University of Virginia Library

ACT III

Scene I:

—A bay on the west coast of Thule open to the sea, but enclosed on the landward side by steep cliffs, which on the right are continued seaward, forming a headland. On the left is a cave dimly lit, the lamp being invisible. It is midnight: the full moon shines on the swelling sea; and heavy waves break on the shore. Moored to a low, ruined pier is a large fishing-smack with sail set. Heymar, Thrym, Rolf and others are drenching the smack with paraffin, and rolling tar-barrels into the hold. When they have finished and made fast the helm, they enter the cave and shortly reappear with Sweyn, an old man, whom four of them carry on a bier to the smack. Heymar, Thrym, Rolf, Sweyn and some of the others wear winged helmets and rusty coats of chain mail. All have belts with swords old or new. Heymar, carrying a torch, sings as they go down to the smack. All join in the chorus.
SONG

Sweyn is laid on the deck of the smack with his head and shoulders resting against the mast.
Heymar.
Farewell, great brother, worthiest to be
The pioneer of heroes.

Sweyn.
Though Time devours
The past, my name will stand while names are known
At all.

Heymar.
Your will is steadfast and your mind
At peace?

Sweyn.
Right glad at heart am I: my body's
Strength is sorely shaken, but my sinewy soul,
Pinioned with growing might, will need no help
Of Woden's warrior maids to scale high Heaven.
Before the morning, mates, old Sweyn will reach
Valhalla and the shining grove, the first
Of mortals for a thousand years to cross
The rainbow. I can hear celestial silence,
Alive with beating hearts of gods and heroes,
Burst like a sea let loose, and such a music
Hover among the rafters, as the deep thunder,
Pealing in cloudy caverns overhead,
Hushes the world with.

Heymar.
Thor will welcome you.

Sweyn.
Woden himself from the high gate of Heaven
Will stoop to greet my soul.—Remember, all:
I wait for you in Asgard with the gods
And the old heroes of our race. Farewell.

Heymar throws the lighted torch int the hold; the smack is thrust off; the wind fills the sail, and Sweyn is borne out to sea.

SONG

Ribolt enters from the cave.
Heymar.
Late, Ribolt: why so late?

Ribolt.
I bring great tidings.—
Has Sweyn set sail?

Heymar.
Out there.

Ribolt.
No shroud of fire?
His courage failed him at the last?

Heymar.
Not so!
Behold the smoke of him!

Ribolt.
I'll shout the news:—
Baldur is come again!—Answer me, Sweyn:—
Baldur is come again!

Heymar.
He cannot hear:
The harping wind, the waves, the sooty cloud
Obscure your cry.—And now the gilded flames
Dance in his sight, loll out their tongues and babble
Of death like fiery-hearted madmen!

Ribolt.
Hush!
Together shout:—Baldur is come again!

All.
Baldur is come again! Baldur has come!

A Voice from the Sea.
Delight shall blossom now, and beauty reign:
Baldur, the sinless one, is come again.

Heymar.
What phantom voice is that? Who juggles here?

Ribolt.
No juggler, Heymar; 'twas the Ægir spake.
The world begins anew: Baldur has come.

Heymar.
The moon lifts up the smoke and chastens it
To silver in the mid region.

Thrym.
What news is this
Of Baldur?

Ribolt.
The King's son, Christian—

Heymar.
Him they call
Prince Mammon?

Ribolt.
Prince Mammon:—he is Baldur.

Rolf.
How can that be?

Ribolt.
Baldur must come again.

Rolf.
He must.

Ribolt.
He must come now.

Heymar.
Because we need him?

Ribolt.
Because the time has come.—Sweyn's voyage! Look!
A sable pall beneath purfled with fire;
Above, the horses and the silver arms!
Tramp, tramp to Asgard, choosers of the slain!

Heymar.
The headland hides death's bonfire; and even now
The soul we loved achieves Valhalla's porch.

Ribolt.
Skall to the spirits of the mighty dead!

All.
Skall to the man we loved!

Heymar.
Figure the sky!
The snowy fleece whereon the moon reclines
Is ruddy as a furnace grate below!

Thrym.
'Tis like a double rose of diverse hues—
A white rose and a red hanging from Heaven.

