God and Mammon A Trilogy : Mammon and his Message : Being the Second Part of God and Mammon |
 | 1. |
 | 2. | ACT II |
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 | God and Mammon |  |
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ACT II
Scene I:
—A hall in the Royal Palace. On the right is a dais with a door entering upon it. On the left are rows of carved stalls. There is a considerable space between the dais and the stalls. A large door at the back. When the act begins Sigtrig Harpur and Florimond are keeping order among the harlots, who are seated in the stalls. Signy Snowbird and Candytuft are in the front row.Mammon enters on the right and summons Sigtrig Harpur who ascends the dais.
Mammon.
Are these all licensed women of the town?
Harpur.
Licensed and warranted. They represent
A dozen brothels and every race in Europe.
I've brought a Malay also; and that's a Cuban:
Ten days ago a Matabele died:
With her I could have shown four continents.
Mammon.
These women have been known to many men?
Harpur.
To scores of men; to hundreds, some of them.
Mammon.
Then are they all insane?—in mind, I mean.
Harpur.
Incontinent in mind and body, King:
Their beaten blood, all froth; their nerves, in rags.
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Ploughed up and harrowed and manured with sin,
Their fallow souls are seasoned for my news.
These women will understand me: these, at least.
Harpur.
They are quick to understand.
Mammon.
Timid and bold,
They browbeat their own smiles with sulky looks
Lest they offend me. But these are handsome women!
Some of them have been beautiful; some still
Are comely. They were children once; and once—
My heart begins to choke me; I must speak,
And greatly: otherwise should no man speak,
And least of all to such an audience.—
Subjects and sisters, harlots of the town,
I sent for you to tell you what you are.
You are the corner-stone of Christendom;
And were I Christian with unction I should say,
“You of all classes are the children of God;
Bulwarks of chastity and sinks of lust,
You keep the Christian family possible;
From your corruption orange-blossoms spring,
And glowing blushes of the virgin bride.
Therefore go forth and sin courageously,
Enhance your charms, and triumph in your art:
Be proud and happy as God's good whores should be.”
Some of the harlots begin to sob.
Mammon.
Why do they sob?
Harpur.
Your voice is gracious, King;
And these must either sob, or laugh, or rage;
No mezzo mood with them.
Mammon.
But that is great!
Has vice theurgic power so wonderful?
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Were I a Christian; and extol to heaven
The excelling mystery of iniquity
Whereby God lets his people sanction sin
In vessels of dishonour that the elect
May breed securely in domestic bliss.
But I am here to put an end to sin,
To ruin Christendom, to change the world,
To set the time. With you, then, I begin,
The blood-stained corner-stone. From this day forth
The license is withdrawn; the harlot's trade
Forbidden under penalty of death.
To every legal harlot in Christianstadt
To-day a score of sovereigns shall be given
Wherewith to quit the land or seek in Thule
Another livelihood.
The harlots exclaim, laugh and whisper to each other.
Mammon.
If you would speak
Address me boldly. Can any of you talk?
Harpur.
She that's the silentest among them knows
More turns of speech than twenty crack debaters.
Snowbird.
Can any of us talk!
Mammon.
What is your name?
Snowbird.
They call me Signy Snowbird. [To Harpur]
What do I say?
Your majesty, or sire, or royal highness?
Harpur.
King or King Mammon. These flourishes are dead.
Mammon.
Is that her name?
Harpur.
Her nomme de guerre, bestowed
Upon her swarthy mane and ruddy cheeks;
A simple irony common with her kind.
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What countrywoman are you?
Snowbird.
Of Thule, King.
Mammon.
Say what you wish to say.
Snowbird.
With twenty pounds
I'll book a passage by the evening boat,
And be in Paris in the morning, King.
Thank you a thousand times, great King of Thule.
My word, you are a king!
Mammon.
Leave out the king.
How will you do in Paris?
Snowbird.
I'll tell you what:—
I dream of Paris and the things I've heard;
The cafés and the restaurants in trees;
The gaieties at night—and all night: mad
Montmartredoms, and in the rues—my God!—
The spice of absinthe all the afternoon.
O King, and won't you come?
Harpur.
Control your tongue.
A fine of twenty pounds would stop your jaunt.
Snowbird.
But Signor Sigtrig—
Mammon.
Let her tongue run on:
I understand that harlotry like God
Has no respect of persons.—You intend
To follow harlotry in Paris, harlot?
Snowbird.
I am a lady that delights in things
That please her, King.
Mammon.
I said to drop the king.
Snowbird.
Then drop the harlot.
Mammon.
I call you what you are—
Snowbird.
Are you not king, King Mammon?
Mammon.
From my mouth
You snatch the obvious. Since it is, so be it:
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You mean to follow harlotry in Paris?
Snowbird.
I'm not a harlot, and I never was:
I don't know what you mean by harlotry.
Mammon.
You live by hiring out your sex to men?
Snowbird.
You filthy fellow!—Stupid, ignorant king!
Some of the harlots scream and others hiss.
Mammon.
What trick is this? Whom have you brought me here?
Snowbird.
They must be humoured, still saying what they please,
If one encounters them without the law.
They have a kind of fancy in their trade,
A sort of euphemism in speech and deed
(If I may say so), while their vigour lasts.
Mammon.
I should have known that: I forget myself.
This is the greatness of the Universe.—
Madame and sister, will it please you well
To change your honest calling?
Snowbird.
