Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/287

THE FIRST MORRIS 261 displaying that preternatural activity, that heightened acuteness of perception, which possesses the body at moments of crisis, the signal of an exalted mood. It needs but a touch to complete the illusion, to make it all but reality. The touch is not withheld. A sacring- bell rings sharply, the Grail glimmers through the forest, " images of wonder " submit the choosing-cloths of doom. The chant of the verse goes on like the voice of a priest. The light that falls on the page is that of a painted window. On all sides we see none but the strained abrupt gestures of people wrought by a pro- found spiritual tension. These bowed knights and burdened queens, moving with the awkwardness of anchorites, seem the servers of a mystery too great to be entrusted to their words. It is impossible not to believe that we are the witnesses of a supreme ceremonial. And when, with Galahad, we watch the bright shrivelling and concentration of all bodily things — " As I sat there not moving, less and less I saw the melted snow that hung in beads Upon my steel-shoes ; less and less I saw Between the tiles the bunches of small weeds" — we feel we are participants too ; that for us also the scroll is about to part and the earth to crumple into a sign. II It is true that as the pages turn, and the book pro- gresses, there are many changes of ostensible motive : The Defence gives place to a battle-piece ; love-songs, lonely ballads, lyrics of a sweet helplessness follow ; but this sense of mystery, of revelation, endures un- challenged — as implicit in a lost refrain : — Two red roses across the moon ;