| ||||
Such is the clarity it confers: a half-articulate sense of conviction that erases all doubt, the skeptic's pause and the philosopher's hesita-tion, in an affirmation that in one sweep con- firms us and belittles - annihilates - us, subord-inating us to a being not only absolutely other to us but numinously so, confirmed as grander, more glorious, more real - it "decenters" us and opens us to other people, other worlds, in gratitude and dazzlement and wonder. And yet, how often do we fail to rise to beauty's occasion. It banners above us, heavily luffing in the evening breeze, beckoning a welcome from the weary and disillusioned, bidding a salute; stands like a scout on a ridge against the sky, throwing one arm toward you, the other toward something just over the hor-  | izon, and you, craven, destitute, exhausted, cannot raise your crippled legs where they lie, abandoned and useless, to follow; it exhorts you in ecstatic, martial bliss, and all you can do is gape, chastened and silent in the dirt at its feet. It rises above you, a whirlwind, a storm of gold, an imperious sea drowning you in the riptide of its gift. For beauty is not only a gift, beauty is a com-mand - though of what is yours to discover; beauty is the exaction of what its magnanimity offers - the flowering world, the hungry child of your life. And beautiful as the offer is, as beautiful is the renunciation, the resigned turn to the valley that will finally break its fall. I will not because I may not, I may not because I cannot, I cannot because I do not, I do not be-  | |||