Brother and King,
I'll tell you what:—I'm sometimes sick of change.
I had a lover once; but that's vieux jeu.
Mammon.
A wilful misconception.
Harpur.
They think it wit.
Mammon.
A lover once? Have you, or any of you,
No inextinguishable fierce desire
For vengeance on the author of your fall?
Snowbird.
And who may he be, King?
Mammon.
He that seduced you.
Snowbird.
No one seduced me. O, la, la!—What's this?
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Men write about? Why, we ourselves seduced
Our own betrayers, every one of us:
Make you no doubt of that. Vengeance on men?
The whole thing's vengeance; love and life and all—
Somebody's bloody vengeance on the world.
[Bursts into tears.
All the harlots with the exception of Candytuft lift up their voices and weep.
Mammon.
I cannot talk with these. What shame to think
The cross of Christ may be their only help!
My message is the greater: once more I try.—
Fair lady, who are you?
Candytuft.
I'm Candytuft.
Mammon.
You're Candytuft!—And why?
Candytuft.
That's asking.
Something to do with cats; I don't know what:
Cats like me or dislike me; I don't know how.
Mammon.
How can I reach them?—Candytuft, you like
Your pleasant calling.
Candytuft.
O, I like it, King!
Mammon.
What do you like about it?
Candytuft.
O, go on!
Mammon.
I am helpless here: my news cannot be told:
The Universe seems to be blotted out.
Beasts, plants would understand me:—and so shall these!
How will you use your twenty pounds? Remember,
Your calling's at an end.
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I think of that;
And wonder what to do.
Mammon.
Work; and in all
Events you and your friends are now set free
From man's brutality.
Candytuft.
O, are we, King!
I never met a brute. Don't you mistake:
You men are brutes at home; but not with us:
Good fellows, happy to be helped: a rough
And tumble wedding, often as not. My life!
What could men do without us? Yes, and the boys
That come ashamed and shy to taste their first
Forbidden fruit? Such a time while it lasts!
We help the world, we help it to be good.
You called us paving-stones—
Mammon.
The corner-stone
Of Christendom.
Candytuft.
I guess your meaning, King;
And guess you're right; we're indispensable,
Like food and drink. How can the world go on
If girls must die for giving men a treat?
Mammon.
How does the world go out?
Candytuft.
I guess your meaning, King:
We have no children. But I've heard it said
The world's too full; so there we help again.
A child when one's alone's the deuce and all
For lightsomeness. ... We can't have everything.
I'm Candytuft, and take it as it comes.
The harlots have dried their eyes, but some of them begin to sob again.
Mammon.
I have them now; I'll grip them by the heart.—
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The harlots are startled and listen attentively.
A woman taken in adultery,
Far off in some barbaric eastern land,
Is punished thus:—with grisly craft they sew
The living sinner in a bullock's hide
Consorted with a cat, and fling the bale
Upon the beach beside the sounding sea
To shrink and crackle in the sun at noon.
Then frantic woman, frantic beast, they fight
With sob and yell in stifling darkness wrapped,
Till their contracting coffin smothers them,
And the slow tide crawls up to hide the thing.
You catch your breath and shiver as I tell
That awful doom. But not less terrible
Is yours, the women set apart and swathed
In dark dishonour; for the vilest hides
Somewhere a heart, and all unknown, unhelped,
Against the teeth and claws of throttling vice,
To the last gasp fights for her womanhood.
Is it not so, my sisters?—I see it is.
Your cruellest pain is when you think of all
The honied treasure of your bodies spent
And no new life to show. O, then you feel
How people lift their hands against themselves,
And taste the bitterest of the punishment
Of those whom pleasure isolates. Sometimes
When darkness, silence, and the sleeping world
Give vision scope, you lie awake and see
The pale sad faces of the little ones
Who should have been your children, as they press
Their cheeks against your windows, looking in
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Denied your wombs and bosoms.
A Harlot.
My God! My God!
Snowbird.
Let me get out of here! This King's a devil!
Candytuft.
You've no right to expose poor women so!
Florimond.
These never can behold your Universe.
Mammon.
They shall be shown.—Sisters, I blame you not;
I hurt you as the surgeon hurts to heal.
The horror of yourselves that stifles you
Is in its essence hope and happiness.
I spoke of sin and sinner, using words
That must be used until the common mind
Escapes from Christendom to the Universe.
You have no souls, therefore you cannot sin—
Snowbird.
Who says I have no soul? You're mad, King Mammon.
Candytuft.
And souls to damn too, damn him!
Mammon.
I have no soul—
Snowbird.
Indeed, and one would think it!
Mammon.
There's no such thing
As soul, but only matter and its powers
Stupendous, which our blood and brain transmute
To thought, emotion, passion, fancy, love.
The vapours radiant in a million stars,
Contracted and condensed as mind in men—
The harlots cease to attend and whisper to each other.
Mammon.
They cannot grasp it, cannot bear to listen.
The thing I have to tell, unthought before,
Demands another language, another folk
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Dismiss these women.—Harlots of Christianstadt—
(A moment, Harpur)—remember my decree:
The money will be paid you, twenty pounds
For your redemption; and in ten weeks' time,
She that regards herself, may pleasantly
Renew her youth and start the world afresh,
A virtuous woman scorning man's embrace
Except with passion and instinctive love
Obsequious and fruitful. Hitherto,
Your love has been too immaterial,
A thing of other world, becoming well
The spirit and corner-stone of Christendom.
