And At The End A Genius Paints A Portrait Of A Wrinkled Old
Woman's Face, And The World Regards And Worships.
Or all discords have
been flung together pell-mell, resolution of them has been deferred
perpetually, perhaps even denied
Altogether, chord of B major has been
struck with C major, works have closed upon the leading note or the
dominant seventh, symphonies have been composed to be played in the
dark, or to be accompanied by a magic-lantern's efforts, operas been
produced which are merely carnage and a row - and at the end a genius
writes a little song, and the world gives the tribute of its
breathless silence and its tears. And it knows that though other
things may be done, better things can never be done. For no perfection
can exceed any other perfection.
And so in Edfu I feel that this untinted austerity is perfect; that
whatever may be done in architecture during future ages of the world,
Edfu, while it lasts, will remain a thing supreme - supreme in form
and, because of this supremacy, supreme in the spell which it casts
upon the soul.
The sanctuary is just a small, beautifully proportioned, inmost
chamber, with a black roof, containing a sort of altar of granite, and
a great polished granite shrine which no doubt once contained the god
Horus. I am glad he is not there now. How far more impressive it is to
stand in an empty sanctuary in the house divine of "the Hidden One,"
whom the nations of the world worship, whether they spread their robes
on the sand and turn their faces to Mecca, or beat the tambourine and
sing "glory hymns" of salvation, or flagellate themselves in the night
before the patron saint of the Passionists, or only gaze at the snow-
white plume that floats from the snows of Etna under the rose of dawn,
and feel the soul behind Nature.
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