Heymar.
The body and the spirit of all roses.—

Rolf.
But Baldur, Ribolt?

Ribolt.
Presently. We first
Must have a leader.

Rolf.
Ay, a leader!

Thrym.
Sweyn
Appointed Heymar; he named him.

Heymar.
I take command,
Of Sweyn's supremacy and power the chosen
Successor and depositary.

Thrym and Others.
Heymar!

Ribolt.
I, Ribolt, claim the headship.

Heymar.
And found your claim
On jealous rage and morbid vanity.
If you refuse allegiance I strike you down.

Ribolt.
Fight for it, then. I am the better man.
Lend me a sword.

Rolf gives Ribolt his sword.
Ribolt.
Now, Heymar, guard yourself.

Heymar.
This will determine strength and swordsmanship,
But not the better man.

Ribolt.
Will't not? I say
It will. Impulsively you set your power
Upon it, now when you threatened me. Command
Is not in craft and skill alone, but force
Of armies or of arms in every sphere
Is still the arbiter; and will be.—Come!

Heymar.
That I dispute—

Ribolt.
Dispute it, then, with steel!

Thrym.
Fight, Heymar, fight! You're not afraid of Ribolt?

Heymar.
Were I afraid, I should confess it. Mark:
Howe'er this combat ends I hold it wrong
To sift out men by brutal means.

Ribolt.
And I!
Foul wrong—in Christendom; but we conspire
To make wrong right again: the ancient wrong
That lost its title only: beauty and strength
In every age have loved the wrong we seek,
The virtue of our fathers. Discuss no more:
We waste the moonlight.

[Attacks Heymar.
Heymar
[defending himself].
I fight, protesting still.

Ribolt.
To fight is to protest to the uttermost.

Heymar is wounded.
Rolf.
First blood! Enough: Ribolt is leader now

Heymar.
This wound is nothing.

Thrym
[attending to Heymar].
But your arm hangs powerless.

Heymar.
Well, I am beaten then. By Uller's bow,
Your sword seems sticking in my heart!

Ribolt.
But I,
Had I been beaten, would have flung my heart
Upon your weapon: no leader born survives
Defeat.

Thrym.
Oh, many a beaten leader lives
To fight again.

Ribolt.
Against opposing captains;
Not in a contest for the leadership.

Heymar.
I'll not dispute in words what blows have settled.—
What's this of Baldur, Ribolt?

Thrym.
You cannot stand:
You must lie down.

Ribolt.
Carry him to the cave.
Thrym, you shall stay by him. The rest of us
Without a pause to Christianstadt to-night,
Where Baldur lies a captive! As we go,
I shall reveal the purpose of the gods.

Heymar is supported into the cave and all enter it.

Scene II:

—The Chapel Royal in the Palace at Christianstadt. The only light burns on the altar. Mammon is bound to a pillar face to face with a large crucifix. Soldiers are standing at the door on guard. When Oswald enters and beckons them away with him, Mammon, perceiving himself alone, addresses the figure of Christ.
Mammon.
Out of this agony, O crucified,
(Vengeance, the lust of it, and pride of birth,
Sick doubt of man's surpassing destiny
Scummed off like dross!) I tap the liquid ore,
Refined and new, the element I am,
And cast it in the very mould of me,
Metal and furnace, fire and foundry, knowing
Myself at last in my own image made,
The loftiest mind and freshest thought of time.
Sad Christ of pity and sin, the prosperous world,
The world of understanding, worlds of joy,
Warriors and lovers, valour, passion, might,
And that wide world of slavery, fertile ground
Wherein our puissance strikes its burrowing roots,
Begin to find you out; and I—unheard
I breathe it here, the secret of my soul—
I am jealous of you, Jesus of Nazareth.
Not Cæsar makes me malcontent: his name
Is all that lasts of him, Kaiser or Tsar,
And of the almanac an annual twelfth.
Now not Napoleon stirs my rancour; he,
Decapitated after death, became
Only a braggart game for prodigals,
The noise he counted on to send his deeds
In thunder echoing through the vaults of time
Abated to a foolish syllable.

Christian
[appears in the doorway].
In prayer! To whom—the devil or himself?