Bestial and of this world your love must be—
Florimond.
O King!
Mammon.
I'll make them think.—I say again
You must be natural and chaste; like beasts,
Unconsciously, devoutly bent on offspring.
Conceive; then live with him whose seed you bear
In closest amity and constant love,
That happy children may delight your hearts,
For happy children spring from amorous joys.
But she who hires again for passing pleasure
The portal of her womb shall surely die.
Now go; in silence go, and do my will.
Escorted by Sigtrig Harpur the harlots go out.
Mammon.
Persuasion fails: it must be life or death.—
The paupers next: I'll see them. Quickly, Harpur.
Florimond.
King Mammon, may an old man speak his mind?
Mammon.
And welcome, if his name be Florimond.
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A harlot called you mad just now; the world
Will echo that, and I begin to think it.
Mammon.
I would be thought so—by the Christian world:
A shallow, economic world that counts
Opinions, gains and losses, and patches peace
With heresies and science. How great it was
When armies drunk with faith, time and again,
Scorning example, in ruinous crusades
Purpled the tawny east with valiant blood!
How great when mantled, masked inquisitors
Excised, consumed, annihilated schism
Obnoxious to the church! Great God, how great!
Then was the world a portent; then did men
Transcend humanity!
Sigtrig Harpur marshals a crowd of beggars and criminals of both sexes and advanced in years; among them, Munter and Paaske.
Mammon.
These are the poor,
The aged, horrible unhappy poor;
And these the rascals, worn-out, filthy rogues,
Thieves, murderers, resetters, demireps.
What shall I say to you? I see you leer
With phosphorescent eyes or shrivelled orbs
Opaque, edacious, crapulous and monstrous
Wretchednesses fit to be mocked by devils,
The very proper offal of Christendom.
Show you the Universe? I'll stuff you with it;
Spread out a surfeit of the Universe
In meat and drink, and watch you choke and die,
Glutted with Universe; for I'll not have
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Legacy of Christ. I'll have no poor at all;
And no incurables, no criminals,
No bedlamites. I'll cut out all that's Christ;
And down shall come asylums, hospitals,
With churches, colleges and culture-marts;
I'll raze out cities and dilapidate
The structure of society to lay the ghost
Of Christendom. How can such folk as you
Endure to live, how dare to breathe?
Munter.
No fault
Of ours, O King! We didn't make ourselves.
Mammon.
I say, you did; before the world began
The vapours, metals, earths that integrate
Your bodies, minds and souls:—(and by your souls,
I mean the whole machinery of power,
Vital, emotional and cerebral,
Transmuted from bisexual energy
Of lightning and the loadstone, from the force
Expansible of gases, from intense
Alchemical desires, miraculous
Irradiations, metamorphoses;
And from the everlasting passionate
Molecular attraction, pulsing strong
Even in the matter of a mendicant,
With that recondite, interatomic play
Electrons manage in secluded courts,
So infinitely small that elfin bowers
Beside them seem the spacious vault of heaven):—
The substance of your bodies minds and souls
Was as it is—before the world began?—
Before a single stitch of lightning pierced
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While all the systems, galaxies and suns,
Dissolved in empyrean slumber, dreamed
Unconscious dreams of orbëd splendour flung
Athwart the firmaments in vast array!
Paaske.
Who is responsible for us, King Mammon?
I never wanted to be born.
A Beggar.
Nor I!
A Thief.
Nor any of us!
Mammon.
You did; each one of you;
You only are responsible for you.
Who asked you to become the consciousness
Of matter? Not I;—Not God; there is none.
You are the nauseous passion that compelled
Degenerate pairs to put you forth—the root,
The essence, and the cause of Christendom.
I'll purge the world of you. Patience is past!
The sight of such unhallowed ugliness
Dispels the frail enchantment tolerance hung
Between me and my purpose. Cut it out,
The cancer and the sin; for this is sin;—
To be unhealthy, ugly, base, unfit.
Eternal energy, diseased and foul!
Beyond invective! Brand it, sear it, stop
The thing with instant death! I'll not be cruel:
You shall be feasted; gorged and drunk, the end
Shall steal upon you to the sound of strings
Discoursing symphonies; your dining-room
Shall be your lethal chamber; your festal board,
Your funeral bier.
Munter.
A lethal chamber! Mates,
He means to poison us like homeless dogs.
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Like homeless dogs! I'll not endure you. Earth
Abhors you, and the Universe disowns
The substance of the stars, offspring of lightning,
Ethereal presences, so sullied, so
Malignantly dishonoured—
Munter, Paaske and the others with hoarse cries attempt to leave the room; but are prevented.
Paaske.
You'll not be king
A day when this is known.
A Beggar.
Children will kill
The monster with reproachful looks!
Another Beggar.
And women
Stone him to a pulp!
Mammon.
They have their greatness, too—
The will to live even in the last disgrace:
This is the universe within them, loath
To lose self-consciousness in any plight.—
Fill up the room with soldiers:—soldiers, man's
Authority and power in terms of man:—
Yet must I speak; yet must I say the thing
I am the furnace and alembic of,
Distilling tidings of eternity
In every cell and chamber of my brain.
Harpur has filled the space in front of the dais with soldiers, who enter by the door at the back.
Mammon.
