Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused abbey I found
half sunken in the grass the grey and goggle-eyed visage of one of those
graven monsters that made the ornamental water-spouts in the cathedrals
of the Middle Ages. It lay there, scoured by ancient rains or striped by
recent fungus, but still looking like the head of some huge dragon slain
by a primeval hero. And as I looked at it, I thought of the meaning of
the grotesque, and passed into some symbolic reverie of the three great
stages of art.
I
Once upon a time there lived upon an island a merry and innocent people,
mostly shepherds and tillers of the earth. They were republicans, like
all primitive and simple souls; they talked over their affairs under a
tree, and the nearest approach they had to a personal ruler was a
sort of priest or white witch who said their prayers for them. They
worshipped the sun, not idolatrously, but as the golden crown of the god
whom all such infants see almost as plainly as the sun.
Now this priest was told by his people to build a great tower, pointing
to the sky in salutation of the Sun-god; and he pondered long and
heavily before he picked his materials. For he was resolved to use
nothing that was not almost as clear and exquisite as sunshine itself;
he would use nothing that was not washed as white as the rain can wash
the heavens, nothing that did not sparkle as spotlessly as that crown of
God. He would have nothing grotesque or obscure; he would not have even
anything emphatic or even anything mysterious. He would have all the
arches as light as laughter and as candid as logic. He built the temple
in three concentric courts, which were cooler and more exquisite in
substance each than the other. For the outer wall was a hedge of white
lilies, ranked so thick that a green stalk was hardly to be seen;
and the wall within that was of crystal, which smashed the sun into a
million stars. And the wall within that, which was the tower itself, was
a tower of pure water, forced up in an everlasting fountain; and upon
the very tip and crest of that foaming spire was one big and blazing
diamond, which the water tossed up eternally and caught again as a child
catches a ball.
“Now,” said the priest, “I have made a tower which is a little worthy of
the sun.”