Mammon.
But you, oh you,
Immanuel, Saviour, God and Son of God,
That hang there vainly human on a tree,
The sight of you distils all passion, thought,
Delight, desire, imagination, power,
To one essential, constant alkahest,
Ethereal jealousy—omnipotent
Dissolvent nothing known can saturate,
In whose divulsive flood and fiery wave
Even Christendom shall melt, and be no more.

Christian
[to himself].
Utter perversion, horribly assured!

Mammon.
Anthems and creeds in stone and sculptured songs,
Glorias and masses and colossal fugues—
Porphyry, alabaster; pillars, aisles,
Crypts, cloisters—mystery, gloom; high windows steeped
Against the east in living hues; encrusted
Altars; apses and chalices and fonts;
Churches, cathedrals, abbeys, temples, towers,
By myriads in the old world and the new;
Greek, Roman, Lutheran, Anglican—nests, lairs
And hives of sects besides; popes, bishops, priests;
Devotion, sacrament, belief, Heaven, Hell;
Millions on millions of the highest hearts,
The noblest breeds of men, called after Christ!

Christian
[to himself].
Millions on millions, and witnesses on high!

Mammon.
A tide of envy labours in my soul
To whelm and end all that as solvents melt
The densest metals, as the summer seas
Consume the arctic drift, floe, glacier, berg.
Bethink you, Christ: the world, adult at last,
Wearies of you? Oh, but you stood it out
Longer than Woden, Zeus, or Jupiter
By many a period! Centuries overdue,
Sheer change, indifferent save to be,
Accumulates stupendous force; while men
Restore, recover, plaster, putty, patch
With systems economic, schemes, reforms,
Not knowing that the thing they mend, outworn
Beyond the tinker's craft, is past repair,
That what was life and breath and flower and fruit,
Is mildew now and blight, disease and death,
That Christendom's the matter with the world.

Christian.
That Christendom's the matter with the world!

Mammon.
The King!

Christian.
I overheard: you meditate
Unholy problems calmly, as a nun
Recites her rosary! What envenomed lymph
Inoculates your soul against dismay?

Mammon.
My mind upholds me: prisoner though I am,
Above immediate destiny I rise
On wings material fledged with untamed thought.

Christian
[removes the crucifix, setting it against the chancel railings].
I too am heaved above the stress of time:
The deep and changing passions of the day—
Wherein I saw as in a stormy sea
Gigantic image of my dotage, near
If not arrived—wrecked me upon an isle
Alone with you, bequeathed me desperate ease,
A savage strength to study and perform
This deed of terror Hell shall tremble at.

Mammon.
What shall Hell tremble at?

Christian.
My soul at first
Spat out the hideous thought; but now it seems
[Lays a surgeon's knife upon the loin-cloth of the figure of Christ.
A motion from on high: the Abbot's trick—
To reap your harvest, purge your sin with steel.

Mammon.
Undo my manhood! empty out my love!
The vengeful dream of impotence, of priests—
A doting dream.

Christian.
Is God a dotard? Fool,
A quintessential fool! Is Heaven not built
Of lustrous chastity, with gates of pearl;
The city and the street of virgin gold;
The deep foundation stones, immaculate
Corundum, jasper, beryl, sardonyx,
Emerald and topaz, sapphire, chrysolite,
Jewels impregnable to all assault,
Igneous or menstrual? Was the Son of God
Begot in sin? No; but by word of mouth,
To live a modest bachelor all his days.
Who are the hierarchs of God's elect?
Virgins and celibates who fought with lust
Till passion of the body and all its bloom
Became to them disease, an issue foul,
A suppuration and an ulcerous sore.
All sex, in Heaven involved again, abides
In single ecstasy, as pure as light,
Infertile, undesirous ravishment,
A passion of tranquillity: the Son,
The Spirit, God, the angels, ransomed souls
That once were men and women, naked dwell
In peace, beholding beauty. Sex is Sin,
Is Hell: perdition with its tongues of fire,
Its fangs of frost, is sensuality
Unending, everlasting impotence
In agony of lustful appetite.
I shall deliver you from Hell, my son,
And carve your way to Heaven against your will.

[Takes up the knife.
Mammon.
Help, Oswald! Magnus! Florimond! Help! help!