You see: I hold you in my hand, as Heaven
Was once supposed to do; and on my nod
Your lives depend. But I am gracious now;
And you shall choose. Man is my prisoner, guilty
Before the universe of growing old;—
What is more loathsome than extinct desire?
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Nor any woman past conception! Cult
Of age is Christian: only youth should be,
Should have, should do, should rule.
Florimond.
Old age was held
In high repute before the Christians came.
Mammon.
And so it was! Everything foul and false
In pagan usage, weaknesses, decay,
The Christians saved and loved:—high time it is
To put an end to all senility!
Another count against my prisoner, man,
Is clumsiness—a Christian salvage also.
Your intellects are clumsy; you are found out—
Beggars and criminals; the crafty rogue,
The clever mendicant deserve to live
Compared with you. And last is ugliness,
The very brand of Christianity.
You all are ugly—men and women, ugly,
Though once you painted Raphael's pictures, once
Erected Gothic wonders. So ugly, you,
Misshaped, degenerate, asymmetrical,
You should be glad to die! The will to live,
The will to power, the will to happiness—
These are but ministers, the separate strands
And conformation of the will to beauty,
The hidden secret of the Universe.—
I blame you not; you could not help yourselves;
But knowing now what noxious things you are
You ought to die at once. I will decree
That ugliness is criminal, and build
A rich pavilion high upon a hill
For folk to die at dawn and sunset in,
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In vapours of decay. In silence go.
I bid you die at once. Go hence, and die.
The beggars and criminals go out.
Mammon.
Soldiers, I love to see your wholesome faces:
My army, only implement of kings.—
That hideous human offal! The harlots pleased me;
But that was horrible.—The legate now;
I'll see him first; and afterwards, the abbot.
Florimond.
I wish to speak of these, King Mammon.
Mammon.
Speak.
Florimond.
Untried and unaccused they lie in prison.
Not only Thule, but Europe calls for justice.
Mammon.
Without an army like a hobbled horse
One stumbles in the tether of the law.
Diplomacy, chicanery, statesmanship,
Become the masters of the unarmed king.
I waited on my army; and now intend
Such justice as omnipotence may deal.
The legate, quickly:—in another room,
For this is foul with decadence of man.
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Scene II:
—A room in the Royal Palace.Mammon
[to an unseen attendant as he enters].
Tell Florimond to send the legate here.—
It drives me breathless onward. Will it hurl
Me headlong to my ruin? Am I mad—
So hounded, scourged, hallooed? If one profound,
Religious soul, ambitious, able, learned,
Would understand me! Oswald loves and serves
In fear and wonder. Guendolen adores;
But when her passion cloys, her mind, relaxed,
Will sink supinely on her Saviour's breast.
Only by fire, by slaughter can the earth
Be purged of Christendom. By talk, by books,
By argument, apparent things are done;
But actual change by war alone arrives.
Yet still I try what eloquence can do:
I have this letch of speech, this power of vision.
Were Anselm mine—the legate; could I turn
A man of such a temper, so refined
A worldliness, so certain of himself,
From the state polity he calls his God,
To Mammon, me and my great universe,
Then might the bloody torrent I behold
Sweeping the serried crosses from the world
Sink in the earth, and in my wounded thought
Ebb and be staunched, and the fierce fire put out
That roars and rustles in my heart and brain.
Anselm enters.
Mammon.
Anselm, in damning me you overreached
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You, like a twisted ankle.
Anselm.
Yes; to-day,
In every country crucified, the church
Endures the utmost spite of men.
Mammon.
I like
The church of Rome.
Anselm.
How dare you say it, King!—
God's enemy and man's?
Mammon.
It puzzles you?
I am the enemy of God and man—
The European-Yankee man, who thinks
In terms of God and Christ and other world;
And yet I say I like your church of Rome.
That puzzles? Yes.—Are you a Jesuit, father?
Anselm.
I am a Jesuit.
Mammon.
Most romantic tribe,
That failed in everything they undertook.
And why?
Anselm.
Because of meannesses in men.
Mammon.
Because they used, abused and multiplied
The meannesses of men! Men are not mean,
Though meanness may by meanness be induced,
As ghosts are raised by self-deluded seers.
All men are great—all men: I say, all men.
Your greatness I appeal to. Centuries
Ago your decadent Catholic Church
Had peremptory notice to be gone;
Yet still it haunts the world, the subtlest power,
The sweetest and the strongest. Rome's a vase,
Empty, discoloured, dusty, chipped and cracked,
So full of roseleaves once, of martyrdoms,
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That its memorial savour, unexpired,
Enthrals the doting world.
Anselm.
The faithful world,
That finds in Holy Rood the tree of life.
Mammon.
It was the tree of life for many an age.
Sprung from a little seed in Bethlehem,
It flourished high and higher, and broad as Heaven,
Hiding the stars; its roots in every heart;
Its foliage fed with fragrant breath of prayer;
Its blossom and its harvest, the opulent
Imaginings of two millenniums.
Anselm.
O king, you speak with most inspiring sense
Of greatness and of glory in the church!
The tree is for the healing of the nations;
Beneath its arms—
Mammon.
Bad shelter in a storm.—
You interrupted me.—A long-lived tree;
But now it's dead. Its bole, a crypt of dust;
Its withered, creaking boughs, shored up and braced
Against tempestuous time and old decay.
Anselm.
Yet nations shelter in its branches!
Mammon.
Yes;
Imagination knows no other home.
