God and Mammon A Trilogy : Mammon and his Message : Being the Second Part of God and Mammon |
 | 1. |
| 1. |
| 2. |
| 3. |
Scene III:
|
 | 2. |
| 3. |
| 4. |
| 5. |
 | God and Mammon |  |
16
Scene III:
—A room in the Royal Palace. Florimond is seated at a table with papers, etc. Oswald stands moodily at the fire-place with his elbow on the mantel-piece. Mammon is at the window.Mammon.
The parks and squares of Christianstadt thickset
With shining tents! From east to west one camp
Wherever nature, elbowing brick and stone,
Throughout the city lights her urban haunts
With lilac and the chestnut's lamp of pearl!
Florimond.
The powers have all withdrawn their embassies.
Mammon.
I know.— [Leaves the window]
I thought it, willed it, and I took
My army in my fist to batter down
The churches, scourge the Christians hence and carve
The world in my own image; but my grasp
Was empty; time and space withheld the huge
Briarean implement an army is,
Scattered abroad in barracks and in forts
To trick me out of prompt omnipotence.
That was an agony:—seven useless days
With Christendom to war upon, and one
Brief life wherein to work its overthrow.
If I could live a thousand thousand years,
Or crush a million into every day!
Florimond.
Aurelian, desperate, hangs about the court,
Unwilling to return without the princess.
17
What princess, sir?
Florimond.
Without the queen, I mean.
Mammon.
Say what you mean.—Aurelian shall return
Without my wife.
Florimond.
The well-born and the rich
With flights of humbler folk depart the land.
Mammon.
They would; but I restrain them. None can quit
The realm without my signature and seal:
The laxity that marred my father's reign
I've medicine for.
Florimond.
Why was this hidden, King?
Unless your faithful counsellors understand
The whole executive they cannot aid.
Mammon.
I have no counsellors: only obedient friends
Who love me and whom I cherish; and the rest—
My instruments, my music and musicians,
The clay, the wheel, the pots I break and make.
Florimond.
I must be faithful:—you are deluded, King;
Your people mock you.
Mammon.
Mock my speech? I know:
My great deliverance in St. Olaf's Hall
Is travestied by every café-wit,
While greasy waiters behind their napkins grin.
Therefore my army camps in Christianstadt
That deeds may thrive where oratory fails.
Yet will I speak:—speak?—speak again, and match
My universe with every type and grade.—
What day is this?
18
Of the week?—Friday, King Mammon.
Mammon
[consulting a diary].
Friday:—To-day a herd of harlots come,
With outcasts from the pauper refuges.
I have determined how to deal with these.
I'll see them now.—Is Sigtrig Harpur there?
Florimond.
Not yet, King Mammon.
Mammon.
Send for him, Florimond.
I want him and his harlots and his scroyles.
I long to face the offscourings of the world,
And to confront them with the Universe.
Florimond goes out.
Mammon.
Among the showrooms of the palace, Oswald,
Is one I mean to close.
Oswald.
Which room, King Mammon?
Mammon.
Perdition's antepast and hell on earth,
The torture-chamber.
Oswald.
And the gentle world
Will thank you. Shows of horror should be shut;
They vex the feeble, vitiate the strong.
Mammon.
You think so.—All the thumbscrews, headscrews, grills,
The rack, strappado—these are as they were
Three years ago; demonstrable and ready?
Oswald.
The keeper triumphs in his occupation;
The turnstile goes all day.
Mammon.
The keeper's joy
Will soon transcend a dilettant delight,
And the locked turnstile on its bearings rust.
Have we a draught, or cowardice of men
19
I mean,—to use the levers of the rack
With living bones and sinews, flesh and blood
To pull upon?
Oswald.
There are such men, no doubt.
Mammon.
Where are they to be found, such warty souls?
Oswald.
In prison and in Bedlam.
Mammon.
Criminals
And madmen?—Ah, you mean the warders! Yes;
They'd have the heart to turn a thumbscrew still:
I had forgotten. I want some six to-day—
Six prison-warders in the torture-room.
Oswald.
You mean to torture some one? O, King Mammon,
Consider and consider! Men may heap
Enormities upon their consciences
And lightly carry everything, as brides
Their customary wreaths of blossom wear!
But with the very pressure—
Mammon.
Of the bridegroom
There comes in time a string of chubby brats.
You misconceive again. I in myself
Will show mankind how dead are all the lies
The other-worldings forged and foisted in
Amidst the immaculate material truth
Like false decretals in the canon law.
Men may do what they list without a thought:
Matter of brain and blood, good food, good drink,
Employment of the muscles, of the nerves,
With high imaginings, superb designs,
Superb exploits, sound sleep and pleasant dreams.
20
But when the stagnant blood rots in the brain
Imprisoned fancy dies; when food and drink
Are routine only, not a joyful art,
Compunction sours the wine and in the dish
A rancid horror crawls; when sleep rebels,
And dreams turn traitor, like a homeless cat
Remorse keeps up a mewing in the night,
And all the silken fabric of the nerves
Becomes a cobweb, tangled in the coils
Whereof the conscience like a flesh-fly sings
A thin and aguish note of agony.
Mammon.
You speak of what you know! Have you no sleep?
Oswald.
No wink of sleep. There's blood upon my soul—
Not for its cleansing.
