University of Virginia Library

THE MASQUE OF THE GODS.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

• A Voice from Space.
• Chorus of Spirits.
• Elohim.
• Immanuel.
• Jove.
• Apollo.
• Brahma.
• Ormuzd.
• Ahriman.
• Odin.
• Baal.
• Perun.
• Manito.
• Man.
• The Sea.
• The Mountains.
• The Rivers.
• The Trees.
• The Serpents.
• The Wolves.
• The Caverns.
• The Rocks.

SCENE I.

The high table-land of Pamere. Midnight. The distant snow-peaks of the Himalayas, the Hindoo-Koosh, and the Küen-Lün shining in the moonlight. At first, silence; then, slowly and indistinctly,
THE ROCKS.
We scarcely change, though wind and rain and thunder
Blow, beat, and fall, for many a thousand years;
And yet we miss the dread, the ignorant wonder,
The dark, stern being, born of human fears.
The stains of blood, upon our bases sprinkled,
Are washed away; the fires no longer flame:
The stars behold our foreheads still unwrinkled;
We were, and are, but Man is not the same.

THE CAVERNS.

THE SERPENTS.

THE WOLVES.

ODIN.
Be silent! Ye are not sons of Fenrir's race,
The huge, the fierce of fang! What will ye here,
Where even Gods grow dim, and scarce behold
Themselves, or hear the echo of their speech?
Methinks I slept, but for how long a time
I know not: dreams, or memories of a home,
Surround me still, and something cold, remote,
Some rude resemblance of the world I swayed,
Revives my waning power. Once more I speak,
And marvel at the accents, sealed so long.
But who art thou, the dark of aspect, here
Confronting me, no less a shade, but more,
Though lost capacity for wrath would fain
Assert itself, and shape thine ancient threat?
I fear thee not.

PERUN.
Yet was I feared erewhile.
Older than thou, and mightier, I but gave
My footstool not my throne, when came they reign.
I held my sceptre still; and on black stones,
The natural altars tumbled from the cliffs,
Frost-carved and thunder-polished, took the blood
Of secret worship, heard the fierce appeals
That half implored my favor, half defied.
I ruled by right of eldest cruelty:
The savage strength of man renewed my life,
And still renews, though all my frame is lean
And racked with hunger,—but I am not dead.

BAAL.
Nor I, whose temples mimicked once the hills.
For those strong lusts of men I kept alive,
They gave me splendor and a mighty name.
None older is than I. When Man came forth,
The final effort, wrung from monstrous forms,
And Earth's outwearied forces could no more,
I warmed the ignorant bantling on my breast.
We rose together, and my kingdom spread
From these cold hills to hamlets in the palms,
That grew to Memphis and to Babylon;
While I, on towers and hanging terraces,
In shaft and obelisk, beheld my sign
Creative, shape of first imperious law.
Thou, Odin, lord of strength, and thou, Perun,
Of fear and fierceness, never touched the springs
Of life, your faint existence there to feed.
It must be you shall pass, your forms are thin
As incense-smoke: what made you shall unmake.
But I beget, not slay,—grant overplus,
Where you are niggard,—drink from hidden founts,
That flow through channels of the riotous blood,
And keep men at the level of their source.
I may be weakened, but I cannot die.

MANITO.
If I be old, I know not: ye are strange,
Yet kindred,—long conjectured, here beheld.
I have some fitful power, which now is dread,
Now merciful, and, as I think, is good.
The smokes I breathed are shrunk and almost spent;
The shouted hymns but faintly stir mine ears;
The blood of dog, and bear, and buffalo,
Gives me but scanty life; and through the lands
I governed, seated in my hunting-grounds
Above the sky, my messenger the swan,
My slaves the beaver and the crafty fox,
The voices which address me slowly fail.
But ye, of other worlds, declare me this,
Am I myself, or am I made of them?
If, as I fear, their simple souls had need
Of One supreme, and therefore I became;
Or if, alone before them, I have drawn
Through ages of unchanged companionship—
Since lonely Gods must stoop to play with men—
Their color to my face, their joys to mine,
And to their prayers the expected answer given,
Declare me this!

