Again you will be tested with photographs and
paragraphs, with lectures and public dinners.... Worst of all there will
come to you terrible hours when you yourself know of a sure certainty that
your work is worthless. In your middle age a great barrenness will come
upon you. You have been a little teller of little tales, and on every side
of you there will be others who have striven for other prizes and have won
them. Sitting alone in your room with your poor strands of coloured silk
that had once been intended to make so beautiful a pattern, poor boy, you
will know that you have failed. That will be a very dreadful hour--the only
power that can meet it is a blind and deaf courage. Courage is the only
thing that we are here to show ... the hour will pass."
The old man paused. There was a silence. Then he said very slowly as though
he were drawing in front of him the earliest histories of his own past
life....
"Against all these temptations, against these voices of the World and the
Flesh, against the glory of power and the swinging hammer of success, you,
sitting quietly in your room, must remember that a great charge has been
given you, that you are here for one thing and one thing only ... to
listen. The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of God.
"I am not speaking in phrases. I am not pressing upon you any sensational
discoveries, but here at the end of my long life, I, with all the things
that I meant to do and have failed to do heavy upon me, can give you only
this one word.
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