1^ iiiiiiiiin TRIUMPH :DR ailiiiilli I B !il!llllliil|lli'l| iJi mmmiiitniit mh nlltliMH nil llij IP III dli 111 JOHN DA\^m' I liilil I ri!f I I I i I l!l! li !i THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES University of Caiifornia SOUTHERN REGiONAL LIBRARY FACiLITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. ^IL- % % DUE 2 WK8 FitOill UCL BOOKS BY JOHN DAVIDSON Holiday, and other Poems. 3s. 6d. net. The Theatrocrat : a Tragic Play of Church and Stage. 5s. net. The Knight of the Maypole. 5s. net. Self's the Man. 5s. net. A Rosary. 53. net. The Testament of a Vivisector. 6d. net. The Testament of a Man Forbid. 6d. net. The Testament of an Empire Builder. 7s. net. The Testament of a Prime Minister. 3s. dd. net. PLAYS :- An Unhistorical Pastoral. A Romantic Farce. Bruce : a Chronicle Play. Smith : a Tragic Farce. Scaramouch in Naxos : a Pantomime (in one Volume). 7s. 6d. net. 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ViBBE Jelke , ^ \Reformers. Tommerup ' •' BiSSERUP , Mayor of Christianstadt ; Ole Larum I an Inceptor of the ^ Teutonic Religion. I Head - Inceptor of the Tamberskelver \ ^ , . „ ,. . ( leutomc Religion. Jan Rykke ) Inceptors of the Teutonic \ Ulf Stromer ) Religioti, \ THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON SWEYN "» RiBOLT Heymar \Nco-pagans. Thrym Rolf An Aide-de-Camp The Harbour-master Of Christianstadt. A Priest A Customer Guendolen A Princess of the Isles. Prounice Guendolen s Attendant. A Waitress A Lady Lords, ladies, soldiers, clergy, Neo-pagans, Inceptors of the Teutonic Religion, chauffeurs, class, mass, and mob of Thule. The event, Ti'hich occupies about tiventy hours of 1907, or any succeeding year for some time to come, happefis in Thule, mainly in Christianstadt, the capital of the country. THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON ACT I Scene I : — The harbour of Christianstadt. In the sound are battleships, cruisers, and other craft, gay with bunting. Villages are visible on the opposite shore, and immediately behind them fields of ripe graiii slope upwards to the foot of a lo7v range of hills. In the distance mountains rise : some of the higher sum- mits are snow-capped, and forests hang about their flanks. On the left an esplanade cro7vded with spectators overlooks a landing-stage. Alottg the wall are various advertisements and automatic tnachines. On the right is the royal motor-car with an atten- dant car behind it, and a first-class army motor in fro7it. Each car is served by two chauffeurs. The Surtur, a declassed battleship, has Just entered the sound and come to moorings abotit three cables' length frorn the quay: the Harbour-master and a signalman are receiving a fiagged message from this vessel. 5 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus, with Aurelian and others, anvaits the land- ing of the Princess of the Isles/tow the armed cruiser Lorelei, newly berthed at the landing-stage. Magnus. If he should land ? Aurelian. Arrest him, prince. Magnus. You think He comes without repentance ? Aurelian. If he comes Without repentance, seize him ; for the King's Decree is absolute : — Not to re-enter Thule save as a convertite, baresark And haltered. Magnus. You were present : tell the thing That happened when my brother lost his name. Aurelian. It passed before I knew : so utterly Irrational, sudden and so beyond Conception was it, that I think no man Can tell, except the King and he. Magnus. I would I knew the truth ! The Princess of the Isles, She may — she must remember : must she not ? Aurelian. I question, prince. He held her hand in his ; The wedding-ring above her finger-tip Hung like an aureole in his shaken grasp When the fit took him : such a hideous wrench Would dislocate her soul. Magnus. And yet her mind Might keep a dream-like record, afterwards Developed in remembrance. Aurelian. Doubtless mind Becomes a magic mirror, wherein events, 6 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Occult in recollection, gleaming- rise Unsummoned like the thoughts we would not think. Magnus. I'il ask her when she lands. My father, gracious Tyrant, issues decrees without preamble, Reason or rubric, comment, gloss or note : My brother's outlawed ; I, become prince royal, Now marry her who was my brother's bride. To be a monarch's heir over the head Of seniority : it captivates. To marry her I worshipped, heart and soul With boyish adoration, she having passed Irrevocably, as it seemed, beyond The scope of my desire— after long wooing To marry Guendolen at last : it comes Like sounds of old-known music seaward borne To ears of homesick castaways, returned From shipwreck, hunger and the haunt of death. So great it is for me that I must taste No drop of bitter conscience in the cup : My bride shall tell me how my brother sinned That I may know the justice of his fall. AuRELiAN. Oh, barbarous I Magnus. But it means for her besides Much peace of mind ! AuRELiAN. The message from the Surtur. Magnus. What says the Surtur? Harbour-master. First, the question, prince : — " Is Mammon penitent, or ill, or dead?" This was acknowledged promptly. The reply :— " Prince Mammon, happily alive and well. Will land at once. His launch now leaves the Surtur.'" 7 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus. Contempt and vanity : no word at all Of penitence. — Oswald, advance these men. Oswald enters ivitli a guard of honour. Magnus. Arrest my brother when thus I lift my finger,— I'm well assured that chance is guiltless here : Arriving with the Lorelei he means Against my marriage some matured device : The first blow shall be mine : the first and last. GuENDOLEN, attendedhy Prounice and several ladies, appears on the deck of the Lorelei and lands imme- diately. The croivd is silent ; but a neighbouring fort fires a salute of tiventy-one guns. Magnus. Welcome to Thule, princess and my bride ! AuRELiAN. Welcome to Thule, princess ! Several Voices. Welcome ! welcome ! Guendolen. I thank you, Magnus ; and I thank you all. Magnus. Is this your silent woman ? Guendolen. Prounice ? Yes ; Prounice is with me, faultless and silent still. Magnus. I am glad to see you, Prounice. Guendolen. She will not speak. Magnus [taking Guendolen aside]. How hard the wooing was ! Eternities Have loitered through the world since first you bade Me wait. Guendolen. At last, and willingly I come— (These guns for me ! Boom, harbingers of war I For war I bring ; I feel it in my heart. ) I come to you, not lightly to be wed As is the destiny of women ; come. THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON By importunity all unconstrained — Though moved and deeply moved ; I come, resolved By meditation, as a wine matures In unmixed darkness, and in solitude Renewed by tears and sighs, and forged and framed In many bitter agonies of prayer : And thus, and thus I come, my dearest prince, To do with you the sweet, heroic wrong Both Heaven and earth require of us. Magnus. The wrong ? My love is vast enough for both ; and soon You will begin to love, feeling my heart About you like an arbour where a goddess Humanly makes her home ; and afterwards Compose your mundsne life in being loved By so devout a will as mine shall prove. GuENDOLEN. Too richly said for me ! Translate it, prince : Speak to this woman, Guendolen of the Isles. Magnus. Speak to the woman ! Guendolen ! My hope Puts forth at last a sanguine flower ! Guendolen. Translate ! Magnus. I hoped, believed, I trusted, dreamt and prayed That when you were my bride, my wife, my mate, Soon would you share my happiness in you. And come at last to take a deep delight In him that made you happy in yourself. Guendolen. Oh, you are skilled in love ! That's not the wrong. My dearest, could I wed and give my soul 9 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Unloving to be ravished ? Rather, flame And torment rare ! I hate that other prince Whom once I loved, and love you perfectly. Magnus. You hate my brother ? GuENDOLEN. The enemy of men— A being lost, inhuman, death alive. Magnus. Unhappy Christian ! GuENDOLEN. Mammon, prince and fiend ! I loved him : oh, he was my first love, Magnus ! And when he earned his name of Mammon, then I loved him most — for one wild moment. Magnus. Loved ! GuENDOLEN. In sinful fancy. — Why do we tarry here? Magnus. We must. — Tell me and quickly, Guen- dolen, The truth of that. Although I saw and heard, Remembrance of it never lived with me : Three years ago it was a boy who watched, Entranced, enslaved and fettered by your looks, When in the chancel on that high day of doom My brother by my father was unchristened ; And now none speak of it but with reserve, Forbiddenly, in gloss and palliative, As if the air had ears and thunder lurked In cloudless skies to smite free-speakers : tell, With signs and looks, image and sleight of speech, But on the instant get it uttered now. GUENDOLEN. Here, stared at, on the quay ! No, for the thing Would move me piteously. Magnus. Though you dissolve in tears 10 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Yet you must tell ! GuENDOLEN. Reason or none ? Magnus. Tremendous reason, urgent on the sea, Will not be balked. Tell, Guendolen ;-tell ;— tell ! GuENDOLEN. I must ou such a summons. At twenty-one Your brother on his birthday, about to wed Her who is yours, abruptly flushed like dawn, And from his eyes there spouted jets of brine That hissed upon my hand, unringed in his, So brackish fell the tears, so thick and hot. Before the Abbot at the altar, heard By King and council and all the states of Thule, In sighing pauses, that convulsed his body As deep sounds jar an organ, counterscored Also with laughter immelodious, torn From him hating it and ashamed, he cried — Magnus. How terrible my brother's moods ! Guendolen. He cried, "These withered vows are not for me ; to say Them palsies thought. Miasma-like your prayers Offend me and your ritual stops my heart. By instinct in my boyhood I broke the pale Of Christendom, displeased because no God Regarded me when for myself I sought A message from on high : no force occult Obeyed when I, exacting miracles. Ordered a puddle in my path to dry ; No powers of Hell rejoiced to win the soul I offered for omnipotence. I stand Outside