he least
parochial; and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms.
Shall we waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists, because their
temperaments are not our own?

But the shapes and colours of the day were now all blurred; every tree
and stone entangled in the dusk. How different the world seemed from
that in which I had first sat down, with the swallows flirting past. And
my mood was different; for each of those worlds had brought to my heart
its proper feeling--painted on my eyes the just picture. And Night, that
was coming, would bring me yet another mood that would frame itself with
consciousness at its own fair moment, and hang before me. A quiet owl
stole by in the geld below, and vanished into the heart of a tree. And
suddenly above the moor-line I saw the large moon rising.
Cinnamon-coloured, it made all things swim, made me uncertain of my
thoughts, vague with mazy feeling. Shapes seemed but drifts of moon-dust,
and true reality nothing save a sort of still listening to the wind. And
for long I sat, just watching the moon creep up, and hearing the thin,
dry rustle of the leaves along the holly hedge. And there came to me
this thought: What is this Universe--that never had beginning and will
never have an end--but a myriad striving to perfect pictures never the
same, so blending and fading one into another, that all form one great
perfected picture? And what are we--ripples on the tides of a birthless,
deathless, equipoised Creative-Purpose--but little works of Art?

Trying to record that thought, I noticed that my note-book was damp with
dew. The cattle were lying down. It was too dark to see.
1911

THE END.

THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY

CONTENTS:

First Series:
The Silver Box
Joy
Strife

Second Series:
The Eldest Son
The Little Dream
Justice

Third Series:
The Fugitive
The Pigeon
The Mob

Fourth Series:
A Bit O' Love
The Foundations
The Skin Game

Six Short Plays:
The First and The Last
The Little Man
Hall-marked
Defeat
The Sun
Punch and Go

Fifth Series:
A Family Man
Loyalties
Windows

FIRST SERIES:

THE SILVER BOX
JOY
STRIFE

THE SILVER BOX

A COMEDY IN