ODIN.
Who shall declare the thing?
Dost thou, the lowest of us all, provoke
The chill that made me shudder on my throne
In Asgaard, when the gold-haired Freya wept,
And the sweet light of Balder's eyes grew dim?
Are we, then, born of those who kneel to us?
Shall we the doubter slay, who doubt ourselves?
Or cease to be, who grant the sacred gift
Of the immortal banquet? I am faint
With more than craving for forgotten rites,
And even might perish, did not something burn
In mine impoverished being from above,
As if Man's shadow met a light in me,
Coming, I know not whence: but it is good.

BAAL.
Dost thou confess it, Odin? That we live,
Outliving name and prayer and sacrifice,
Save such as in the heart and limbs of Man
Unconsciously is rendered, tests the truth
Of ancient godship, yet dependent still
On something strange, and mightier than ourselves.
Were we but servants, then, instead of lords?
Did blood and odor, sound of harp and horn,
And choral cries from multitudes of men,
But pass our palates and our ears, to reach
The senses of some sole Divinity,
Whom we thus flattered? When I looked below
Upon my soaring fane in Babylon,
Who was't looked down on me? Who shook my soul,
But not with fear, or hate, or jealousy,—
Since each were vain,—but something fine and pure,
That made me stagger, as my feet were clay?

PERUN.
Why, then, if such there be, I know Him not.

ODIN.
Peace, ignorant savage! To thy Lord and mine
Dream no rebellion! By His leave we are,
No less than Man's necessity. But what
He is, where throned, and how upheld in power,
I fain would know.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Lo! I am that I am.

A pause.
THE GODS.
We cannot understand Thee, yet we bow,
And, without knowledge, own Thee: are we Thine,
Or shall we cease when men no more believe?

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Mine are ye: also Man's.

THE GODS.
We feel, and must
Acknowledge Thee. Our questioning is vain
And self-betraying, since to question is
No office of the Gods. We yield to Thee,
Who knowest, but who wilt not answer us.

MAN.
We burned their temples, overturned their altars;
Through force or love we learned the newer worship,
And taught our children other than our fathers.
We gave them fear, we gave them war and slaughter,
We died to keep them in their sacred houses,
We lived to crown them rulers of the nations.
But they forget, they perish or desert us,
Too weak, without us, to become immortal.
They change like us, yet claim to sit above us,
Our likenesses, of grander limb and feature,
Of stronger hate and lust, and gentler pity.
We dream of higher, yet we cannot reach them;
We grope for something which our hands can cling to,
Our eyes behold, our minds accept and fathom;
And, groping, seizing, holding, lo! they fail us
As they were not—yet must we fear and worship.

SCENE II.

A Doric temple, in ruins, on a headland above the Ægean Sea. A valley and mountains in the background. Early dawn.
THE TREES.

THE RIVERS.

THE MOUNTAINS.
Howe'er the wheels of Time go round,
We cannot wholly be discrowned.
We bind, in form, and hue, and height,
The Finite to the Infinite,
And, lifted on our shoulders bare,
The races breathe an ampler air.
The arms that clasped, the lips that kissed,
Have vanished from the morning mist;
The dainty shapes that flashed and passed
In spray the plunging torrent cast,
Or danced through woven gleam and shade,
The vapors and the sunbeams braid,
Grow thin and pale: each holy haunt
Of Gods or spirits ministrant
Hath something lost of ancient awe;
Yet from the stooping heavens we draw
A beauty, mystery, and might,
Time cannot change nor worship slight.
The gold of dawn and sunset sheds
Unearthly glory on our heads;
The secret of the skies we keep;
And whispers, round each lonely steep,
Allure and promise, yet withhold,
What bard and prophet never told.
While Man's slow ages come and go,
Our dateless chronicles of snow
Their changeless old inscription show,
And men therein forever see
The unread speech of Deity.

THE SEA.

JOVE.
I hear thine ancient murmur, and the slow
Reverberation from thy thousand shores.
Who knows thee, cannot die: for those, thy Gods,
My brood that peopled thee, but strayed in joy
Of half-existence 'oer thy restless fields.
What though Olympus props dismantled halls,
The dust of ages on their golden chairs,
And Ganymede is but a heap of bones
Beside the shrivelled eagle,—still I live,
Much as I was before my children made
Their easy ladders for the climbing souls
Of men, who dreamed while dreaming that they knew.
All chains of life they grasped led back to me;
All aspirations pointed on to me,
And, like thyself, I bounded then the world.
If now the chains be broken, otherwhere
The eyes be turned, and features not mine own
Shine from that void beyond both men and Gods,
Shall I then cease? Not so: the later reign
Is built on mine, of mine the later laws
Are born, and he who rules resembles me.