Mammon.
To shed blood is to cleanse:
The world is cleaner since my father died,
And sweeter by my brother's life outpoured,
Like fragrance from a vessel richly chased
That bursts asunder with its weight of balm.—
You sleep alone?
Oswald.
I lie alone: you know
I am not married.
Mammon.
Married! What of that?
You should have some sweet woman: wantonly
I do not mean, but needfully and highly:—
'Tis new to me and wonderful:—stop up
The body anywhere, at once the soul,
Which is the body, sickens and torments
With questionings and qualms and quodlibets
21
Supposed of old the Holy Spirit's work.
Oswald.
O king, you scorn my misery!
Mammon.
Not so;
I mean to help you. O, I undertake
The cure of all distress, however deep
The mortifying wound, however foul
The immaterial gangrene! Let me know:
Physicians must be told the hateful things
Men fear to tell themselves.
Oswald.
I underlie
A heaped, downbearing, brooding heaviness
No fantasy can shift, no thought explode.
Far as the farthest in our prodigal
And boyish hardihood of mind I sped,
Stripped to the marrow in the exodus
From Christendom and zeal to try a fall
Naked against the Universe. All that
Was holiday and playground! In the world's
Reverberating fire my adamant
Buckles like parchment, and my unarmed soul
Cries out for respite and the hearth I left;
To feel that right is right and wrong is wrong;
To choose the better part, and repossess
My own approval and the world's goodwill.
Mammon.
The world's goodwill no man should hanker for;
You have your own approval at command!
Oswald.
Not at command—not now at my command!
Since I consented in the prince's death,
Conspired to make the world believe a lie,
22
In sin up to the lips: upon its wash
I choke; its fume and spray nauseate and blind me:
Palsied, inhibited, accursed, forbid,
I shall go mad unless I can repent.
Mammon.
Sin, Oswald? Sin's a costive habit chiefly;
And doubtless prayer promotes catharsis: prayer,
And cascara sagrada; clysters, pills:
To purge is to repent. Love, too, is sin:
A vent plugged up and sealed with celibacy
To keep contrition at the boiling-point.
You cannot laugh? Matter of mirth mankind
Should make all sin henceforth—inviting still
The lofty mood that deems our daily deeds
Eternally momentous.
Oswald.
Can I live
Beneath the intolerable weight of care
That crushes me!
Mammon.
Cast it on me! I need
You, Oswald: conscience such as yours,
With ardent power; such scruple with such daring,
A rare alloy I have assayed, provide
The very mettle of a minister.
The strength and fineness of your nature claim
My interest, my affection, and my faith.
Oswald.
But every nerve is quick with sense of sin.
Mammon.
A sense of sin is rust: go on to sin,
And make the sense of it a constant joy:
The sin's the man; keep your soul bright with sin;
For oxidation of the blood and brain,
Unused in psychic function or physical,
23
The dazzling web of thought even in the loom.—
Have you a handsome lady that you love?
Oswald.
I am betrothed to—
Mammon.
Marry her to-day,
And in your true love's arms be purged of sin!
O marry, marry, marry! By three great vents
The conscious universe renews itself:—
By that most honourable alvine vent
(Considered shameful once, but now by me
Exalted) that discards triumphantly
Fermented refuse; by that exquisite
Secernent carrying off exhausted blood,
Muscle and wear and tear of body and brain—
The Ganges of the soul, the sacred stream
That floats our dead away, dead thought, dead power,
The substance of the stars; and that third vent
The first among its peers, the vent of love,
Not like the other issues, desolate
Escapes of death, but, being the fount of life,
A secret ecstasy that two may share,
Dissolving out the universe to be
The seed and substance of posterity:
A vent of love, a thoroughfare of life
Whose admirable presence in the midst
Could graciously ennoble all the rest
Were every function not itself a lord
In its demesne. So, marry, marry, marry!
Amassed maturity that clogs the mind
Is sin essential: set your life abroach;
Have all the fountains playing, the lanterns lit;
Give matter scope; let the whole tide of things
24
The vein, the artery and the rhythmic heart
The rapid current of the ether loves—
A man with every fibre strained to do
And every faculty in exercise.
Oswald.
I have the king's command to marry?
Mammon.
Now!
Choose out the warders first: I mean to torture
Gottlieb—
Oswald.
O king and friend, you will not do it!
Mammon.
Will I not! And you shall share the adventure;
Thereafter in your bride's embrace become
A sinless virgin. Love's the greatest thing!
Have you not wondered sometimes how men live
Disgraced, dishonoured, shamed, uncharactered?
It is by love: in the world's sight they seem
Unhappiest recrement, but every night
Their faithful women take them in their arms,
And all the past and each day's infamy,
Being evicted in the vent of love,
The door stands open for the universe
To enter and renew them body and soul.
O men are great! The meanest man is great!
How great might men not be! How great I'll make them!
Marry the lady, Oswald, and at night,
After the barbarous festival of the rack,
Unlock the floodgate of the Universe
That thunders for deliverance form and power
In all the sex of plants and beasts and men.
Oswald.
O King, you overwhelm me!
25
Do my will:
And lay your sins on me if courage fails:
It is the right of kings to bear the brunt.—
My hand:—No; clasp it: we are friends:
Who does my will is mine, a piece of me.
| God and Mammon | |