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45 - Centaur by Algernon Blackwood · Centaur

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  Speaker 1: Chapter forty five of The Centaur by Algnon Blackwood. This
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  Speaker 1: livery box recording is in the public domain. Read by
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  Speaker 1: yoganand The Centaur, chapter forty five, and here the crowded,
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  Speaker 1: muddled note books come to an end. The rest was
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  Speaker 1: action and inevitable disaster. The brief history of O'Malley's mad
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  Speaker 1: campaign may be imagined. To writer who found interest in
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  Speaker 1: the study of fallen hopes and their leaders, a detailed
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  Speaker 1: record of this particular one might seem worth while. For
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  Speaker 1: me personally, it is too sad and too pathetic. I
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  Speaker 1: cannot bring myself to tell, much less to analyze the
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  Speaker 1: story of a broken heart, when the heart and story
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  Speaker 1: are those of a close and deeply admired intimate, a
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  Speaker 1: man who gave me genuine love and held my own. Besides,
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  Speaker 1: although a curious chapter in uncommon human nature, it is not,
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  Speaker 1: by any means a new one. It's a true story
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  Speaker 1: of many a poet and dreamer since the world began,
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  Speaker 1: though perhaps not often nor even guessed. And only the
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  Speaker 1: poets themselves, especially the little poets, who cannot utter half
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  Speaker 1: the fire that consumes them, may know the searing pain
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  Speaker 1: and passion, and the true inwardness of it all. Most
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  Speaker 1: of those months it chanced I was away and only
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  Speaker 1: fragments of the foolish enterprise could reach me. But nothing
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  Speaker 1: I think I could have stopped him, nor any very
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  Speaker 1: selfish wisdom made him even pause. The thing possessed him utterly.
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  Speaker 1: It had to flame its way out as best it could,
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  Speaker 1: to high and low. He preached, by every means in
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  Speaker 1: his power, the simple life. He preached the mystical life,
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  Speaker 1: as well, that the true knowledge and the true progress
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  Speaker 1: of within, that they both pertained to the inner being
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  Speaker 1: and have no chief concern with external things. He preached
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  Speaker 1: it wildly, lopsidedly, in or out of season, knowing no
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  Speaker 1: half meashious. His enthusiasm obscured a sense of proportion, and
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  Speaker 1: the extravagance hid the germ of truth that undeniably lay
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  Speaker 1: in his message to put the movement on its feet.
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  Speaker 1: At first he realized every possession that he had. It
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  Speaker 1: left him penniless, if he was not almost so already,
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  Speaker 1: And in the end it left him smallthered beneath the
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  Speaker 1: glory of his blinding and unutterable dream. He never understood
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  Speaker 1: that suggestion is more effective than a sledge hammer. His
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  Speaker 1: Faith was no mere little seed of mustard, but a
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  Speaker 1: full fledged for us, singing its message in a wind
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  Speaker 1: of thunder, he shouted it aloud to the world. I
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  Speaker 1: think the acid disappointment that lies beneath that trite old
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  Speaker 1: phrase a broken heart, was never really his. For indeed,
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  Speaker 1: it seemed that his cruel, ludicrous failure merely served to
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  Speaker 1: strengthen hope and purpose by making him seek for a
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  Speaker 1: better method of imparting what he had to say. In
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  Speaker 1: the end, he learned the bitter lesson to the full.
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  Speaker 1: But faith never trailed a single feather, Those cheering audiences
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  Speaker 1: in the park, those empty benches in many a public hall,
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  Speaker 1: those brief, ignoring paragraphs in the few newspapers that filled
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  Speaker 1: the vacant corner by labeling him a rank and long
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  Speaker 1: haird profit. Even the silence that greeted his pamphlets, his
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  Speaker 1: letter to the press, and all the rest hurt him
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  Speaker 1: for others rather than for himself. His pain was altruistic
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  Speaker 1: and never personal. Histreme and motive. His huge, unwieldy compassion,
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  Speaker 1: his genuine love for humanity, all were big enough for that.
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  Speaker 1: And so I think he missed the personal mortification that
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  Speaker 1: disappointment so deep might bring to dreamers. With an aim less,
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  Speaker 1: unalteratedly pure, his eyes were single. To the end, he
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  Speaker 1: attributed whally the highest motives to all who suffered health.
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  Speaker 1: The very quacks and fools who flocked his banner, eager
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  Speaker 1: to exploit their smaller facts by joining them to his own,
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  Speaker 1: he welcomed, while he regretting that, as Tall had warned him,
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  Speaker 1: he could not attract a better class of mind. He
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  Speaker 1: did not even see through the maneuvers of the occasional
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  Speaker 1: women of wealth and title who sought to conceal their
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  Speaker 1: own mediocrity by advertising in their drawing rooms the eccentricities
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  Speaker 1: of men like himself. And to the end he had
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  Speaker 1: the courage of his glorious convictions. The change of matter
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  Speaker 1: that he learned at last, moreover, was characteristic of this
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  Speaker 1: faith and courage. I've picked at the wrong end, he said.
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  Speaker 1: I shall never reach men through the intellects. Their brains
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  Speaker 1: to day are occupied by machine made gods of civilization.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot change the direction of their thoughts and lusts
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  Speaker 1: from outside. The momentum is too great to stop that way.
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  Speaker 1: I must get at them from within. To reach the hants,
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  Speaker 1: the new ideas must rise up from within. I see
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  Speaker 1: the truer way. I must do it from the other side.
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  Speaker 1: It must come to them in beauty. For he was
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  Speaker 1: to the last convinced that death would mergch him in
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  Speaker 1: the being of the Earth's collective consciousness, and that lost
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  Speaker 1: in a deep, eternal beauty, he thus might reach the
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  Speaker 1: hearts of men in some stray glimpse of nature's loveliness
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  Speaker 1: and register's flaming message. He loved to quote from Adonais.
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  Speaker 1: He is made one with nature, that is heard his
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  Speaker 1: voice in all the music, from the more of thunder
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  Speaker 1: to the song of Knight's sweet bird. He is a
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  Speaker 1: presence to be felt and known in darkness and in light,
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  Speaker 1: from herb and stone, spreading itself whereable that power may move,
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  Speaker 1: which as withdrawn as being to its own his portion
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  Speaker 1: of the loveliness which once he made more lovely, he
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  Speaker 1: death bare his part, while the one spirit's plastic stress
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  Speaker 1: sweeps through the dull, dense world. And this thought, phrased
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  Speaker 1: in a dozen different ways, was always on his lips.
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  Speaker 1: To dream was right and useful, even to dream alone,
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  Speaker 1: because the beauty of the dream must add to the
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  Speaker 1: beauty of the whole of which it is a part,
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  Speaker 1: and an interpretation. It was not really lost or vain.
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  Speaker 1: All must come back in time to feed the world.
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  Speaker 1: He had known gracious thoughts of earth, too big to utter,
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  Speaker 1: almost too big to hold. Such thoughts could not ever
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  Speaker 1: be really told they were incommunicable. For the mystical revolution
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  Speaker 1: is incommunicable. It has authority only for him who feels it.
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  Speaker 1: A corporate revelation is impossible. Only those among men could
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  Speaker 1: know in whose hearts it rose intuitively and made its
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  Speaker 1: presence felt as innate ideas. Inspiration brings it, and beauty
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  Speaker 1: is a vehicle. Their hearts must change before their minds
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  Speaker 1: could be reached. I can work it better from the
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  Speaker 1: other side, from that old old garden, which is the
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  Speaker 1: mother's heart. In this way I can help at any rate.
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  Speaker 1: The end of Chapter forty five