Christian.
Oswald attends without: he guards the door.
No summons will avail; your shrieks and groans,
Expected, may affright the listeners: aid
They cannot bring.

Mammon.
Touch me, and I shall die!
Raise but a finger and my reason fails,
My memory, leaving all my crystal sense
A puddle of lunacies.

Christian.
Better be mad
In Heaven than sane in Hell.

Mammon.
A knife instead
Of Guendolen! O father, sex is soul,
The flower and fragrance of humanity,
More beautiful than beauty, holier
Than any sacrament, greater than God—
I tell you, father, greater than all the gods,
Being the infinite source of every thought
Worth thinking, every symbol, myth, divine
Delight of fancy.

Christian.
Such a sinful mind
Cries out to be unsexed!

Mammon.
Think, father, think!
Did you beget me or was my mother false?
If you begot me then your bridal joy
Am I, the image and the substance of it,
For duly to the nine months' night I came;
And if, accurst, you cut my manhood out,
You kill your youth, your happiness, your love,
And deal despite to that most noble womb
Wherein I lay as in elysium, fed
With nectar and ambrosia, sweetly poured
From the rich veins and the rich soul of her
Whose temper I inherit: you pierce the breasts
I sucked, the tender queenly bosom given
Ungrudgingly—

Christian.
Lewd tongue, lewd mind, no more!
You stain the memory of a queen in Heaven.—
You cannot move me: I am wrought to this,
Although I faint and die the moment after.
The soul of Thule, of the world, is sapped
With irreligion, atheism, and sin
Preferred. The thrones fall fast, since monarchy
Derives from God alone: when God's cashiered
The king a-begging goes, or sinks to some
Derided, limitary figurehead,
A shadow crowned, the ghastliest fool of time.
No nihilist ascends the throne of Thule
To bring the kingdom toppling on his head,
Like a vast arch whose wedged and thrusting stones,
Unlocked, descend in ruin: God builds up
All principality, all government;
God is the keystone of the Universe.
No godless man can be a king—can be
A man!

Mammon.
Oh, listen!

Christian.
Being ungodly—

Mammon.
Hear me!

Christian.
You must be made unmanly, now in fact,
As virtually you are. Life you can have,
But shorn of that which makes men fit to live,
Unhappy, that you may be fit to die.

Mammon.
Mad beast, keep off! I'll spit upon you!

Christian.
Son!

Mammon.
O father, let me say the thing I mean!
If once you knew, no cavil, scruple, doubt
Would blunt your surgery: like thread against
A flame, my fibrous bonds against your knife,
And not my potent nerves, would part asunder.
God now is nothing, father: nothing at all—

Christian.
God foreordained this Christian surgery:
My will is but a tool in the machine
Whereon God turns the world as on a lathe.

Mammon.
That stale perversion: ancient, putrid lie;
That shadow of man that blurred and blotted out
The wholesome Universe, as the moon's dark wake
Conceals the sun! These dead two thousand years
To me are but a moment of eclipse:
The Universe unveiled is there, there, there!
I cannot speak such greatness, but with room,
Gesture and high-tossed head: were I unloosed
I should upheave this vault and batter down
The buttress of the church that hides high Heaven—
Heaven and the heavens, showing you far and wide
The immaculate, material Universe,
All radiance, darkness, beauty, glory, power.

Christian.
I held my hand, nerved to this deed sublime,
Expecting God Himself to strike such sin;
But as of old through man He vents His wrath.
This awful sacrifice shall light the cross
As with a human torch; the will of God—
No disembodied notion in the mind
Of men evolving, but the God that made
The world—shall wondrously appear in me,
Enabled like the patriarch, like God
Himself, who offered up their sons, to kill
My seed in you, and show mankind once more
The most audacious faith, transcendent soul,
The triumph of the spirit.

Mammon.
No! no! no!

Christian.
My passion and my hideous pain of heart—
They wring me more than to be cut piecemeal.

Mammon.
Father, you cannot! Father! father! father!

Christian.
Hush, or I tremble and the knife strikes wide.

Mammon.
You will relent, father; you will relent!

Christian.
Not in my choice: the supernatural power
That uses me regards the end alone.