of fable, uprooted from the world That lives in God and Sin and Heaven and Hell." II THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus. This to King Christian ! GuENDOLEN. Think of it ! And this— " There is no God and Christ has had His day : Your sacraments befoul the things they bless." Magnus. God! And my father? GuENDOLEN. " No son of mine ! " he thundered. (It was believed the prince's vagrant mind, After a devious course, had turned to God : The shattered happiness of that o'erthrew King Christian's self-command.) Raving, he cried, "A changeling, you! All God's good earth disowns you ! To sea, to sea, blaspheming outcast ! Hence ! Far off from Thule range the unblessed waste ! Never be seen within our coasts again But baresark and in haltered penitence : Till then Prince Mammon is your name. Begone, Apostate ! " He, unchristened harshly thus, Departed sobbing from the Abbey. Stunned, I heard aloft the echo of his tread Haunting the clerestory like ghostly steps ; And knew no sight or sound or hope or fear Until the evening v/hen the Surtur steamed Seaward athwart my window, he on board, An exile. Magnus. Infamy ! What could it serve To taint the Abbey's cloistered air with breath So blasphemous ? GuENDOLEN. As dear as thought and love In one ecstatic trial of my soul I saw and felt his meaning : to begin The world again and let the past be past. 12 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON The summer of my youth rose from the deeps Of me ; upon its tide I reached the shore Unnoted ; in a vision of the world Begun anew, fragrant with love and held By men of might, I stepped into the sea And swam after my lover ; but between Me and the massive Snrfm- hurling smoke To Heaven, upon a crested wave appeared The Son of Man, even as He walked the deep In Galilee. Magnus. You saw the Son of Man ! GuENDOLEN. A golden light about Him and His robe As red as blood, swiftly He came to me. He showed no wounds. He spoke no word, nor sighed, But looked and looked, wistfully and with wonder. It seemed — how can I say it ? — yet it seemed Behind the wonder and the wistfulness A terror beat, as if He surely knew His hour had come— He and His cross to be Consigned to the lumber-room with other toys. Religions, deities, hobby-horses, dolls. I gazed and sank, expecting death ; but Christ Upheld me : hand in hand with Him I trod the slippery water. On the shore He left me. His till death. Though He Himself, Conceived and born again even of my womb. Should come to preach the passing of His name, I still should love and pray for Jesus' sake. Magnus. And is your love of me for Jesus' sake ? GuENDOLEN. Ay, Magnus ; for yourself in the name of Christ. My agony was this : to take the veil 13 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Or to be yours. The sinful choice is made. — Now, your tremendous reason. Magnus. The sinful choice ? GuENDOLEN. I was as good as married, Magnus : vowed, Betrothed and in my thought your brother's wife. My love for you is sin if truth be truth, Religion holy, and Christ the Son of God. Magnus. And yet you love me in the name of Christ ? A foolish subtlety your restless brain Perplexes sense with : not your heart's conviction ? GuENDOLEN. My heart's profound conviction. Magnus. And resolve ? To live in sin with me ? GuENDOLEN. To siu with you. When we are married, Magnus, I can speak ; At midnight in your arms, in darkness hid, I shall unfold my meaning. — Your reason, now, Tremendous, on the sea ? [The guns of the Surtur announce the landing of Prince Mammon.] What battleship Salutes, and who arrives ? Magnus. My reason. Spell The name. GuENDOLEN. I hardly make it out. That . . . Magnus ! The Surtur/ Magnus. With my brother, home, uncalled. Unheralded. GuENDOLEN. Can he be penitent ? 14 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus. These guns forbid the thought. GuENDOLEN. Docs the king know Of Mammon's coming ? Magnus. None imagined it Until the Surlur steamed into the sound. GuENDOLEN. This was the battleship that haunted us : Its smoke upon the border of the world, A dusky plume, portentous in the sun ; Its shifting wedge of beams electrical, A threat by night. Magnus. A prearranged event ! You think the Surtur dogged the Lorelei? Prince Mammon followed you ? GuENDOLEN. A battleship Frequented our horizon, now on the lee. And now to windward, troubling us at times With ominous fancies. Mammon enters and is welcomed by the crowd. GUENDOLEN. Magnus, look ! Oh, look ! What kind of man is this ? He comes from Hell. More wonderful than man he seems ! From Heaven ? Beautiful, terrible I Mammon ! Mammon ! Look ! The world is different since he landed ! Keep Beside me ! Terror tames me. Mammon. Is it true You wed my brother, Guendolen ? GUENDOLEN. In the name Of Christ. Mammon. And in the name of love ? GUENDOLEN. I love Your brother. »5 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. You thought so, Guendolen ; but now You love his brother, Mammon : me, again Upon the instant as you loved me once — And always in the seedplot of your soul, As fertile ground adores the beams of day. Guendolen. Magnus! Magnus! Magnus {signals to Oswald]. Traitor to God and man ! Oswald aiid the guard make Mammon prisoner. Mammon. Now, borrow patience from the name you lost! A little Christian patience yet awhile. Magnus, my brother, lead me to the King. Magnus. Better for you to die a thousand deaths Than stand before the King impenitent. Mammon. Impenitent? I know not what you mean. If to lament that ever I was born, With burning passion to beget my kind, With eyes and ears to note the tragic things That diaper the wrinkled web of life ; A pregnant brain that momently conceives A new solution and a new despair ; And in my pulse an amaranthine hope Luxuriant on the ruddy brink of Hell— Which is my heart, my heart : if to be choked With tears I cannot shed, beholding her I love— and will possess ; to swoon with awe Upon the golden threshold of the day, The portal of the sun ; to shudder yet With fever, palsy, death when music sounds Its infinite appeal, or beauty breaks i6 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON In blossoms and the sweet sex of the rose Perfumes the way, or when the crescent moon, Recut anew in pallid gold, adorns The saffron sunset, like an odour changed To purest chrysolite and hung in heaven : If hope, despair, remorse, compassion, love, Endurance, sorrow, pity, terror, joy. The mingled heritage of both the worlds, Be fibres of impenitence, my soul Is most impenitent. Magnus. This heathen cult Of sensuous things, and loose abandonment To nature and the world, proclaim a soul Indeed uncontrite. Knowing the King's decree, How dared you enter Thule ? Mammon. If it be death To enter Thule impenitent, my time To die has come. Magnus. Death daunts you not : but think What dungeons are : darkness and idlesse nigh And day ; disquiet, frenzy, hebetude. Mammon. A dungeon can be burst. I should escape, If not by subtler means, by dogged death. AuRELiAN. Send him away ! Debate the thing no more ! Aboard the Surhir with him ! At once aboard Magnus. I think it lies within my choice to keep Or cast him out.— Brother, I give you leave Now to depart from Thule. The seas are broad All countries of the world— except your own, And our ally, the Empire of the Isles, Closed by your foul apostasy— await C 17 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Your visit, sojourn, travel. Go in peace. Mammon. I know the seas and countries of the world : I like them all : Thule alone I love. This is my native earth ; my roots struck deep In Thule— stem and branch and filament That nourished me with riches of romance, With dulcet stuff of love, enchantment, song. With strength of martyrdom, adventure, war ; And, though I did deracinate my soul, My purpose is to plant it deeper still In virgin ground of Thule. My home is here ; I live in Thule — and the Universe: The one I cannot leave alive or dead ; The other willingly I shall not — bound Or free, despised or honoured. GuENDOLEN. Christian, I Beseech — Mammon. My name is Mammon to the end. GuENDOLEN. But Christian— Mammon. . . . Oh, I cannot speak ! Magnus. If honestly you love your native land 'Twere wise to leave it. Like a quicksand here Opinion swallows weekly factions— doomed To sprout again, as if, like dragon's teeth, Compost and seed in one, the desert dust They could impregnate, or the beach itself Impoverished day and night by barren tides ; Inbred religions like ephemeral moths Flutter and fade ; system from system springs By fission ; prophets, anarchs, orators Foretell, foment, harangue : alone, secure i8 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Above this turbulence of mind and storm Of folk, the throne of Thule stands, a rock Indeed of ages, a secular rock Remaining still unblasted in the fall Of kingdoms. Leave Thule, and succession treads An undisputed vpay. If you remain, Your death, your life, abasement, prison, bonds, Or liberty in full— whate'er your fate. Your presence here, above or underground, Divides our world between us, and begins Conspiracy, divulsion, overthrow Of Thule and the one free throne in Europe. Mammon. Who can predict the event of my abode In Thule, of my function in the world ? A man apart, no antitype am I : My presence means emotion, mystery, fear ; My deeds shall be unparagoned in time. — Lead me before the King. Voices. The prophet ! Speak ! The prophet I Let him speak ! Loud let him speak ! Starkad appears above on the esplanade. He is naked except for a bearskin. His hair and beard are ivell cared for : he is not ati old vian. GuENDOLEN. What monstrous man is that? Magnus. A debauchee Of fantasy : sign of the times, insane With knowledge, daily trumpeted abroad. Of fresh discoveries— radiants, elements. New lice, new stars, new worlds, new microcosms ; Signposts and milestones in the Milky Way ; The soul of matter and the bourne of space. — What would you, Starkad ? 19 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Voices, Prophet, prophesy ! Magnus. The folk applaud. 