University of Virginia Library

Famine:

A MASQUE

THE MASQUERS

• Famine
• Blight
• The Locust Manito
• Waste
• War
• Trade
• Death and Sin
• Chorus of Labourers

The Night is cold: a Cry is heard in the air.
Where? O where?—
Where are they who bring Hunger in?
Which of you will the dance begin?
Blight, that spoilest the ripening corn!
Locusts, that make the green earth lorn!
Waste, that tramplest down the fruit!
War, that dost the corn uproot!—
Ye who herald Hunger! hear
Our call to you: appear! appear!
A formless Shadow creeps in through the mist:
Like a black shroud scorch'd by fire.
Hist! hist!
I come
From the fields where the whisper of hope is dumb,
Where the birds forget to sing;
I pinch'd every germ with finger and thumb,
And the charr'd remains I bring—
My Hunger-offering.
Darkness and the rustling of multitudinous wings:
As the darkness passes off a shrill Voice sings:—
We are the myriad-winged race!
We alight on the first green place,
And we strip the leaves and the juicy shoots
And ruin the fruits
And efface every fruitful trace:
Famine! we pray thy grace.
Famine! Famine! we have sped:
The buffaloes out on the plains lie dead,
Too many to count, a goodly sight
For the lover of mere brute misery!
We had stay'd to see,
But thy call wing'd our flight
To Thee.
A King enters, in a palanquin carried on the shoulders of naked slaves:—
Above, below, without, within,
The earth is mine.
These have their graves,
While I dine off a kingdom or quaff my wine
Of great vineyards with blood manured.
What matter how is procured
My pleasure? Am I not King?
Are not my names
Arrogance, Greed, and Waste?
What traitor dare bring
His basket of blames?
Lo! I eat: let the famish'd be glad!
I am clad
In the purple,—they are but dust:
As the dust in my path when I haste
In my lust
To devour and to waste.
Clangour of trumpets: War rushes in,
driving a chariot arm'd with scythes.
Amidst the din my voice shall yet be heard.
Let Blight and Hunger's winged hordes and Waste
Collect their tithes;
But haste!
My claim preferr'd, all they have left I take.
And with a rake,
Stirring what Fear conceals,
Want follows at my wheels
Through the red slush and mud
To slake
Her thirst, in blood.

Song of the Four

Famine! Greatest of the Powers!
We bring here ourselves and ours:
At thy feet to lay
These our records of obstruction,
These our tokens of destruction,
For thy holiday.
Blight
Mildew I am, the forerunner of Death.

The Manito of the Locusts
No green thing grows my shadow underneath.

Waste
My wantonness tramples on all you left.

War
The orts from the open mouth I reft.

Blight
They have sown, they have planted,—I hinder'd the growth.

Locust Spirit
When the harvest was promised I came,—
Like a flame I devour'd.

Waste
I more than you both
Have consumed, and had never a care.

War
My name is Despair. Who will sow
With War for his foe?

All
Famine! we are here, each one
To stand underneath thy throne
Bearer of a corner stone
Of the sepulchre whereon
We would have thee sit supreme,
Leaving us the task to make
Human hope a starveling's dream
For thy name's sake.