Mammon.
I am a virgin, father: all my love
I kept for Guendolen. Cut up instead
Some common Christian letcher—some old ram
Caught in the thicket! If there were a God—

Christian.
Wanton in terror even! How dare you jest?

Mammon.
Jest! Did I jest? To be a sapless thing
That women shudder at; an empty form,
A phantom in the flesh! Never to know
And never to have known the love of woman!
If God is, he must visit on your soul
Unheard-of retribution—He who loves
Virginity. And Guendolen—my wife,
If Christian vows are holy!—when she knows
Your butchery, look for her instant death.
So exquisite a being by taking thought
Will perish suddenly, not to remember
That such a thing was done.

Christian.
By taking thought
Already, in the arms of my true son,
A willing bride, the princess happily
Conceives the heir of Thule.

Mammon.
Guendolen!

Christian.
To-night the wife of Magnus, at her own
Importunate entreaty, well inspired—
I verily believe it!—by God Himself,
As I am chosen for this.—Now shall you know
How Heaven o'erwhelms blasphemers! To be king
In Thule was your boast, and to beget
A son on Guendolen. My hand, this knife,
That root your power out and your purposes,
Are God's: the pride of life like a foul weed
No more shall choke your soul.

Mammon.
The wife of Magnus!
Guendolen! To-night!

Christian.
Woven of the sin itself,
Heaven's punishments transcend affliction planned
By men. Against the Rock of Ages all
Oppugnance splits, and founders deep as Hell.
As keen as dawn that with a crimson slash
Hews out the darkness and delivers day,
My knife sets free your soul: the hurt is small:
Swift as the light, my hand.

Mammon.
Possess me yet
A moment in my plenitude of power!

Christian.
Not one dread moment, one wild heartbeat more.

Mammon.
God help me then! Christ save me!

Christian.
What, my son?

Mammon.
Oh father, I repent.

Christian.
Repent? You lie,
My son, through fear.

Mammon.
No! Cut me, kill me, stuff
Me into Hell!

Christian.
Repentance looks to Heaven.

Mammon.
But can God pardon me? For ever more
To pine—I clutch the astounding thought!
It is a kind of joy for reprobates
To gnaw their tongues in Hell: sheltered by flame,
There, in eternal privacy, they know
As thoroughly as God Himself, the deep,
Sheer justice, the inevitable doom
Of it.

Christian.
What of the glorious Universe
Man's shadow hid?

Mammon.
Faded and broken up:
Systems and constellations, tracts of stars,
Like gathered blossoms wither in the sun
Of Christ's atonement.

Christian.
Greatly said! You feel
Convinced of sin?

Mammon.
Sin! I am dyed in sin!

Christian.
The blood of Christ—I cannot trust you yet!

Mammon.
No one will trust me, sin has warped me so.

Christian.
This is to save your manhood, not your soul.

Mammon.
I beg no mercy, and I yield myself
Christ's captive in your hands.

Christian.
Not in my hands!
Into the hands of God.—But can it be?
An earthquake in a moment overturns
A city. Truly! And the Holy Ghost
Will not be laid by any blasphemy.—
Look up, my son. Are you converted? Hush!
Answer me thoughtfully. Do you believe
That Christ was crucified to save your soul?

Mammon.
Tremblingly I believe.

Christian.
What shaft of power
Transfixed the pride that thought to undertake
The overthrow of Christendom?

Mammon.
No shaft—
No single shaft:—the overthrow of me;
My chief desires forbidden—no crown, no love;
And pouring through my veins a cataract
Memorial—admonition, music, prayer
From infancy to adolescence; plus
The pitch-and-toss of unforeseen events
That play me like a feather in the air.

Christian.
This humbles you? You feel yourself undone?

Mammon.
I have no feeling: I repent.

Christian.
You lay
Your sins on Jesus?

Mammon.
Even I.

Christian.
In Heaven
The saints rejoice; angels, archangels shout
As loud as when the Son ascended.—God,
My breath until the end will be one prayer,
One sigh of thanks! I must not doubt you, boy—
An old, vain, foolish Christian man, I must not!
[Cuts Mammon's bonds and lays the knife again upon the figure of Christ.
God pardon you as thankfully as I,
My first-begotten and my best-belov'd!