'Twill please them every way If we give audience. GuENDOLEN. Audiencc, Magnus? Magnus. Yes, And patiently. Mammon. In times agone the kings Of the earth usurped the world's conceit By being kingly : now we must be nice. Magnus. Nothing unpopular shall mar to-day. — Your errand, prophet, quickly. Starkad. Not with you, Prince Magnus, but with Mammon would I speak — Name awful, yet auspicious ; itself a fate. Mammon. Obscene pretender, keep your lunacies For ears incontinent. Starkad. Restrain your scorn. — You will work wonders. I predict for you Great power. Mammon. Great power? What can you know of power ? What is the fount of power ? the seed of power ? Starkad. The fount and seed of power ? Torture as coarse As flame, as exquisite as music strained With sanguine teardrops from the soul of love ; And solitude, the utter fate of fate Reserved for the immortals : thence come strength, Dominion, worship and the world's applause. Mammon. The world's applause ? I seek my own. Starkad. All men 30 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Desire the world's applause, and those the most Who would applaud themselves. Mammon. So tongnesters think. Starkad. And kings and clowns. Mammon. What privilege is yours In public places to appear undraped ? Starkad. I have my skin. Mammon. You would be, wanting it, Monstrous indeed— rawhead and bloody bones. Starkad. I mean my bearskin. Mammon. What heroic deed, Or infamy sublime, is paid or punished In your apparel ? Starkad. My savage garb itself Is most heroic and its own reward. Mammon. Before you took to this of prophecy What were you ? Starkad. One who sought the world's applause. Mammon. And having failed to please began to curse. Starkad. I burrowed in the bowels of the earth, Profoundly solitary— Mammon. Out of sight And out of mind, you— Starkad. Utterance is vouchsafed Me ; silence I Out of sight and out of mind I sank, down swifter than the dexterous mole That pierces woven turf and kneaded ground Expressly as the fisher cleaves the green Translucent gulf, where pearl, in living cells Secreted, hives and ripens. From the top Of heaven the lark's uplifted song pursued 21 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Me, echoing in my bosom, when the noise Of cities, traffic, armies, armaments, The rumble of the world, had ceased o'erhead Like sounds of service in an upper room. I groped through veins of fire, I fathomed ores And ancient buried streets that no man trod, But mammoths only and lizards huge as hills ; I read the rock-hewn legend subterrene. And bathed my body in the central fire. Hence am I naked nerve, unarmed, unclad ; Hence none can help me, none can understand. Yet must I prophesy though none believe ; Yea, though my wine is bitterness, my meat A tainted portion, love an agony. And life a point of time whereon I hang Impaled. By endless torture men grow great. As I have grown, as you will grow. King Mammon : Great, to discover in the core of greatness A maggot of chagrin, putrescent death. [Goes out.] Mammon. Prophet, a word ! Magnus. He will not speak again. Nor yet be seen, till next the moon is full. Mammon. So lunatic ! He called me King. Magnus. I heard. Mammon. And heed the prophecy ? Magnus. Strange things are told Of gross unlikelihoods foreseen by him ; And this I marked : — No sooner had you cried, "Who shall predict the event of my abode In Thule, of my function in the world ? " When one appeared who did predict the event. Mammon. Oh, you can hunt out omens, tokens, signs, 22 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Coincidences, warnings, day and night. Yes, and by brooding on them, give them scope. Mercurial minds react. Come, here's my fate ! Pence ! pence I Oswald ^ves Mammon sotne coppers. Mammon. The devil himself his scripture quotes For copper coins of idle fools or busy, Like a blind beggar reading holy things. [Drops a penny i?i the slot of an automatic fortune- teller., on the dial of which is a pic- ture of the devil.] A penny for your thoughts, good namesake, hoofed And horned I I svyore I was no antitype, Forgetting you, old Mammon. — Slowly, Satan ! What says the automatic augur ? Read ! Oswald [reads]. "You will recover more than you have lost." Mammon. That's not my news ! You grind out stocks and shares — Or horses 1— Hey ? dull devil that you are ! [Drops aiwthcr penny. Come ; round you go again I And think of me. — Let the cat die ! Not there ? Creep on ! At last ! Now read this second message out of Hell. Oswald [reads]. "Success is certain if you have the pluck." Mammon, Still wide of me ! Mahound, unhappy brute. No whit refined in twice a thousand years, For skulking jobbery angle, and timid lust. With tarnished gold and ladies fair and false ; But intellect and fantasy— for them THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON What offers ? For ambition, Mahound ? Come ; [Drops a third pefitiy. That's threepence, fiend ! Once more your gin-horse round ! The kingdoms of the world— try me with them : Your lunatic competitor called me King. — The third attempt of damned improvidence To touch veridical prediction. Read. Oswald [reads']. " Your expectations will be realized." Mammon. My expectations will be realized ! The banal witchcraft of it ! So they will— Or any man's I Stocks, horses, women, weather ; When down disaster comes the destined wretch Confesses in his beard, remembering all His deep dubiety, cunctation, fear, " My expectations have been realized I " Now from the Delphic pythoness to him That borrows bruin's hide and cheats his soul With vision, or to this profane machine, This slotted automatic augury. The raker in the future has still to note The dull, deceiving cavil of the phrase, The indifferent snare set in the open field That traps the wiliest bird. By Heaven and Hell, The world is what it was, the fool of fate, The dupe of hope in custody of time. The martyr of suspense ! But if I live I'll change the mood of men.— My father, Magnus ; Lead me before him. Magnus. You choose it, then ; not I. Mammon. No one save I myself can choose for me. 24 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus. Your blood be on your head. Mammon. My time will come ; But not to-day, nor yet for many a day. I know a thing automatons and freaks Would never guess, would never dream. Magnus. What thing? Mammon. That I am I. Once more a man says that. — Which carriage ? Magnus. Forward. Take him with you, Oswald. Mammon guarded, and attended by Oswald enters the foremost car. Aurelian. He filled out space here : none of us could think While he at large disported unperturbed His abject, arrogant personality. Magnus. / spoke my mind. Aurelian. With dignity and power ! My words undid my meaning. He lacks restraint, Is what I should have said ; and blurts the burden Of his heart unthinkingly, so holds the ears, The eyes of all in sight and sound of him. — Strength I deny him, prince : his influence comes From deep susceptibility ; we feel His tremor shake the world, and look to see Body and spirit fly asunder, Mark How his name affects him : 'twill eat him up, This high infernal title, cancer-like. GuENDOLEN. Unless we cure him. Magnus. Cure him, Guendolen ? GuENDOLEN. Your father's edict :— Penitent, bare- sark And haltered. If the name of Mammon works 2; THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON So potently upon him, that now he loves The very sound, and feels himself imbued With purpose by it, how would it quell his pride To bring him pinioned in before the King-, Baresark and haltered ? The effect of that On so responsive, so untamed a man ? AuRELiAN. Like all untamed things, subject to pro- found Dismay, irrational terror, instant change Upon the shaking of a leaf. GuENDOLEN. He might— Before your father, seated on his throne, Majestical and old and terrible- He might— in sackcloth, Magnus, with a rope For necklace, as the King commanded him— He might conceive it fate, the act of God ; He might be suddenly converted, Magnus ! Magnus. Like Saul. Indeed he might. And for my father? GuENDOLEN. Him we must not tell. Magnus. Not tell my father ? Why ? GUENDOLEN. Seeing his eldest born, his prodigal, Return at last in penitential garb After these years, the old man's hungry heart Will snatch his son with such devouring welcome That even a prouder child of sin than he Would lie, would die rather than undeceive An old man so rejoiced with heavenly news. AuRELiAN. A Christian bait to catch a wanton soul. Magnus, Fishers of men we are ! But if the King On his contrition reinstates him ? GUENDOLEN. If — 26 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON What then ? Magnus. This fickle marriage, Guendolen : King of the Isles and Emperor of Ind, Your father gives his daughter to the heir Of Thule's ancient crown— Mammon ; or me, Your lover, much in doubt. Guendolen, Shall we reject A ruse that seems inspired ? What would you give To save your brother from eternal death ? Would I not sacrifice myself and you ? Oh, Magnus, think ! If Christendom were doomed, The penitence of one so highly placed— AuRELiAN. With such a legend, such a character. So marked, so known ! — Guendolen, It might defer the end. And keep us holy for a hundred years. Magnus in silence hands Guendolen to a seat. Aurelian, Prounice and the others take their places, and the cars move off amid the shouts of the spectators. 