Death, the Skeleton, rides in on the pale horse;
Sin on a pillion behind. A rush of wind.
Then FAMINE, a living corse, with hollow cheeks,
is borne in on a shield (the device an empty field),
on the uplifted hands of Skeletons, an army following.
She stands and speaks.
Ye all have done your utmost: but alone
Had not succeeded. Wherefore ye are blamed.
Why is my Mightiest One unnamed?
Weak are Grasshoppers and Blight;
Waste and War may be ashamed:
Ye ministers to my delight?
Ye servants worthy me?
Know I not what each hath done?
Finish'd, ye have scarce begun.
On the trail of Blight I follow'd fast,
For I knew that it could not last:
The desert, barren and drear,
Will blossom again next year.
When the Grasshoppers disappear
They come not for years again;
The corn crowds the prairies, the deer
Hide in herds in the clover,
The birds sing over
The golden miles of grain.
O, ye devour in vain;
And Waste's swift car and the scythes of War
Leave but a scar.
Lo! the earth is now at peace,
And the locusts are no more;
Autumn's days will have surcease
Ere they garner all the store
Of this year's harvest. Yet see! see!
Worshipers crowd unto me—
Crowding in their thousands:—See!
Where is He
Who alone hath made me sure?
God of the unstarved Poor! appear!
We wait for thee.
TRADE, the hundred-arm'd, comes on an iron car
drawn by women: on his breast a star.
Trade
I am who giveth to the labourer food!—
Without me were not work, nor life, nor good.
Who marshaleth the labourers' force but I?
Who sets their tasks? What other can supply
Their daily bread when the mill-race is dry
And Blight and War and Locusts hover nigh?
My capital, well saved and well employ'd,
Maintains the poor fool Labour, else destroy'd
By reckless ignorance and folly. Why
Am I, the poor man's help, his bounteous lord,
Who give much more than I can well afford,
Class'd thus with these Abhorr'd?
What have I done?
Are not my hands clean? and the smell of gold
Is it not pleasant? And my hair is white
With wintry years. For I am very old,
And little hath this world for my delight.

Famine
Well phrased, Belovèd One!
But hear what others say!
Thou art too modest — not thy usual way.
What ho, my worshipers devout! attend!
Welcome the Skeletons' Friend!
Tell out his well-earn'd pay!—
Sing! sing to the Spoiler
The hymn your pain wringeth,
The hymn Despair singeth,

The Song of the Toiler!

Honour the Master
Dealer in clammin'!
Thy husband, Disaster!
Provider of Famine,
World-ruling Trade.
Honour the jackal,
The blood-hound of Want!
When work is slack, all
The worse for the Gaunt,
Wages unpaid.
Laud him, Applauder!
Him of the close fist;
Hymn the wise hoarder!
Hymn the Economist,
Genius of gain!
Praise him who filleth
With folly his warerooms!
Praise him who killeth
His workers, in bare rooms
Prison'd and slain!
Surely he hateth
Communist dreamers:
While the world waiteth
Yet for Redeemers,
Silver hath he:
Counteth his pieces,
His thirty per cent;
Counteth his fleeces,
Centuples his rent,
Earth holds in fee.
Praise him who hinders
Division of good:
Peddler of cinders,
Destroyer of food,
Hirer of Death!
Praise him who playeth
With Death as a doll!
Praise him who slayeth,
And slaying takes toll
Of his victim's last breath!
Fatten him, labour!
With coin in his purse;
Let pipe and tabor
Keep close to his hearse;
Pray for his soul!
So wise a reaper
May well own the soil;
Surely thy keeper,
Cain's brother, call'd Toil!
Thy life may controul.
Work when he chooseth!
Starve when he biddeth!
Tools that he useth
Rightly he riddeth
Him of, his work done.
Heap him with blessing,
This God of the Ages!
Hope no redressing,
But scantier wages
As the years run!
His — pick and shovel,
His — axe and ploughshare,
Hammer and trowel,
Shop-gear and house-ware,
His the machine;
His — the red vintage,
Harvest and profit,
His — the percentage,
Usury of it
Counted between:
Traffic's great highways,
Gold-room, exchanges,
Labour's least byeways,
All he arranges,
Ruleth like Doom.
Born when he liketh,
Bred as he orders,
Die when he striketh!
There in Want's borders
Dig thy cheap tomb!
Semichorus I
We have toil'd, we have striven:
Our horn'd hands have riven
The rocks of the primeval world:
We split them with fingers of iron;
We rent them, we burst them asunder,
Loud-roaring like thunder,
As if heaven's fire on
Their flanks had been hurl'd.
Like beasts were we driven
To labour, from labour returning;
Within us was burning
The sting of the goad:
The scourge in our flesh, in our hearts,
Deeper churning, the sting of the goad.
Our scarr'd backs were raw
With the scourge and the goad
And the weight of our load,
Making bricks without straw.

Semichorus II
In the sweat of thy brow and with pain
Shalt thou labour and till the earth:
Gaining nought from the sun or the rain
Till thy service compelleth worth.
In the red sweat of hope and with pain
Shalt thou dig, and assort the seed,
That the earth may bring forth right grain:
And thy scourge shall be need.
For the days of that first Paradise are not:
Life-pleasure grows no more in idle living.
Man's hard lot
Is in the thorny wilderness, where he must win
By long endeavour,— Nature nothing giving
Except to Strength, Strength able to begin
With craft and with endurance to persist,
Holding with firm-closed fist
Each handful of his patient gathering.

