But
alas! that little Wonder had to die first--"
"I used to tell myself," he went on, "that human life, however
exquisite, without art to eternalise it, was like a rose showering its
petals upon the ground. For so brief a space the rose stood perfect,
then fell in a ruin of perfume. Wonderful moments had human life, but
without art were they not like pearls falling into a gulf? So I said:
there is nothing real but art. The material of art passes--human love,
human beauty--but art remains. It is the image, not the reality, that
is everlasting. I will live in the image."
"But I know now," he once more resumed, "that there is a higher
immortality than art's,--the immortality of love. The immortality of art
indeed is one of those curious illusions of man's self-love which a
moment's thought dispels. Art, who need be told, is as dependent for its
survival on the survival of its physical media as man's body itself--and
though the epic and the great canvas escape combustion for a million
years, they must burn at last, burn with all the other accumulated
shadows of time. What we call immortality in art is but the shadow of
the soul's immortality; but the immortality of love is that of the soul
itself--"
"O Antony," interrupted Beatrice, "you really believe that now? You will
never doubt it again?"
"We never doubt what we have really seen, and I had never seen before,"
answered Antony, taking her hand and looking deep into her eyes, "never
seen it as I see it now.
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