But I am here to fell the hollow trunk,
To faggot all the dry wind-shaken limbs,
To stub the twisted, earth-shot roots that sprawl
The pathway o'er, tripping adventurous feet;
And in that old symbolic stead divulge
The matter of the universe itself.
Anselm regards Mammon disdainfully.
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They say you are a master mind, instinct
With science and the culture of the schools,
And one to whom the facets of man's soul,
The ways of fate, the labyrinthine world,
Are known enigmas. Such a friend I want.
Anselm.
An honest-hearted man of single mind,
I walk with God as closely as I may.
Mammon.
But I would have you march in step with me.
Anselm.
The road you travel strikes across God's path.
Mammon.
Not so; my road begins where God's leaves off.
The narrow way men trod with bleeding feet—
Where think you does it lead?
Anselm.
It leads to heaven.
Mammon.
Say so; but what is heaven?
Anselm.
The abode of bliss,
Where ransomed souls enjoy the glory of God.
Mammon.
And where is that?
Anselm.
Above, beyond the stars.
Mammon.
I think so, too; but I materialise.
The narrow way, unluckiest, longest lane
In man's itinerary hitherto,
Turns off at last with me, the first to reach
The turning, straight into the broad one, heaven
On earth—which is the one and only heaven.
Anselm.
The narrow way leads straight into the broad one?
Mammon.
Yes, father; that's the world's eternal route.
I see the turning at the long lane's end,
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Its curving spines blood-stained; its flinty path
With purple mottled; gloom and doleful sounds
About its porch of writhen boughs, wherethrough
A crowd of pallid cheeks and eyes amazed
Come halting from the hideous byway, straight
Upon the broad, green thoroughfare of kings,
Adventurers, warriors, dancers, pleasant folk
Among the joyful birds and summer flowers.
So ends at last the Christian era; so
Does every era end. Recurrent time,
The vagrant bedesman of the infinite,
Through many a Hades and the trough of Hell,
Over Olympian heights, and past the jasper
Walls of the golden city, homeward-bound
Instinctively, in every period gains
The broad way of the earth: there are we now,
After the centuries of Christendom—
Which mean to me a moment's madness only;
And here am I, with power to alter time
From that old wiseacre of scythe and sand,
To youth and favour, beauty and delight,
A damsel mantled in eternity,
Who takes no turning into narrow ways,
But singing clearly in the constant dawn,
Before the splendid world by royal roads
Moves ever onward to an unknown goal.
Anselm.
Get thee behind me, Satan!
Mammon.
I reach your heart?
I touch your understanding?
Anselm.
Seduction rides
Upon your tongue, King Mammon, and youth and grace
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The joys of life, love, offspring, tender cares,
Forget themselves when striplings woo their thoughts.
But God is not forgotten. You are supposed
A murderer, and I think it.
Mammon.
No murderer, priest:
But were I worse than murderer, how should blood
Belie the truth of what I have to tell?
No more than turning rods to serpents shows
That two and two make five. Suppose I say,
“The earth is flat, and I shall prove the same
By raising from the grave a man long dead?”
The Jew Appella or a Scottish Kelt
Would not be taken in! A man might spill
A life a day, yet be a good logician,
And play a sweet adagio on the flute.—
I am keen to make you mine.
Anselm.
That cannot be.
You deal in images:—when you can turn
A negro white by argument, reverse
The sexes by transfusion, or evolve
Baboons from men by grafting tails, expect
To change my faith.
Mammon.
Were you upon my side
The world would pause before condemning me:
I must have old men, wise, renowned and good.
Father, I shall convert you to my thought,
Show you my vision of the Universe,
And pluck you from the burning; in your own terms
I'll do it:—your exaltation of the Host,
Your triune God, your ardent Heaven and Hell,
Your wonderful parthenogenesis.
48
Why shame and torture me with blasphemy?
Mammon.
No word of blasphemy shall pass my lips.
Know father that the wildest thoughts of men
Are true as true, for matter cannot lie,
And men and thoughts are matter: material truth
Behind the immaterial symbol hides,
As priests conceive of God behind the veil.
Self-consciousness, imagination, soul
Are forms of matter as the lightning is,
As gold and phosphorus and gases are—
Matter eternal, diverse, mutable.
Like all the mythic intercourse of Heaven,
Adonai's commerce with the virgin means
That man is more than man, and with his bride
Engenders righteously the manifold
Illimitable universe itself,
Continuing in sense and consciousness
The ether and the substance of the stars.
Immaculate conception intimates
The purity of women in all their functions—
Wonderful partners, virginal every month,
Sweet votarists of the moon. Celestial glory?
Remembrances of being unbegun
In old ethereal eternities.
The intolerable tragedy of Hell?
Encaustic records of the pristine fire
In every passionate ion branded: these,
Achieving consciousness in man, reveal
His pure material nature. You exalt
The Host, and eat the body of the Lord
In ecstasy of adoration: great,
And in the very essence of it true!
49
Travail of Calvary, and Martyrdoms
Forgotten by the thousand, this issue leapt
To sheer pre-eminence:—“Is that bless'd bread
The body of God or not?” The body of God!
It is the sun, the earth, the elements,
Sirius and Aldebaran and Mazzaroth,
The ether, and the lightning and the light,
The whole illimitable universe.
O father, see you not how great it is!
The rapture and the glory of the Mass
Predicted me, and the high news I bring.
Anselm.
Dismiss me, King! To listen is to sin!