ELOHIM.
Thou liest to thyself, as thou erewhile
Didst lie to men. We saw thy hollow state,
And we allowed, foreknowing its decay.
Stretch not this tolerance, which lets thee still
Dream olden dreams, see olden visions, claim—
Since broken is thy painted thunderbolt—
The lightnings of the Law! We led the tribes,
By changing pillars of the cloud and fire,
From On to Pisgah: we upheld their hands:
We planted them among the pleasant vales,
And they, our children, knew the Lord their God.
They cried, and we did hear: they went astray,
And then we smote them: as they honored us,
We gave them honor, and as they obeyed
We blessed them; till the chosen seed became
Exalted o'er the kingdoms of the world.
Thy bestial co-mates, Baal and Peor
And Ashtaroth, have died disgraceful deaths:
Why livest thou?

JOVE.
Thou wert a jealous God,
And wouldst none others have beside thee. Yet
They were, and led thy chosen seed astray.
If, knowing thee, men justice learned, and truth,
And worship, which is highest, I bestowed
Joy, beauty, grace, and with permitted toys
Coaxed my fair children to a fairer state.
I grudged thee not thy shrines and oracles,
Prophet, and judge, and psalmist, having mine.
I saw thy ways, and read what even thou
Not yet acknowledgest, but which draws nigh
To shake our thrones: for as we are, we are:
We cannot rise when clearer eyes of men
Attain our height, and strive to pierce beyond
Their own colossal shadows. Mark where ours
Fall side by side upon the race below,
Featured alike in power and majesty,
Yet fading in a sweet and solemn light
That dawns above them: Be not wroth with me:
I kept thy secret as thou keptest mine.

ELOHIM.
Yea, thou hast worked for us: what we foreknew
Was thy foreboding. If, like cloud on cloud,
Something of us is dimly thrown on thee,
We are the sun whereby our shadow falls.
If thou wouldst live, teach men the way to us
Through justice, fear, and through avenging law;
And leave thy lusts and base necessities
To those below the thunder!

JOVE.
See, where come
The orbs of Light and Darkness from the East,
Across thy heavens, as 't were the cloud of stars
Beside the lone black blot of starless space,
In that far universe I know not of.
They, too, are Gods, and claim their equal seats.

ORMUZD.
Be mighty, ye, for them who look to Power;
Be stern and just for them who bow to Law;
Be jealous, kind, or cruel, as your tribes
Demand such discipline! I am but one,
One spirit, effluence, operation, force,
One sweet and sovereign heart, whose beats began
With first of things, and shall be felt in all
Forever! Void of veil or mystery
My being men behold, and with weak arms
Draw down to wed their own, and give them peace.
The lowest feels me, and the highest fails
To grasp my sole omnipotence of Good.

AHRIMAN.
Make room for me, twin of thine eldest birth!
If each bright sun in all the studded sky
Be throne, at once, and fountain of thy rays,
Yet in the unmeasured gulfs dividing them
I dwell, and ever compass thee around,
One spirit, effluence, operation, force,
One dark, relentless heart, whose beats began
With first of things, and shall be felt in all
Forever! Men may fear me, but they love:
They seek the darkness rather than the light;
And all thine atoms, or in them or space,
Are swallowed up in mine. Thus am I throned
In sole omnipotence of Evil.

JOVE.
Hark!
I hear a noise of mighty multitudes,
Confused, and crying from the fields of Earth,
And in their cries I hear your names and mine.

MAN.
We found the Gods above our ancient idols,
And worshipped them with voice and deed and duty.
Each was unquestioned, each august and awful,
And, knowing him, we rested in the knowledge.
We grew in power, we builded towns and temples;
We wrought the wider fabric of the nations,
We made the forces which we feared obey us.
Lo! now, their spirits, as our own in battle,
Stand face to face: their dark or shining legions
Meet in our souls, and tear us and bewilder.
We yield to Law, we seek eternal Justice,
We love the Good, yet we accept the Evil,
We love our lives, we cling to joy and beauty,
We render penitence, we pray for pardon,
We look past death to some serene Hereafter.
Which of these things of ours shall we surrender?
They were bestowed: how can they be divided?
Shall we be umpires in the high, supernal
Debate of Gods, or is there One beyond them
Whom we have heard, through them, in changing voices?
Then come Thou near, enlighten and console us!
Take our own shape, be guide and God, yet brother!