27 ACT II Scene I : — A tea-shop on the Marine Parade, near the harbour of Christianstadt. Several cotnpanies, dis- cussing in whispers the event o/ the day, are seated at marble-top tables. Vibbe, Tommerup, Bisserup, Jelke, and Crawford are near the centre. Craw- ford "writes in a notebook, ivhile the others take tea and bread and butter. Through the open door the parade is seen throtiged "with passengers, atid in the distance the grey hulls of the battleships and the opposite shore, as in Scene I. Tommerup. Mammon's our man. Bisserup. An anarch on the throne? The worst that could befall ! Jelke. We want the worst. Bisserup. Yes, for society ; but not for us. The ship of state, a wandering derelict, Side-slipped upon the ocean as it were. With shifted cargo, flapping rudder, deck Aslope, might right itself upon the swell Of such a wave as anarchy enthroned ; Receive a salvage crew ; be harboured, docked ; Refitted for a hundred voyages. Tommerup. Ay, but an anarch on the throne invites A thousand might-bes ; and among them just 28 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON The Revolution : underdogs on top ; Strait-jackets for the individualists ; Procrustean beds for all. Jelke. But v/hy that first ? ToMMERUP. Because it's ripest, and our mouths agape To catch the harvest. ViBBE. These indecent jests Provoke me : we desire the common good. You bring discredit on our cause and us. ToMMERUP. I wear no blinkers, Vibbe. Good for a few, Evil for all the rest, is what we have : Good for the many and evil for the few Is what we want, and what we mean to make : There's no best way, only the choice of ills. Prepare procrustean peace for normal men, And bloody heads and toes for special folk. Jelke. Some needful surgery there will always be. But to the question :— Mammon on Thule's throne : What would that mean to us ? I say, an end In our day of our hopes : the moneyed might Of Thule, recognized for what it is — The only power efficient in the state — Released from every semblance of control. Condensed and centred in a lawless mind. Will set a foot so heavy on the world That all reformers must be squelched like slugs. Vibbe, Why use these brutal figures ? Men are men : The revolution means a final end Of such opprobrium. — But our thoughts outrun 29 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Events : Mammon's a prisoner. Jelke. That means nothing : The fond old King will pardon his first-born. BissERUP. The plot against him in his presence snaps Like misty gossamer. ToMMERUP. What plot ? These things Have simply happened. BissERUP. No ; there is a plot ! The home and foreign press are full of it. ToMMERUP. Invention— every word ! Oh, here we catch The lying muse of history at her trade. Deed follows deeds, issue from issue springs, As naive and natural as life and death : There's no more plot in these affairs of Mammon Than in the periods of plants or stars. You might as well denounce that beautiful. Mechanical occurrence, our solar system. Calling it treacherous and a nebular Conspiracy, as seek to find a plot In modern mysteries of the court of Thule. BissERUP. But I know better. Magnus schemed it out. Young as he is : love gave him craft : the whole Intrigue in the great daily of the Isles Appeared with leaded type a week ago. TOMMERUP. Mere history in the making, as close to truth As ivy to the tree it kills and shrouds. BissERUp. Your simile demonstrates nothing : images 30 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Are feverish maladies of speech. I say, Prince Mammon was betrayed. ToMMERUp. And I say, no ! Crawford. What? Bisserup and Tommerup again ! How often must I check your nauseous wrangling ! Bisserup. But he began ! He contradicted me ! Tommerup. He babbled nonsense from the purple press, And set the news against my insight, damn him I Crawford. Hush ! both of you ! I've drawn this document. We'll have it placed in Mammon's hands to-night. Now, comrades, have you finished with your slops ? Tommerup, Bisserup, etc., rise from the table. Crawford. Come out of this, then ; I want to smoke and drink. ViBBE. But, comrade, don't we hear the document ? Crawford. I'll read it out : Jelke shall copy it ; And every man subscribe it dauntlessly. Crawford, Tommerup, etc., go out. A Customer. Who are these fellows ? A Waitress. Don't know. Socialists— Or something else low-down and high-and-mighty : Not worth a halfpenny in the shilling, sir. 31 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Scene II : — The draiving-room in the house of Ole Larum, the Mayor of Christianstadt. Folding- doors, ivhich are closed when the act beghis, open into the dining-room. A hastily summo7ied meeting of the Inceptors of the Teutonic Relig'ion. Present : Ole Larum, Tamberskelver, Jan Rykke, Ulf Stromer and others. Larum. If I can gauge the mood and trend of time, The period of our patience closes now : Fate plants to-day a germinal event, The all-desired return of Thule's heir. Tamberskelver. Prince Christian? Larum. No ! Prince Mammon, the Unchristened. Where were you, not to know ? Tamberskelver. In bed : I crossed From Jutland late last night and slept all day, A slumber of tempestuous dreams (the sea Ran riot in the straits) until your wire Hurried me hither scarce awake. — Great news ! The hope of Thule and the v/orld returned I Stromer. Authentic, unexpected, pregnant news I Rykke. Why, what may it determine ! Larum. This, I think:— At last the proclamation of our aim, Our great inception of a new religion, Uncatholic and Teutonic. Rykke. Wherefore now ? Mammon's return, by every likelihood, 32 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Means his submission. Stromer. That we cannot tell. Certain it is, he goes before the King A prisoner. I was present : I saw him land ; I saw the princes quarrel ; I saw the arrest. Tamberskelver. The brothers quarrelled ? Stromer. In presence of the crowd ! The city with the rumour of it rings. Men wait on wonder, and their quickened minds Invite events and sniff the gust of change. Tamberskelver. The time has come then and the leader — fixed By fate, the overlord of men and gods. Rvkke. What should this Mammon know of us? How care For our, or any, reformation— placed Above mankind, a prince and proud as sin ? Tamberskelver. I have prepared his mind. At every port The Surtur entered on her wayward course, Iconoclastic, adumbrative stuff, Preliminary to our great inception, Papers and pamphlets, disquisitions, books Awaited him, with letters from myself Unsigned and ominous, that like a leaven Would work his thought and fancy. Rvkke. If he read Your public and your private documents, Perhaps ; but I take leave to doubt : think this :— Had Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or other scribe Bombarded Nero or Caligula, Tiberius or Commodus with tracts — D 33 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON There would have been a feast of literature For one reformer, set to eat his words With his own blood for sauce ! Tamberskelver. Mere sensualists ; Above the prurient cruelty, the lust Caesarian and the madness. Mammon soars On immaterial wings of clearest thought : I know his lofty spirit by my own. Larum. There I am with you : I have felt my soul At sight of Mammon blessed and purified, So rare he seems. Tamberskelver. Profoundly I believe His sudden advent has no other cause Than my prolonged importunate assault ; And I expect his summons to reveal The purport of our published prophecies. [A gong is heard. Larum. He may inquire us out to learn our meaning ; But to depend on that were to await The chance of courts, of policy, of pleasure. {The folding-doors are opened and hhKV^''s Guesis pass into the dining-room, -where a table is set for dinner, Larum . I asked you here to give this matter thought : How to approach Prince Mammon ; to formulate The definite expression of our aims . . . \The folding-doors close as Larum, still speakings enters the dining-room. 34 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Scene III :—The Throne-room of the Royal Palace at Christ ianstadt. When the scene begins the room is concealed by curtains. Lower than the left curtain is an arched doonvay, the entrance to the chapel. Enter through the curtains King Christian -with Florimond. The King goes quickly to the arched door7vay; but pauses on the threshold. Christian. Baresark and haltered in the chapel royal ! Is this a true conversion, Florimond ? My withered body burns to clasp my son — A parching fire the salt green wood of youth With vapour moist and bitter suffocates. Spirits in travail labour forth to God ; Repentant sons should seek their fathers out. Why has this prodigal withheld himself? Had he endured the invincible assault Of grace divine, the overthrow of pride, The awfal agony of self annulled, And the immediate miracle of peace That passeth understanding, would he not then Through every barrier rush to these old arms, As sure of welcome as of Heaven itself? Speak, Florimond. Florimond. Prince — Christian (as I hope ; Would fain believe) approached your judgment-seat By no inferior mediator. Christian. My son. Prince Magnus, strangely moved, gave me but now 35 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON The news of Mammon's coming. What of that ? Florimond. Might this not be a symbol ? Through the heir Of God men must approach the throne of God. Christian. He comes to me through Magnus to signify Return to God through Christ ? Too finical ; His mind in masses moves : too ladylike ; My son is male : too sweet and fine ; my son, Even in a righteous cause with righteous means, Would drive as if he sinned. Florimond. But his offence— So stark, so heinous ! Well his stormy soul May falter on repentance ! Christian. His father's son ! His mind once set, the only stay is death. How shall I work? If he be insincere — And I shall note it, Florimond, at sight : If hither as a hypocrite he comes, 'Twill madden me ; 'twill kill me, Florimond. Florimond. What motives for hypocrisy ? Christian. Homesickness ! — And sceptresickness, and lovesickness. Thrones Are worth dissimulation legend tells. — What is your counsel ? Shall I visit him ? Or have him brought before me ? Florimond. Whether he lags Sincerely undetermined, or regrets A violated conscience, receive him now, Lest in retreat a longer hesitance Exhaust compunction, or enjoin a gloss On crude hypocrisy. The court is met : 36 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Be throned, and when he enters welcome him With triumph ; for I hold that insincere Avowals heartily embraced, compel Sincerity in what was feigned. Christian. Great counsellor I Draw back the curtains that he may behold The majesty of Thule unveiled at once. Florimond. Be by the throne, King Christian. \^The curtains are drawn, discovering the assembled court, ambassadors, ministers, etc. Magnus and GuENDOLEN, 0)1 cJtairs of state, are seated near the throne, ivhich stands upon a dais binder a canopy. GOTTLIEB and Anselm arc together con- versing. All rise wlien King Christian ascends the dais. Florimond at the door of the chapel awaits the King's iiist ruction. Christian. Rejoice with me I Three years of anguish end : my exiled son, Whose soul