Mammon.
I move you, Anselm? I can make you mine!
Carbon, and those aerial potentates—
Azote, which men call nitrogen; the virile
Sultan of all the elements, oxygen;
The brilliant vapour of the hottest stars,
The lady of the water: principal
Components of the visible Universe,
And the main fibres of infinitude,
Are we, our food, our drink; and every meal
Is eucharist, and every dining-room
A temple.
Anselm.
Gracious images, King Mammon;
Most immaterial figures! How can one
So specially endowed with fancy choose
A disenchanted world?
Mammon.
You mark me not.
I rend in twain the old moth-eaten veil
You Christians juggled with, and show mankind
50
All ancient fantasies of spirit things
Are types of matter. Take your triune God,
The effort of the conscious Universe,
Not yet self-conscious, to enunciate
The triple form of matter:—Dynamic ether,
First person of the Trinity whence all
Derives;—the polar tension couched and wed
In every atom—Force, the Holy Spirit;—
The ponderable elements whereof
The galaxies and systems, beasts and men,
Stars, flowers, amœbas, lichens, lice consist
Are each and all the well-belovëd Son.
Anselm.
Why change it then, this old belief in God,
So hallowed, pregnant, satisfying, true?
Mammon.
To-day a damnable and damning lie!
We know there is no God—no God who made
The world and man, pitched high above us heaven,
And underneath sunk Hell. The wistful hearts
That meditate emasculate immanence
In place of the Almighty overthrown,
Degrade the world below the darkest age.
The inbred fault and meanness of the time
In art, in thought, in polity, in trade,
I charge directly to the ruined will
That neither takes nor leaves the Omnipotent
Creator, the immortal soul of man,
Heaven, Hell, the Cross of Christ, and all that once
Was great in Christendom when God meant God.
Anselm.
God is a fact for me and for my church.
Mammon.
What was a fact has now become a symbol;
51
Gigantic Brocken spectres, Boygs, mobs,
Anarchic spiritisms, democracies,
Denationalisation of the world.
I want a home for greatness, and I take
The Universe wherein to be and do:
I and my people shall eclipse renown.
Anselm.
God makes men great: without God man's a beast.
Mammon.
I say so too:—Without God man's a beast.
Back to the beast! We must get back to the beast:
“Get thee behind me, God!” shall be our cry.
From lower forms of life out of the ether,
By way of lightning and the nebula,
The king of all the beasts arrived at last.
There I begin again as if no time
Had ever been: no metaphysical
Consideration, myth or wonderworld
Installed in space by sorrow and ignorance;
No moral law insidiously wrought
To play the pandar to malignity;
No gyves of right and wrong to shackle power.
Anselm.
O King, though many an honest conscience breaks
The frame and form of Christianity,
The ethic heart of it remains to sway
Behaviour and to point the heavenward path.
Mammon.
Ultimate cowardice and hypocrisy!
The Christian ethic and the Christian creed
Are head and heart of the anatomy:
Dissect out either and you have for guide
52
Or sodden preparation in a jar.
Four centuries of sects, denominations,
Of hydra-headed variance and protest loud,
Broke up the showy coffin, undid the cloths,
And tore the stuffing forth—to find no God
Inside the thing or out. Aghast and hushed
In droning compromise, fain would they use
The old embalmment, all its virtue gone,
Fain swathe and join again the empty limbs
With tattered cerements crumbling into dust.
Alone the church of Rome continues still
Your perfect mummy, gilded, painted, spiced;
Alone, and worthy in unworthiness,
Lives in its vision of the Universe,
The stage complete:—Heaven, Hell, the earth between,
A righteous God, a sinful man, and Christ
To make atonement while the Virgin prays.
Not in an emblem of the Universe,
A tale, a coarse archaic mythologue,
But in the matter symbolized I mean
To root the mind of man. The priceless earth,
That like a pearl within an oyster lay
Between your Heaven and Hell, I shall transmute
To adamant; and for your jewel-box,
Your closed and padlocked Hell and Heaven that choke
Imagination, I shall give mankind
The spacious casket of the Universe
For ever open—systems, wastes of stars,
Room for a million million sinful worlds,
Ethereal room for every wandering thought.
Anselm.
In God's great name sully my soul no more!
53
I sin too much in converse with a wretch
Under the greater excommunication!
How long, O Lord, how long is power withheld?
When shall Thy Churchmen, militant again,
With necks of kings for stirrups conquering ride?
Mammon.
“With necks of kings for stirrups! The sound I like!
Ambition, jealousy, revengeful lust,
The scouted moods I mean to make so great,
Material essences of action! You
I want, and all the power and pride of Rome,
The wilful, passionate, executive
Fraternity of kings and warriors. Folk
That live in every bodily organ hard
As driven machinery on a record run;
That ask and take no less than just the whole
Great Universe itself, as due to them,
As being them and theirs; for them I'll spread
The banquet, carve the world, and set the time—
The first hour of a known eternity.
Anselm.
O King, material voices fail to reach
The portal of the spirit's audience! God,
For some high purpose fixed ere time began,
Withholds His favour and relinquishes
The kingdom of the soul, permitting wrong.
But when this pregnant age and travail fierce
(Religion's Chastisement) determine, look
For prophecy fulfilled, and God's great dream,
Which our so seeming solid matter is,
Sublimed, installed, accomplished and assured
Eternally in substance spiritual—
54
Mammon.