Mammon.
[takes the knife and seizing King Christian by the throat stabs him].
Now, old, vain, foolish Christian man, who saw
My terror—I, afraid!—go up to Heaven!
Glare at me! Heart of Hell, what awful eyes!
[Stabs again.
I would you were the soul of Christendom!
[Stabs a third time.
I would you had been God!
[Christian dies, and Mammon lays his body on the floor with the right arm extended, and the knife close to the right hand.
Excise my sex!
'Tis I shall do what cutting's to be done!
[Imitating the voice of the dead King.
Oswald!

[Takes off his sackcloth shirt.
Oswald appears at the door.
Mammon.
Come in. Give me your cloak. My skin
Is chafed and stung.

Oswald
[giving Mammon his cloak].
Oh prince, where is the King?

Mammon.
King Mammon?—here; alive. King Christian?—dead;
There, by the crucifix. He killed himself:
A fierce insanity assailed him: first
He cut my bonds; then dealt three savage blows
Deep in his bosom, grunting like a beast.

Oswald.
And you?—Uncut?—Unscathed?

Mammon.
Without a scratch,
A man entire.

Oswald.
Dear prince, it glads my heart!
How came King Christian mad?

Mammon.
I shall divulge
To all the dreadful issue of the night.
This hour invokes achievement. Send at once
For Florimond. Return without a pause.

Oswald goes out.
Mammon.
Excise my pleasure, manhood, courage, pride,
My love, the hoarded treasure of my soul,
Reserved intact for Guendolen's delight!
For Guendolen? ... But the world's full of women!
Oh, I shall find a virgin to my mind!
I am unmaimed—I thank my craft and power!—
And nothing else concerns my private fate.
Ten thousand old, conceited Christian dolts,
Amazed by death, shall in their life-blood bathe,
Or ever I forgo one swelling pulse,
One sumptuous tide of my superb desire!

Oswald re-enters.
Mammon.
Oswald, you were my jailer: yet, you sighed;
I caught beseeching glances.

Oswald.
Let me add
Beseeching words:—Pardon me, dearest prince.

Mammon.
You need no pardon: all you did was done
Religiously for Thule and your King.—
Oswald, we once were friends. For whom are you—
My brother, or myself?

Oswald.
For you—with all
The youth of Thule.

Mammon.
Like a sudden torch
That word lights up the way.—I need a man
To do my will like a third hand to-night.

Oswald.
Here is my hand; and here am I, a man
To do to-night your whole unquestioned will.

Mammon.
Oswald, you shall be second in the state
If I to-morrow morn unrivalled reign.

Oswald.
Unrivalled?

Mammon.
Time for doubt is past in Thule;
For doubt and Christendom together die.
Instant imagination of the thing,
Before, behind, above, beneath, throughout;
And thunder of the thought shall seem to wait
Upon the nimbler lightning of the deed.
My champions must be supercharged with power—
Made up, wound up, instinctive to the end.
Shall I to-morrow morn unrivalled reign?

Oswald.
The opportunity?

Mammon.
That I provide.—
You trust your men?

Oswald.
Free of the Universe
Each heart—and proud of you.

Mammon.
Now you recall
Delightful hours! Free of the Universe:
It was our watchword.—Bring your men along—
Your gallant freemen. Show me the bridal room,
And wait without, your weapons in your hands.

Oswald.
And should an accident befall the Prince?—
Why, Mammon must be king, the prophet said!

Mammon.
An easy guess to say I should be king.

Oswald.
He also said:—By torture men grow great.

Mammon.
A darker saying that, a note occult,
A missile crammed with subtle dynamite.

Oswald.
But you are great now?

Mammon.
I was always great!
The passion and the torment of the night—
I have been tortured!—make me terrible.—
I waste the richest hour of all my life!
First, Oswald, food—some food, or I may faint:—
I'll eat it as we go.—What is the time?

Oswald.
Upon the stroke of twelve.

Mammon.
The noon of night,
Belov'd of love! The bridegroom and the bride:—
Wedded and bedded!—Let them know it all
In one brief snatch, their first night and their last!
Get me some food; some meat, some bread, some wine:—
They starved me—Christians!—to undo my will.—
Then, like the fabled ministers of Heaven!
Then, swiftly, darkly, silently as fate!

[They go out.