Chorus
Sing! sing! O sing!
For the Curse is beneath our feet:
Though our gain be incomplete.
We have tamed the untamed Force;
We have ridden him as a horse,
And with Thought as a rein
Have bridled him, never again
To wander at will.
From the loftiest sill
Of walls Cyclopean to the Future shout!
Tell how we builded, what our hands have wrought!
Sing out! sing out!
To the farthest ends of time,
O Javan of the Isles! and Tubal heaven-taught,
The first Artificer!
Who now is skill'd to o'erreach our works sublime?
Did not we build
Thy towers, O Seba! on the Cushite shore;
Chaldean Ur and Erech too,— before
We aim'd for Nimrod, aiming (so we will'd)
Above his arrows? Later Nineveh
We moulded; and yet later Babylon.
By our strong hands the earth-mounds were upthrown
In the Great Valley 'neath the Western slopes;
Thy water-ways, thy roads, Peru! we made
And temples buried now in many a forest glade.
Force, where to-day enfranchised Science gropes,
Then push'd his simpler way,
And lifted trophies vast to amaze the latest day.

Semichorus I
Day by day we toil and moil and die:
Day after day
Unrestingly
We pour our lives away;
And all our pay
Scarce buyeth oil to soothe our agony
Of wounds: the goad-thrust in the side,
The holes in our feet. To us they have denied
The vinegar with the gall. The wine
Of life we taste not. And those things divine,
Which some have seen in dreams, we never know:
Outwearied long ago,
And sleeping so the weary sleep of death.
And thy long arms, Machinery!
(Envying our little breath
Of the free air are they who invoke thy power)
Reach for the fateful hour
Of surer misery.

Semichorus II
Hope liveth yet. The murderers have set
Their seal upon the sepulchre in vain:
The Master-Builder's secret was not known
To them,— to him alone
Intrusted who but waits to raise the Slain.
Steam's hands Briarean,— they may rob you now,
But shall work for you, earning your release
From brutefying toils! Lift up thy brow,
Bright with intelligence, and welcome Peace,
Worn Bond-Slave of the Present! See thy slave
In each new mechanism: slave and saviour too!
Ye Toilers! welcome powers that human labour save:
Whose savings shall be counted out in interest to you.

Chorus

Famine

Semichorus I
We hail thee with curses, O Trade!
Thou hast made God's earth as the Potters' Field,
Where Hope and Effort, the powers that wield
Axe and plough and spade and hammer,
Are sepulchred: the clamour
Of their volcanic anguish rends the world,
Cursing, as we too curse thee, O Misrule!

Semichorus II
The Destinies have hurl'd
Defiance at thee: yet, thou Fool!
Thou settlest tariffs; holdest, loosest Toil;
And rakèst in thy spoil;
Nor hear'st the steps Titanic
Of One who cometh, heedest not though he
Shouts to thee threateningly, again, again.
How often shall he warn, in vain?
Thy master — Panic.

Chorus
Guerdon for thee, Great Genius of our time!
Anarch sublime!
Everywhere groweth good: thou dost provide;
Thou dost distribute,— to thy knaves rank food,
To the producers bones or hide.
Thou addest field to field, and in thy granaries
Forestallest corn, to rot.
Across the seas thy argosies
Pass to and fro, but not with blessings for mankind.
For this, and more, we judge thee, Giant blind!—
For thou hast choked increase with lies and fraud,
For thou hast made of hope a merchandize,
For thou hast robb'd the labourer of his hire,
For thou hast defiled our wives at thy desire,
For thou hast driven our children through the fire
In sacrifice to the Abhorr'd:
For these things do we laud thy name
And with acclaim
Greet thee as Rapine — Desolation's Lord,
And pray that Famine yield thee her so fit reward.

Famine
Now, when you have taken breath,
Our high revels may begin.—

Reel of Famine, Trade, and Sin.
Then follows the Dance of Death.