This is the huge insanity of the world,
The time-old morbid mind that fears itself,
Unknowing and unknown. How great are men
To fashion out of ignorance and dread
Such greatness! For I know your spirit-world
Better than any prophet, poet, priest,
Philosopher, occultist, mystic, seer.
Hear me expound your dual universe:—
Man is a spirit, and his various life,
A bodying forth of the invisible;
The Universe and forms of time and space—
The garment and the symbolism of God;
The elements, the stars, earth and its brood—
The self-analysis, precipitation,
Pomp and deployment of the absolute:
The visible's the immaterial;
And only spirit's matter and momentous.
A noble Universe whose furthest nook
Is still a suburb of the City of God;
Where every star and every blade of grass,
Where every pulse and every thought reveals
The hallowed presence of divinity!
Anselm.
You sin against the light knowing so well
What apparition matter is, and all
The Universe a mere similitude
And mutable appurtenance of God.
Mammon.
No God; no spirit; only matter. God?
The cowardice of men flung forth to fill
With welcome shadow an imagined void—
Which never was, which by no chance can be.
The unconscious ether fills the universe,
55
No interstice in matter anywhere
Even for the daintiest elf of other world;
And in the infinite no interval
To harbour alien immaterial dreams.
Anselm.
But spirit, God, may be material stuff,
Of the same substance as the stars and us.
Mammon.
Not spirit, then; not God. You know!
Anselm.
I do.
And may God pardon me my flash of sin!
Mammon.
Afraid of mystery men explained the unknown
As something immaterial—spirit, God.
But there's no mystery hidden in the unknown;
There's nothing in the unknown; there's no unknown.
Anselm.
O King, the darkness! There the unknown hides!
Mammon.
Darkness?—negation; nil. Light?—wonder; woven
Magnificence of seven mysterious stains,
Ethereal substance of the universe.
Anselm.
Bethink you, King; the silence of the night—
Mammon.
Silence that misanthropes have praised so, golden
Against the silver sound of speech, is dull
Inanity: the mystery of the whole resides
In music—substance of the ether tuned
To audible enchantment. Time's a lie,
And space a trick. Eternity's the truth:
Infinitude, the all-dynamic vast,
Mystery of mysteries, known to any one,
56
Of the immeasurable universe;
For all is matter, all is mystery, all
Is known: we are the universe become
Self-conscious; and nothing anywhere exists
Not us. All men are great, all men: unmade,
Incomparable, immeasurable, free—
The eternal Universe become self-conscious.
I'll have you understand this here and now,
Accept its truth and change the world with me.
My patience ends: I bring the greatest news;
I'll have it welcomed. We ourselves are fate;
We are the universe; we are all that is:
Outside of us nothing that is not us
Can be at all. No room! The universe
Is full of us, the matter of the stars;
The all-pervading ether seen as light,
Elaborate purity of rainbows; heard
As music, woven of elemental sounds;
And smelt in perfume, the poetry of flowers
Exhaled from sex, which in all plants and beasts
Secretes and sows the ethereal universe.
Seen in the light, in music heard, and smelt
In subtle odour of a thousand flowers,
In us the ether consciously becomes
Imagination, thought, religion, art.
We are the ether, we are the universe,
We are eternity: not sense, not spirit,
But matter; but the whole become self-conscious.
Whatever Heaven there is, whatever Hell,
Here now we have it; and I cannot wait
On God, the nothing, and his damned event
57
Nor will I linger eating out my heart
While this new proxy of divinity
Your specious evolution, blunders on
From tedious age to age. I'll carve the world
In my own image, I, the first of men
To comprehend the greatness of mankind;
I'll melt the earth and cast it in my mould,
The form and beauty of the universe.
Say after me “Get thee behind me, God;
“I follow Mammon.” Say it, say it!
Anselm.
God
Is God, eternal and unchangeable,
The God of my salvation.
Mammon
[seizes Anselm by the throat].
Hideous liar,
Abominably old and impotent!
You know there is no God, no soul at all,
But only matter, ether polarised,
Condensed and shown and felt and understood,
Beholding, feeling, thinking, comprehending,
The subject-object of the Universe.
“Get thee behind me, God; I follow Mammon.”
Say it, before I fling you at my feet,
Abhorred senility, and stubborn past
Of the world! Say it, antiquity!
Anselm.
Release
Me, King.
Mammon flings Anselm from him violently.
Anselm staggers and falls with a loud cry.
Mammon.
Old craven heart of man, from truth
Divorced, God's creature, famulus and fool,
Go back to Rome and tell the triple-crown—
58
[who has entered quickly and is kneeling beside Anselm].
He'll ne'er see Rome again: the legate's dead.
Mammon.
Dead! Anselm dead! How dead? Dead in the spirit—
Like all the world to all material truth,
Senseless and dead.
Florimond.
Dead as a carcase, King.
How quickly he grows cold!
Mammon.
Why should he die?
A wine-glass falls and breaks. Is human stuff
As brittle? Come; help him to his feet.
Florimond.
The man is dead. His heart: to-day the world
Trembles with broken hearts; the pace of life
Exceeds our staying power.
[Rises.
Mammon.
I'm glad he's dead,
He was so old: old age is horrible.
I gripped his skinny throat; his yellow eyes
Bulged from their sodden wrinkles; between his jaws
His false teeth clattered; I shook him and he fell.
He would not say, “Get thee behind me, God;
I follow Mammon.”—You say that, Florimond.