APOLLO.
I come, your shepherd of the sunny hills
In Thessaly, who from the reedy pipe
Allured the hidden sweetness of your breath,
And made a music of your empty lives.
I taught ye beauty, harmony, and grace;
I lifted and ennobled ye; I clothed
Your limbs with glory and your brows with song.
Nature, the hard, unfriendly mother, gave
Her sweetest milk to nourish ye anew,
And all her forms, as lovers or as friends,
Moved in your life, and led your shining march
Of ages, as a triumph! Still I walk,
Though unacknowledged, filling hungry ears
With purer sound, and brightening weary eyes
With visions of the beauty that may be.
For Beauty is the order of the Gods,
The ether breathed alone by souls uplift
In aspiration, and the crown of all,
Save whom dumb darkness and the bestial life
Tread out of being. Reaching her, ye live.

IMMANUEL.
She is not Love. I know thy proud, pure face,
And was content to see thy form as mine,
In temples where the Truth was sought through me.
In love, in meekness and in lowliness,
I did my Father's will: come unto me,
Ye heavy-laden, weary sons of earth,
And I will give you rest. I do but speak
The things He bids me, of myself am naught.
Love one another: inasmuch as ye
Shall do it to the least of these, my brothers,
Ye do it unto me. Behold, I came
To bring ye peace, yet also bring a sword;
For love, and diligence in doing good,
Mercy divine and holy charity,
Stir up the evil that among you dwells;
But through the strife His Kingdom shall be based,
Who is alone from everlasting on
To everlasting: and His rule is love.

MAN.
One's face is fairer than the star of morning;
One's voice is sweeter than the dew of Hermon
To flowers that wither: who is there beside them?
And is there need of any one above him
Who brings his gifts of good and love and mercy?
We climb to nobler knowledge, finer senses,
And every triumph brings diviner promise,
But Life is more: our souls for other waters
Were sore athirst, till He unlocked the fountain.
Now let us drink; for as a hart that panteth,
Escaped from spears across the burning desert,
We think to drain the brook, yet still it floweth.

SCENE III.

A vast landscape. Sunrise.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

ODIN, BAAL, PERUN, AND MANITO.
We are but shadows now, we know full well,
Yet life is sweet, even that which shadows lead
In mist, and storm, and twilights of the world.
We have acknowledged Thee, the High, Unknown,
Who sitt'st above our passions: we depend
On Thee, it seems, and would behold Thy face,
If haply blood of Thine make grand our limbs,
As ours the strong, heroic shapes of men.
We give the strength which meets and overcomes;
The amorous ardor which renews the world;
The fierceness which is needful as the love,
And those indulgences to come, which lure
Where judgment threatens: shall we live or die?

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
I have allowed ye.

BRAHMA.
On my moveless throne
I hear, and, that I speak, suspend the work
Of effortless creation. If Thou be
The primal One, whose being only IS
Forever everywhere, I work for Thee,
Thine eldest force, who fashioned Indra's peak,
And from my hand the holy Ganges stream
Poured as a long libation,—bade the gods
Be hatched in beasts and from the lotus-flower,
And with the infant races sport, until
These prayed to find me, and I was revealed.
I saw my symbols stolen, saw my laws
Transferred to other faiths, myself unknown
By those who yet obeyed me and adored:
But I am calm: no seed of meanest life
Hath missed its place in falling from my hand,
Nor any mesh in all my boundless net
Of woven law hath felt unequal strain.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Thou doest the work I set, yet nam'st thyself:
I have no name.

ORMUZD.
Thou hast!—thy name is Good.
I surely know Thee, since I sprang from Thee.
For Good is wisdom, Good is beauty, Good
Is even the root below the flower of Love.
I am not idle, though my nature sole
Exists therein, but like the active sun
My sacred orb, with silent energy
Pervade the universe.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Good came from me.

AHRIMAN.
Whence, then, came I? Born of the selfsame womb,
If born, or separated even with him,
From earliest stuff of Gods! I work as well
In mine own way: I am the thing I seem,
And could not be, except in strife with him.
He may revile me, but I owe him much:
His children serve me in their ignorance,
And round his brightest altars curls the smoke
I breathe below them. If he came from Thee,
I came beside him and with him return.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
And Evil I permitted.