in jeopardy about the world Unceasing roamed, contrite returns at last, Baresark and haltered as I bade him come. Over one sinner that repents the loud Acclaim of Heaven shakes vnth. exultant roar Celestial battlements, and all their banners Beat in the wind of it like hearts set free. But, gentle friends and noble, who is this That comes in sackcloth, haltered and ashamed ? No mean offender : the heir of Thule comes, A penitent forgiven. This rich event (And if I sin in thinking it, I shall Myself do penance) seems to me as great For us below, as it might be in Heaven 37 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON If God's beloved Son Himself had sinned— Supremely tempted, not by open gifts Of Lucifer contending for the world, But by some swift and subtle accident That happens with the music and the stars, Such as we all confess : if so the Heir Of paradise had sinned in tender sport, And stood in tears before the mercy-seat Divinely penitent, how would Jehovah, From His throne uprisen, command the trumpeters With crashing noise of victory to rend The lofty air of Heaven, until the peal. Reverberant throughout the galaxies, Enshrined the universe in joyful sound ! Wherefore, when at my throne my first-begotten Repentant stands, it must become us well To join with Heaven in acclamation high. Let cannon fiing their deafening voices forth. Their films of thunder that break from iron wombs And even in being burst ; and let the drum Utter its thick-tongued rumour ; trumpets sing With brazen lungs of morning ; cymbals, bells, And all your throats of joy resound to God In welcoming my son.— Now, Florimond. Mammon enters, sohhing and in tears, fro7n the chapel. He is pinioned, in sackcloth, and with a rope about his neck. Cries of " Long live Prince Christian " are heard above the sound of trumpet and drum and the ?ioise of camion. Oswald and a guard attend Mammon. Mammon. No word ! There is no word ! No lan- guage I Nothing I 38 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Christian [comes down from the dais and embraces Mammon]. Oh, hush, my son ! Contrition, thorough, deep, And terrible. Again, I say, be glad ! These my son's tears are each a pearl of price. Cannon and trumpets, cymbals, drums, and oh. Your golden human voices I Shout, my people. And let God know of it I For this my son Was dead and is alive again ; was lost, And found— and found ! \The acclamation is repeated. Mammon. Undo my bonds 1 Christian. Your bonds ? Why are you bound ? . . . Into your heart I see 1 A noble penitence ! I bade you come. Baresark and haltered : you in infinite Contrition add the deep disgrace of bonds. I shall myself undo them. A knife, a knife, To cut the knot that ties my Christian's soul ! The fantasy was deep. — Surely my lot Is happier than God's ; He has but one Beloved : I have two— Christian and Magnus. [Receives a knife from Oswald and is about to cut Mammon's bonds. Mammon. No Christian ; Mammon, I. Christian. My son — Mammon. These ropes ! Christian. They tell— what tale? Have I not read aright Their gracious meaning ? Mammon. Minds by doctrine warped Read everything awry. 39 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Christian. It was my heart That read. Oh, son, you dare not ! Christian — look Unholily on me ! Gottlieb. Almighty God Forbid I Mammon. It palsies you, abused old men, The outrage done us, the obscene device Of pious brains ! Oh, for one word to hold A document of scorn ! For we must speak; And that's the hell of it I Why cannot thought Erase the actions, dry the marrow up, And comminute the bones of hateful folk ? Let Magnus talk : come, brother, untie your tongue : Expound your purposes, expose your mind, Elucidate the virtue of a lie. And like a subtle exegete propound Indisputably ; argue quite away The loathsome horror of the thing you did. Florimond. If humbly I may speak I beg the King To tarry till this turbid water clears : Then let consideration filter out The crystal essence. Gottlieb. Faithfully advised ! I also add my voice. Intemperate zeal Begets its punishment ; here works, indeed, Its ultimate effect — catastrophe In the great world of spirit. Time perhaps May fill the rents, the interstices, clothe The ruins, gulfs, ravines, and hardly save Defaced memorials, habitation, tilth From wilderness and stony avalanche, Detestable oblivion, desert, death. 40 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Christian. I'll know the truth of this although I wring My heart out with it. Counsel helps us not ; Nothing can help again. I feel a fate Descend like mist, like smoke, a stifling snare Wherein we stumble and are all undone. I have — I had two sons. I want to know ? . . . Come, who can tell me what I want to know ! Mammon. Will you not speak ? That brother Jacob, there, That stole my birthright, juggled for my bride. And tried to pick my pocket of my soul ! Christian. He seems to doubt you, Magnus ; to impute A many kinds of wickedness. Magnus. I wrought This wrong to save him. GuENDOLEN. It was ntj> dcvice. Christian. Yet I know nothing ! Who nods the head behind Me, undertakes with muffled step to steal The sceptre, digs my private ground and sows Disease, sterility ? Old, am I ? King In Thule still i Unveil the secret fount Of this dark flood of woe 1 Who knows it, speak. Magnus. The blame is mine. Pondering my brother's moods, I thought to work a miracle by sleight Of costume, as sometimes the Highest wrought With kneaded clay, and, in the earlier age, By brazen images, ablutions, rods, Incentives, symbols, urgencies, constraints. 41 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Christian. Well? Must I ask again ? Unfold the truth Of this unparalleled, unhappiest chance. First let us know how — God I — how this Prince Mammon Appears in Christianstadt. Magnus. That he must tell. Christian. Prince Mammon— (Jealous and eternal God Inure my heart and make my tongue a fire !) — Forbidden, unrepentant, Thule's coasts, What dire necessity, what lure, what wild Prediction, hope, bravado, sickness, dream Provokes your presence here ? Mammon. Have I free leave To speak my mind ? Else will I hold my tongue. Christian. Leave, without licence. What may be disclosed Unblasphemously, speak ; and speak at large. Mammon. But blasphemy incarnate since my name Was changed am I. Christian. You dare to jest ! Mammon, No jest — By me and by my love !— if greater things I knew, my oath should stand thereon. My thought Is blasphemy in every teeming cell, In every swift electron of my mind ; I blame the past, I blame two thousand years— Christian. Now take this step by step. Gottlieb. In private, sir, I beg you. Christian. Better so : my triumph end 42 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Unborn, a dead thing in my mind. — Good night ; And sweeter dreams to all than mine shall prove. [The court is dismissed, and Christian, Magnus, GUENDOLEN, FlORIMOND, GoTTLIEB, AnSELM, Oswald and the guard are left "with Mammon. Unhappy son, you lay your sins on us, Having become, you say, since vre, since God Unchristened you, incarnate blasphemy — For God inspired us, when we called you Mammon : We put it rather that your blasphemy Procured your style and title. Mammon. Understand : Three years ago my mind was in the rough ; The name you called me carved it. Christian. Is the mind A thing so exigent ? Yet names are powerful— And the word : in the beginning was the word. Some share of your iniquity devolves Perhaps upon our haste. Mammon. That which I am I am, and would be under any name, Immanuel, or Siddartha, or Herakles, A new force in the world. My title, Mammon, Delights me : I shall make this name renowned For things unprecedented through the earth. Christian. What things ? Mammon. Things sifted from the stars in nights Of trava'l,— exiled moons ; things that shall change The thoughts of men and renovate the time. This name you gave de pitefully began Illustrious and divine : Mammon, the god Of riches and the world ; inspirer of desire 43 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON That makes the night one blush, one sigh, one deed Devout of love ; the stirrer-up of war. Enamelling earth writh carmine -fields of blood, The shock of battle, trances, mighty strokes, And victory pendent on a single arm. Or coiled in one deep brain ; adventure's lord — Discovery, knowledge, honour, wealth, renown, Estate, dominion, principality. The attributes of Mammon ! This splendid God, With every living beauty, every truth Of fact and power, your sullen creed depraved. Debased, debauched and turned to noisome trash. Gottlieb. Why need we listen. King ? Christian. Hush ! Let him speak. This time he shall be heard, although we quake With terror for his soul. Proceed, Prince Mammon. Mammon. You made of Mammon's godhead skulk- ing guile. Inferior devilry ; and all his glory Tarnished with fumes of Hell ; his ancient virtue Transmuted shamefully to modern vice. You Christians did it ! It has been your trade For twenty centuries to sicken men With life and with themselves that you may rule : You humble pride ; you smirch the flower of love, Dilute the blood, restrain with iron hand Presumptuous thought — Gottlieb. We do, by Heaven ! A gag To gag him ! Christian. Hush ! Mammon. — and tie imagination. Whereby alone the Universe is ours, 44 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON In strangled impotence. Lo, at your tricks I find you ! No man— my brother knows it !— Is in his person privater than I : Such worship have I for myself that not The body-service attendant from their birth On princes, and as needful to their state As nurses are for nurselings, can I bear About me :— Off ! hands off !- And what was done ? These nerves of mine, the lute-strings of my soul, Were jarred and jangled in the careless hands Of soldiers : two I choked, but twenty held me. Then was I stripped . . . impotent tears of rage Like molten metal blinded me, and blind Me now ! Christian. Was this done, Magnus ? Magnus. For the best : To show, as by a symbol, the power of God. Mammon. In sackcloth, girt with rope, haltered and pinioned !— I who can scarce endure the softest silk About my shuddering loins ! Christian. 