Florimond.
If the King commands.
Mammon.
O, but you'll mean it too!
Florimond.
Except the King's commands I have no meaning.
Mammon.
Say it; mean it.
Florimond.
In presence of the dead?
Mammon.
Why not in presence of the dead?
Florimond.
There hangs
A mystery in the air: the unseen—felt,
59
Mammon.
Mystery of mysteries, death!
The ether to the ether whence it came
Returns again; to darkness, silence, peace,
The wide oblivion of the universe,
The rapture of the infinite.
Florimond.
O King,
There may be God and judgment! I am old—
Like him that lies there; and my heart's worn out;
But in some part of me a fibre wakes
Rekindled at the quickening thought of death.
How can I say and mean so utterly
Against the ancient texture of my soul?
To turn a river at its outflow, cast
The entrails and the vitals of the mind
At threescore years and ten—
Mammon.
Dispute with me?
Pronounce my formula!
Florimond.
“Get thee behind—”
Mammon.
Hush, Florimond!—Three corpses on the floor!
I gave the order for their burial! Look!
They should be underground! Who brought them here?
And left them naked?
Florimond.
His eyes expand like lights
That issue from the darkness, growing great!
What are you glaring at?
Mammon.
See, Florimond!
Some one's been widening their wounds: what hand
Profaned the dead and Thule's royalty?
Their wounds like leeches seem to feel about!
They writhe, they mutter, and they suck the air!
60
[Throws the table cover over the body of Anselm.
One! There's only one
Beneath the cover! Lift it, Florimond.
Florimond removes the cover.
Mammon.
I saw them, plainer than I see the legate's,
The corpses of my father and my brother—
All mapped with wounds and diapered with blood,
Like some torn fabric full of holes and stained.
I say they lay there on the carpet stretched
Beside the legate. Are you the conjurer?
Craft more inexplicable, nightly plied
By jugglers in the street for pence, is known
To be no medium-work, but sleight-of-hand
Acquirable by fools. Where are the bodies?
Florimond.
What bodies, King?
Mammon.
What bodies, cavilling echo! Those
That lay there by the legate's, which I named.
[Opens the door and beckons.
Two attendants enter.
Mammon.
Your fraud again; but let me see it done.
Although their wounds be knots of serpents yet
I'll gaze on them and handle them unhurt.
You stare at me, interrogate each other
With shamefast looks like petty culprits caught,
And stand about as awkwardly as boys
Expecting punishment. Repeat the trick;
Bring in the bodies! It shall not be said
That like some conscience-stricken murderer
I see things!
Florimond.
You've seen things, then, King Mammon?
61
Nothing but what was there. Lay them again
Beside the legate.
[Crosses to Anselm's body.
Attendant
[To Florimond].
Will your good lordship say
Our business here?
Florimond.
Be silent;—and begone.
[The attendants go out.
Mammon.
They lay here side by side. ... Where are they now,
These fellows? Have they vanished?
Florimond.
I bade them go.
Mammon.
Then bid them back again!
Florimond.
I risk your wrath.
O King, regard yourself!
Mammon.
To have it told
That spirits hounded me into my grave!
Not ghosts, I tell you, Florimond; ghosts move;
Ghosts come and go, gliding with bodily motion.
They lay there, still as corpses—as themselves,
Being themselves, dead bodies, as dead as dead.
Florimond.
Shrouded and coffined in the royal vault
Your father and your brother buried lie.
Mammon.
And yet I saw them; not their ghosts; themselves,
By jugglery laid out and whipped away.
Their bosomed wounds awry, and sweating blood,
Like features of a monster with harpoons torn.
Find out the malefactors.—Will you go!
Florimond goes out.
Mammon.
To spread it further, stir it and froth it up!
62
Florimond! Florimond!—let this business rest.
I saw them; but it seems they were not there.
Count it miraculous or a fantasy.
And give these fellows money—a handful each.
Right! Money!—I forgot: I must have money.
Bring it at dinner.
Florimond
[at the door].
King Mammon—
Mammon.
But you must!
Bring all there is: empty the treasury.
[Closes the door.]
The legate! How they hang about my neck,
Dead bodies!—But to see things! Dreams I've had,
Like all men:—does your waking vision spell
Degenerate mind? This was not in my bargain.—
I see them now!—not there; but in my brain—
A photograph of corpses meshed with wounds.
I've heard of lifeless and astonished eyes
Retaining pictures of events beheld
Upon the very article of death:
Alive, mine keep corroded records etched
Through crystalline humour and vitreous, net and nerve,
Upon the tingling marrow of conceit,
Because I looked so long:—my flesh and blood
Upon a trestle; my people's eyes on me,
To fix in mine the pregnant negative
For reproduction in the shadow of death,
As in a dark room—where the legate's corpse
Revealed the latent image. But nothing dwells
Herein, integrant or of any import:
Vision, a polished surface of the mind
63
Delicate, not degenerate.—What terror once
In damned hallucination lurked when men
Believed in ghosts and necromantic art!
I'll study this delusion when it comes;
Anatomise my visionary dead;
Compel serenity; let thought prevail;
With sights of beauty cleanse, and daily scour
With virtuous deeds, the surface of my mind.
No pause for me henceforth until the end,
Or till I win this world from other world,
And set upon the throne material man
So long deposed by phantoms of his fear.
[Goes out.
| God and Mammon | |