothing new or
unexpected; it is the old evil stretching out and ever seeking the end
it cannot find; it may coil and writhe and recur in endless battle to
days without end, but it is the same human ill and bitter hurt. But
Beauty is fulfilment. It satisfies. It is always new and strange. It is
the reasonable thing. Its end is Death--the sweet silence of perfection,
the calm and balance of utter music. Therein is the triumph of Beauty.

So strong is the spell of beau