'Twas crudely done. Mammon. Left in a chapel, face to face with Christ ! Christian. 'Twas harsh, 'twas bitter ; but the hand of God — Seemed it not so ? Mammon. It seemed so : the very hand Of God— the precious God that made the world And found it good ! My God, the treason of it ! Malignity ! The rancour, envy— sin Of Christendom against mankind ! Christian. Oh, devil ! 45 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Devil ! No son of mine ! Inhuman beast ! One question ere I speak your punishment : I asked you once already :— Why have you come Impenitent to me ? Answ^er, in brief. Mammon. Because I love the Princess of the Isles. Christian. You love the Princess of the Isles ? How deeply? What would you do to prove your love? The Princess, Sweetest Christian of the world, could never marry Belial. Mammon. There I catch you, Christian, in the act Of Christianizing at its meanest, foulest, Deadliest. It leapt into your mind, "For love Of Guendolen he might at least profess Belief, and shortly come to be the thing He mimicked." Answer me. King Christian : that Was your thought ? Christian. That was my sudden hope : The Holy Spirit works in divers ways ; Scoffers and infidels and heathen kings Of old were brought to Christ by Christian wives. Oh, son — my son, I would that you were mine ! And while I live my soul shall be in travail With the new birth of yours. You love the Princess? I know the force of love in the blood royal Of Thule ; to prove their love— the might of it. The passion, and the utter overthrow Of self which love is, princes of our house Have undertaken and performed exploits Of dazzling hardihood, have sacrificed Inheritance, yea, things endeared and priceless. Could you ... I stumble on injustice ; on— 46 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON I know not what ! Why did you come ? What for ? What reason ? what excuse ? what mad design ? Mammon. I told you : for the love of Guendolen. My presence here is proof of love unknown To-day, unmatched for centuries. What prince, What man, cast out like me, accursed, forbid. With red fire in his veins, and every nerve Dynamic, can aver as I aver, " I live a virgin for the love of her Whose beauty not the soul of sound can tell ; Without whom life is death, and Heaven Hell." Guendolen. Oh Heaven ! oh me ! Magnus. Must this go on ? Christian. It must : I'll know the very marrow of his mind. Mammon. Word of betrothal with my brother brought My fate about me like an army wanting A leader. Hither I came, commanded And commanding ; and alone I came, Assured of this— that in the evolution Of the world I am to play a part, to wield Dominion, to elaborate a change No rival can forestall, no foe o'erturn, No chance prevent. Friendless, unarmed, condemned. The enemy of Christendom, I dare Your worst ; I in the swept and garnished house Of that old faith the moulting world is sick of, The proudest, rashest, sinfullest of men, Declare that Guendolen shall be by me A mother, and I, unholy monster. King In Thule. 47 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON GuENDOLEN. Chdst Jcsus savc me ! [Goes out. Christian, Evil heart, Base tongue ! That tenderest lady clasped by you ! Magnus. She shuns the hateful thought. Father and King, I have no brother, you one only son. This miscreant — name predicting him ! — to us Is nothing. Christian, From my heart I pluck him out ! Mammon. Oh, vain old heart and tottering mind that mount On draggled plumes of wrath, to sink again In maudlin tenderness I Get him a nurse. And advertise for kings ! Do something, some one ! Christian. Is that a son? Is that a mankind thing? Magnus. No ; not to be a Christian in Christendom Is to be nothing in the world ! His doom Is death. Christian. Is death ? Ay, dead already, Magnus. Magnus. But he must die the death. Christian. Unsaved ? My son, You would not kill his soul ! Magnus. His soul is lost I Were he to live ten lives of penitence In daily prayer and nightly discipline, He could not save one atom of a soul So deeply damned, so utterly undone. Christian, No ; but the puissant blood of Christ can save To the uttermost : I hold there is no sin Unpardonable— none ; and dare affirm That God and His Belov'd delight in sin, 48 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON The soil, the manure and the deep-struck root Of all Heaven's joy. Let men go on to sin That grace may more abound. Tie him again Before the crucifix — a thought of power ! There can he brim the abominable cup Of his iniquities until the spilth Engulfs him, or until the blood of Christ Shall stem that tide, and, like an ocean stream With summer saturate that cleaves the main, Undo the latitude and cli.T.e of death. Mammon. Chain me again to Calvary ! Not that ! Christian. He fears it? Then there's hope! Be- hold he shakes ! Mammon. An outrage on my flesh, my nerves, my blood Worse than the rack ! These tears that scald my cheek Are tears of mine— again a torrent, salt As Sodom's sea ! — the tears of one v^ho holds Himself in av/e and three times sacrosanct. For every drop I shed trussed up and shamed Shall I not work a separate ruin ? Scathe Upon the world, vengeance on vengeance, woe On this intolerable Christendom ! Magnus. Should this man live ? Christian, Oh, God, direct me ! Son— My sons ; I must have my two sons ! And there !^ You see it ? — there the mind of God comes out : God will have both your souls for Heaven, as I Your living presences on earth. Magnus. But I Will have him dead I Christian. Magnus ! ^ 49 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus. I speak for Thule, And for myself, my son and my son's son, Great kings to be in Thule ; for God I speak, And for the welfare of the City of God. Such danger breathed not in the world before ; So strange a soul, so powerful, new, uncouth. So capable of unimagined things. Comes only once in time. Always for evil Unusual natures work, however high Their aim : unchristian in itself it is To be abnormal ; criminal, insane Is all excess of genius, potence, blood. The slow elaboration of the years. Mellowing the growth and fibrous sap of things. Ferments and sours when special men exert Ungauged, untrammelled influence : the time Is wounded, and the pleasant tree of life Broached, drained, disfigured with unsightly galls. Warts, tumours, morbid shoots which are indeed The very types of all extravagance. Mammon. Never did mediocrity disclose Its inner sense more aptly ! Magnus. Of himself A twofold brag he thrusts at us :— to be In Thule king, and to impregnate her Whom I shall marry. Florimond. The vainest insolence I If I may speak, I make the Prince unwell : Diet, repose, regimenal restraint Would quickly bring his mind about s gain. Mammon. Old, suave conniver ! I've a use for you. Magnus. Poseur or maniac, charlatan or dupe, 50 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON While Mammon lives, so wonderful is he, So fertile in contrivance, so belov'd By broken men and thinkers, rebels, knaves, And all the swelter of resentment, hig To burst the quaking bounds of civic life, That this insufferable arrogance Of prophecy may suddenly become Accomplished horror to our bitter loss. Christian. Your brother, Magnus ; think. Magnus. I think and think. Me it concerns the most : I flung the crown. My happiness, my all upon the balance. Labouring for his salvation : he rejects The cross, and in my own behalf and Thule's I give my voice for instant death. His soul Shall haunt us, well I know ; the heinous mind Of him imbue fierce faction in the state ; A sequel of imposture from his grave May also issue ; but he himself away, The world is manageable here : his death Is needful more than any other fact That can befall in Thule. Gottlieb. Our counsels clash : The King to save the soul would save the life Of one most dear ; the Prince, and justly, leaves For Thule's sake to deep perdition both The spirit and the flesh of one accursed. No longer son or brother. Now, hear a word Of compromise, the Church's modern role. Two things are to be stopped beyond resumption Even in Prince Mammon's fancy :— usurpature Of Thule and the rape of Guendolen. 51 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus. And only death can sign the period Of Mammon's lustful will and power to do. Gottlieb. Death only : but his actual presence here May still solace his father's yearning heart. No gelding can commit a rape— Mammon. No what ! Gottlieb. Or wear a crown ; the one is nature's rule, The other in our constitution stands. There is besides a statute unrepealed, Archaic, barbarous, harsh and horrible, Which substitutes for death castration. Cut His sex away, then abrogate a law In whose survival I perceive a craft Of prescience and the providence of God Forecasting our dilemma : its duty done — I marvel as the perfect purpose falls At last mature : its savage duty done Uniquely, let — Mammon. By your Jehovah, priest. You have a perfect courage of your creed ! Unsex us all, the final blessed state Of Christendom : geld, spay them, men and women. And start on earth your pallid Heaven of neuters Where marriage is not ! Gottlieb. He makes a mock of Heaven ! Magnus. Ought he to overhear? Christian. His presence frets Our counsel. To the chapel 1 to the cross ! Prone at the mercy-seat we'll have him yet ! Mammon. Most Christian judges. Christian punis'.:- ment! 52 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Oswald and the guard lead Mammon into the chapel. Christian. We must have mercy, father. Gottlieb. Christ has none : Believe and live ; reject the cross and die. Magnus. He dared our worst, remember. Hardi- hood So blasphemous, reliance impudent Upon his povyer and personality Without the help of God, or any call Solicitous on what is not himself. Invite our wrath and terrible rebuke. Christian. He dared our worst. Magnus. And fears us not at all. Gottlieb. My motion to unsex him passed him by: He laughed ; he thought it bluff. Christian. Was it not bluff? Gottlieb. I meant it, mean it ; for he dared our worst. Magnus. 