makes strange magic: with a sword thrust into a man's right hand he creates the Warrior; with a robe and crown on a woman's brow and shoulders he makes a Queen. And through their clashing drama of love and war he moves his figures, but always escaping the obvious, always omitting
the anti-climax, the routine
That ends all well.
For, as he says,
Why hunt your pleasure to its death?
Ignore the ending—trace a new design.
I own to a real thrill when the man—or the Man-motif, as the poet puts it—rebels, crying
We'll make our own design!
and Capulchard, exclaiming sardonically,
how slight
A breath would puff them pell-mell into space,
And free the canvas for another theme!—
marches them through a new round of experience before the
Ultimate critics in Olympian chairs.
At last, when rebellion becomes blasphemy, when the tortured grotesques "fling defiance"—
will no longer bow.
The prey of gods!
and Capulchard rises to full power, saying,
They shall have freedom, even as they wish,
Freedom beyond their wish, freedom complete!
And even the gods shall hesitate to laugh!—
when, stripping moon and stars from the sky, he sends his beings of an hour out into the void, the thrill becomes an exaltation, a shiver of spiritual sympathy with the poet's vision.
[195]