JOVE.
In my youth
I called Thee Fate, and trembled at Thy name.
I felt Thou wast, but knew not what Thou wast.
Thou gav'st me fair dominions, happy realms,
Hills that inspired, and wandering seas that sang,
And noble forms of men that worshipped me.
I taught them Order, Art, Humanity,
And left them—when the time foretold had found
All these in ruin—nearer to Thy feet.
I bate no privilege of ancient pride;
If Thou art what I dream, it came from Thee;
And if I launched the thunder, loosed the leash
Of War and Pestilence, it was Thy will.
I do not crouch, for Thou hast made me strong.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Thou wast my servant.

ELOHIM.
Art thou not ourselves?
We spread with Thee the waters of the deep,
We hung with Thee the curtains of the heavens,
And choired the morning stars; we gave Thy law
In thunder, and Thy mercy as the dew;
We banished other Gods from out Thy house,
And smote the heathen: we translated Thee
In human speech to men, and sealed with them
Thy Covenant; o'er Thy chosen seed we watched
In war, and exile, and captivity,
And the strange lusts that visited their kings.
We mean to rule forever, and we claim
Obedience of men and rival Gods.
If what we hear be but our echoed voice,
Then we have spoken. Who besides should speak
From the unfathomed silence of the stars?
We walk the world and hear our names implored,
Behold our power increase, our kingdom come.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Ye I commissioned.

APOLLO.
I but claimed a place
Among the serving Gods, yet lords of men.
Not mine to call existence from the void,
Or give reward, save what in Beauty's self
Is given forever: mine the simpler task
To build one bridge that reaches to the sky,
To teach one truth that brings eternal joy,
And from the imperfect world the promise wrest
Of one perfection. If than this Man needs
A broader hope, a loftier longing, yet
This must he have; bereft of it, he dies.
He cannot feed on cold ascetic dreams,
And mutilate the beauty of the world
For something far and shapeless: he must give
His eyes the form of what in him aspires,
His ears the sound of that diviner speech
He pines to speak, his soul the proud content
Of having touched the skirts of perfect things.
This much in him I foster, marring not
Thy high design, but lending it a grace
Which he, insane to grasp Thee, might forget.
If Thou, as needs Thou must, be harmony,
The soft concordance of my Delphic lute
Is heard between Thy thunders, and I keep
My gentle state in dear humanity.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Live! Beauty is of me.

IMMANUEL.
And thou art chief
A God of Love! Who hath seen me hath seen
The Father. I was sent from Thee to teach
Thy Truth to souls anhungered; if I left
Untaught the things of less account, I spake
No prohibition. Men have used my name
To mortify their bodies, maim their lives,
And plant with sorrow where I came to sow
The seeds of joy, as in that pleasant land,
In Cana's mansion and the home of Nain.
I know that I am Thine: my heart leaps up
To hear Thee, and I lean, as doth a child,
Upon Thy bosom. I have done Thy will,
My Father, who hast not forsaken me.
Accept my work, and bless me: Thou art Love!

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Yea, most am Love!

IMMANUEL.
Then am I near to Thee!

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Thou art my one begotten Son, in whom
I am well pleased.

MAN.
We hearken to the words
We cannot understand. If we look up
Beyond the shining form wherein Thy Love
Made holiest revelation, we must shade
Our eyes beneath the broadening wing of Doubt,
To save us from Thy splendor. All we learn
From delving in the marrow of the Earth,
From scattering thought among the timeless stars,
From slow-deciphered hieroglyphs of power
In chemic forces, planetary paths,
Or primal cells whence all Thy worlds are born,
But lifts Thee higher, seats Thee more august,
Till Thou art grown so vast and wonderful,
We dare not name Thee, scarce dare pray to Thee.
Yet what Thou art Thyself hast taught us: Thou
Didst plant the ladders which we seek to climb,
Didst satisfy the heart, yet leave the brain
To work its own new miracles, and read
Thy thoughts, and stretch its agonizing hands
To grasp Thee. Chide us not: be patient: we
Are children still, we were mistaken oft,
Yet we believe that in some riper time
Thy perfect Truth shall come.

A VOICE FROM SPACE.
Wait! Ye shall know.