'Twould be our worst ! Anselm. The earthly worst might prove Divinely best for him. Our holiest father Undid his sex to set his spirit free ; The wanton mind of Abelard became Divinely pure when vengeance struck away The witness of his m.anhood ; Cybele, The lofty mother of the gods, enforced Castration, did enchanted males take up The trumpet and the tambourine to join Her rapturous women— symbol of the church, The bride of Christ, and of the word of God, Dividing bone and marrow, and spirit and flesh. Christian. To enter Heaven unsexed already 1 53 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Gottlieb. Prepared For Paradise ! Magnus. A pregnant punishment ! A penalty ? The only true reward ! Anselm. a deprivation that becomes a dowry ! Christian. If all else fails I swear it shall be done. Better to enter Heaven wanting an eye — Gottlieb. Christ's euphemism for sex. Christian. —than go to Hell With every member perfect. Guendolen re-enters quickly. Magnus. Guendolen ! Guendolen. Let me be married now, King Chris- tian ! Now ! Christian. To-morrow is your wedding-day, my child. Guendolen. Marry me now, or terrible distress Will overtake us all. Christian. What moves you so ? Guendolen. Fear in my bosom, in my bones con- sumes My life. Prince Mammon's power of old was great Upon my senses : devils invade my soul — It must be so ! — when Mammon's glances burst In fire about me. Let me be the wife Of Magnus now, at once ! Christian. Nothing can stay Your marriage, Guendolen. I greatly lean On ceremonial and appointed times : To-morrow, Guendolen, as the world expects. Guendolen. No ! No ! This hour or never ! Even now 54 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON May be too late : the souls of women guess The awful silent presence forward there, Unthoug-ht and unimagined, but felt in front, As high as Heaven, as deep as Hell, the fate That breathes upon us waiting to devour. Christian. My daughter! Over - wrought and haunted, sleep Will bring your nerves in tune. Magnus. Sleep ? In my arms I Her terror like a treble shrill accords With my deep-toned foreboding. Marry us ; Then by no miracle can Mammrn's boast Mature in Guendolen. Florimond. This is God's choice. Guendolen. Lord Abbot, you will marry us ? Gottlieb. I will : The quickened sense of women apprehends Like instinct : if the King consents, I will. Guendolen. Oh, King, consent ! King Christian ? Christian. I consent. Not knowing why. Time from my trembling hands Snatches the reins it seems. The public rite To-morrow ; a private marriage— oh, divine Conclusion ! In the chapel Mammon writhes And sins : he shall behold this wedding ; know His vaunt is idle ; learn how Heaven can blast Satanic hopes before they bloom ; be thrown In his unhallowed confidence, and fall Contrite and humbled, sobbing at my feet. Guendolen. King Christian, I implore you by the cross. By things immaculate, by God, by love, 55 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON By marriage and by every Christian tie, Bring me no more where Mammon is : no more ! Christian, It passes me : a rude and rebel boy Subverts our purpose and affronts us all : I cannot dredge the undercurrent here. But have your vray ; for in your eyes your soul Dances as if in torment. Take her, Magnus, Her and her beauty and her strangeness : keep Them v^ell : you— and 'tis excellent— possess A tested faith and shine in guiltless youth. Proceed, Lord Abbot, writh the sacrament. Magnus. Most royal father, should you visit Mam- mon And once again do battle for his soul. Acquaint him with our marriage, and Heaven's joy May crown your travail. Finally, the threat Of what we had determined might so move His busy fancy that the deed itself Would be redundant. Christian. I begin to feel The grandeur and the duty of the deed. To trim him up for Heaven ! The sacrifice Would please the triune God. GuENDOLEN. Now, grave Lord Abbot— Oh, proud Lord Abbot, bless and marry us ! Magnus and Guendolen kneel before the Abbot as the scene closes. 56 ACT III Scene I : — A bay on the 7vesf coast of Tlutle open to the sea, but enclosed on the laiidivard side by steep cliffs, which on the right are continued sea7vard, forming a headland. On the left is a cave dimly lit, the lamp being invisible. It is midnight: the full moon shines on the S7velling sea; and heavy waves break on the shore. Moored to a low, ruined pier is a large fshing-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 7vith SWEYN, an old man, whom four of them carry on a bier to tJie smack. Heymar, Thrym, Rolf, Sweyn and some of the others wear winged helmets atid rusty coats of chain ?nail. 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 Youth, manhood, old agfe duly Make up Hfe's tragic spell. The black cock crows in Thule ; The red cock crows in Hell. In Utgard giants wander, And men in Midgard stray, In Asgard the Einheriar Enjoy eternal day. 57 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON No man should tarry longer Than strength and courage last ; Strong as our souls are, stronger Is Time that eats the past. In Utgard giants wander, etc. Our shunless weird abiding, We overcome despair. On high the Valkyrs riding Await the souls that dare. In Utgard giants wander, etc. SwEYN zs laid on ilie deck of the smack "with his head a7id 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, 58 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 thro7vs the lighted torch into the hold ; the smack is thrust off; the wind Jills the sail, and SwEYN is borne out to sea. SONG To him who dies in battle, Or him who chooses death, While swords on bucklers rattle. The song of triumph saith, "Oh, welcome brave immortal. Who flung the world away, And stormed the bloodstained portal Of everlasting day I " 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 I Behold the smoke of him ! Ribolt. I'll shout the news :— 59 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 I 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 ^Egir 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 ! 60 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON A sable pall beneath purfled with fire ; Above, the horses and the silver arms ! Tramp, tramp to Asgard, choosers of the slain ! Hevmar. 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 I The snowy fleece whereon the moon reclines Is ruddy as a furnace grate belov/ ! 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 s7vord. Ribolt. Now, Heymar, guard yourself. 6i THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Hevmar. This will determine strength and swords- manship, But not the better man. RiBOLT. Wiirt 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 1 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 UUer's bow, Your sword seems sticking in my heart ! 62 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 Christian- stadt. The only light burns on the altar. Mammon is hound to a pillar face to face -with a large crucifix. Soldiers are standing at the door 07i guard. When Oswald enters and beckons them aivay 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, 63 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 Caesar 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 door7i'ay\ 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, Delighr, desire, imagination, power, To one essential, constant alkahest, Ethereal jealousy— omnipotent Dissolvent nothing known can saturate, 64 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON In whose divulsive flood and fiery wave Even Christendom shall melt, and be no more. Christian [to hhnself]. Utter perversion, horribly assured ! Mammox. Anthems and creeds in stone and sculp- tured 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 F 6S THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 I 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 [^removcs the crucifix, setting it against the cha7icel railings]. 1 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 [La_ys a surgeon's knife upon the loin-cloth of the figure of Christ. 66 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON A motion from on high : the Abbot's trick — To reap your harvest, purge your sin with steel. MamiMox. 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, vyith 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. 67 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON I shall deliver you from Hell, my son, And carve your way to Heaven against your will. \^Takcs up the knife. Mammon. Help, Oswald ! Magnus ! Florimond ! Help ! help I 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 1 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 ; 68 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 1 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 I Christian. Being ungodly— Mammon. Hear me ! Christian. You must be made unmanly, now in fact, 69 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 sur- gery : 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 I These dead tv/o 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 heaven;, 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 ; 70 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 Vy^ill relent, father ; you vAU relent I 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 1 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 71 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 I 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, 72 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 heart- beat 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 I 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 I You feel Convinced of sin ? Mammon. Sin ! I am dyed in sin ! Christian. The blood of Christ — I cannot trust you yet! 73 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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. 74 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 1 [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 aiid seiziftg King Chris- tian by the throat stabs him]. Nov7, old, vain, foolish Christian man, who saw My terror — I, afraid !— go up to Heaven 1 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 ivith 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 ; 75 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 ? Majimon. 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. THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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, 77 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON 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 I 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. 78 ACT IV Scene: — A bedroom in the Royal Palace, Christianstadt. The 7v{ndow is open ; the moon hangs over the sound; the noise of the surges on the beach is faintly heard. A shaded lamp is the only light in the room. Magnus and GuENDOLEN are in bed. GuENDOLEN. Sin, Magnus, sin! No flesh shall touch my flesh ! [Leaves the bed. The beasts do that— abominable beasts ! Magnus [leaves the bed]. In the creator's name what did you dream of? What, in the name of creaturehood ? GuENDOLEN. Of lOVe. Magnus. Of married love that makes the couple one? Guendolen. Of human, Christian love ; of love divine. Magnus. The mystery of a maiden's mind I Dear soul, Did you not knovy that love, anatomized. Is but an excrement in men ; in women, Receptacle and flux and monthly heat ? A letch, a deed more nauseous, gross, uncouth Than even your daintiest horror can conceive ? Hence sacrament to cleanse it— God's device To make of wantonness beatitude, 79 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON And lift lust heaven-high. What was your thought When you avowed to-day you dared not yield Your body to be ravished ? GiENDOLEN. I said my soul ! I said — I could not wed and give my soul Unloving to be ravished. I remember : That was my word, my meaning. Magnus. Give your soul ? But— Heaven and earth ! . . . Come back to bed ! The air — GuENDOLEN [at the window]. Stay where you are ! I leap if you come nigh. Be still ; be silent. Give me breathing space To make the toilet of my mind, undone So ruthlessly. — The night will dress my thought In dreams again — in beauty, like a stole With stars embroidered : — tenderly, sweet moon, Hide, hide my nakedness in snowy lawn :— And let the wind with fragrant chrism anoint My forehead and my eyes, and wipe my mouth Of wanton kisses clean. Magnus. By the high God Whom I adore as holily as you, You fire my wrath and lure my passion on To force my wife in every Christian name, If ail-becomingly she will not yield A bridal welcome to an honest love. GuENDOLEN. Oh, shame I Oh, shame ! Hush ! Hush ! And listen !— Hush ! The murmur of the seaboard : surges beat Their slow uncertain, softly-swelling fugue — The brooding surges, fingering the shore. 80 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnis. I'll not be so put off ! GcENDOLEN. Oh, fudc ! Put off ! The high and tender bridegroom of my soul — Gone, gone, I know not where ! Magnus. He never was ! The bridegroom of your soul is arc and part, The bridegroom of your blood': alloyed, they make Enduring metal capable of all That soul and body can of mundane love. When death shall decompose us, God receives The liberated soul, and mother earth — Incredible ! The lisping infants know ! I speak as if you were a visitant From some far planet new to our estate. GuENDOLEN. I am a visitant from further off Than any planet, system, sun or star : I come from God as you and all men do. Oh, Magnus, soul and body never mix ! The soul is like a glittering weapon plunged In mortal matter, as in baths of blood, To flesh it for the armoury of Heaven. Engendered as the beasts are, Magnus ? I ? Oh, if I thought it !— No— My mother ?— No ! My father and my mother never did The loathsome thing you tried to do with me ! Magnus. What did your father and your mother do ? GuENDOLEN. Their wedded souls in innocence matured Consummate ecstasy ; and I became That ecstasy incarnate. Did you not know ? Magnus. I doubt your candour now. GuENDOLEN. You— doubt— my— G 8i THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Magnus. No ! I swear it ! Never ! Pardon— on my knees ! But tell me this : — you spoke of sinful choice, (Your morning talk keeps buzzing in my mind) Of your resolve to live in sin with me, And of a revelation to be made At midnight in my arms :— Now, tell me true : What was the sin you meant to sin with me ? GuENDOLEN. I gave my soul to Mammon : we were betrothed. It is a sin to take my soul from him And give it up to you. Magnus. Your soul ? With mine ? In innocent ecstasy to— Ha ! Ha-hah I By the Divine Sophia, I must laugh ! Oh, Guendolen !— Ha-hoh ! Ha-hoh-hoch ! Hah ! Frown and be wild ! I'll laugh myself to shreds, Remembering this until my dying day ! Oh, child, child, child, there's not a way of love Save that you shrink from ! Guendolen. But there is, there is ! Oh, Magnus, I was happy in your love ! This was my revelation :— Some still night. Together lying in each other's arms, I thought my passive soul entwined with yours Would once again conceive the Son of Man : Without that hope I never should have married. Not good enough, not pure enough am I For God to let me have, as Mary had, A great announcing angel with the Word Of impregnation ; but I thought that Christ, Seeking a woman to be born of, found 82 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Like Mary none on earth, so chose me out To be His mother : and it haunts my mind That God perhaps intended Christ this time To be conceived and born in sin, because The awful failure of His sinless birth Arises from its very sinlessness. Magnus. God ! . . . Guendolen, what do you mean by sin ? Guendolen. To be a wife is sin, since God's own son Was first conceived by tidings, not by marriage. Marriage requires God's sanction: when God's message Begot His Son immaculate, the Word That blesses marriage was the husband : all Begetting and conceiving else is sin. Did you not know ? Magnus. Marriage in your sense, sin ? To lie together in each other's arms Sans passionate union of our bodies, sin ? Guendolen. Oh, Magnus, surely! Gabriel never lay Vv/^ith Mary : dressed and girt, not even in bed, Madonna met the angel of her fate. Magnus. Madonna keep me sane ! And men and women Who do devoutly as the beasts do : what Of them ? Guendolen. They sin against the Holy Ghost ! They lose their souls ; they die eternally : They turn themselves to beasts. Magnus. Have beasts no souls? Guendolen. God made them soulless ; they can never sin : 83 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON The soulless beasts that God made, being soulless, Must join their bodies or become extinct : The beasts fulfil the will of God that way. But men and women ? Images of God ? Oh, Magnus, the unpardonable sin I Magnus. And you believe this ? GuENDOLEN, In my heart and soul ! I know ; I've thought it out ; I understand. It must be as I say ; for where's the need Of sacrament in marriage if men and women Must do as beasts do to have offspring ? None ! Magnus. By Heaven, an argument! Nothing to- night Disturbs your faith that psychic powers alone Are joined in Christian marriage ? GuENDOLEN. Nothing ! Nothing ! God's benediction with the brutish deed Dispenses, Magnus : how could he be God Without the constant miracle of life From psychic wedding ? Soul to soul Is all that marriage wants : bastards are sprung^ From foul adulterers who, forgetting God, Commit that horrid, bestial act of shame ; But you and I, and all good Christian folk. Are of the spirit born, remembering God Who joins our souls in rapture while we sleep. Satan joins bodies ; and a spice of Hell Goes with the chastest kiss ; therefore v/e sin Even in our Christian way— which God forgives Beforehand in the sacrament of marriage : But only Christ's nativity was pure. Magnus. And did you never feel the fire of Hell 84 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON That burns in sinful bodies ? GuENDOLEN. Fof Mammon — yes. Once when I swam the sound to reach his ship, And twice again to-day : — first on the quay ; Then as he stood in sackcloth at the throne, Like sin itself, so grave, so terrible. Or racked with passion, by tempestuous sobs O'ercast and storms of tears, a god rebuked— Oh, not like God !— but like a deity From Asgard or Olympus wandered far, Astray in time and place. Magnus. How did it take you. This passion for my brother ? GuEXDOLEN. In every pulse. In every nerve, a fount arose, a fire Began : my body like a furnace burned To melt him up and hoard him in my womb, A molten treasure. Magnus. Guendolen ! GUENDOLEN. I fclt My soul evaporate, and tyrannous sin Usurp me gloriously. But Christ stood by. Awaiting to be born : He gave me strength To cling to you— the husband of my soul. And now ? — Oh, now— I have no husband now ! Magnus. You have no husband.— What a cheated fool Am I ! You love my brother with a love I would surrender hope of Heaven to win. — But hark you here :— my head chimes with your cry, " Did you not know ? "—May I demand of you A question terrible as Hell ? 85 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON GuENDOLEN. Demand Your hellish riddle : I'll answer it. Magnus. Do you know How mad you are ? GuENDOLEN. Mad? I? I wish I were! I might forget this tragic night, or change Catastrophe to triumph in my wildness. — This is my room : you know your way to yours. — A footstep ! Magnus. No ; a groaning joist, a door Ajar, a mouse, a rat. Best go to bed. I'll watch the night out in your dressing-room. GuENDOLEN. Footstcps I I hear them ! Magnus. Night-sounds of the house : The silence gives them audience : in the day They pass unnoted. GuENDOLEN. In the corridor ! They come this way. Listen. Magnus. I hear them now. GuENDOLEN. What Can it mean ? Magnus. Immoderate jesters sworn To plague the bride and bridegroom. GuENDOLEN. No ; not that : None know of us— unless the abbot told. Magnus. He would not. GuENDOLEN. Stealthily they tread. No voice : Only the thronging footsteps woven close. They're at the door ! They halt ! Magnus. Should they intend— GuENDOLEN. The door's unlocked ! Magnus. Lock it— or open ? Which? GuENDOLEN. The handle turns I Look ! Look ! An angel sent 86 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON At last ? Fate in some form for me ! Mammon enters. GUENDOLEN. Ah-h-h ! Magnus. You ! Back ! Back, apostate ! Oswald, who let him loose ? Oswald standing in the doorrvay, salutes. Mammon. You plotted to unsex me, Magnus ; stole My love ; seduced her into marriage ; culled The sweetest rose of all my destiny. — Guendolen. GuENDOLEN. Priuce ! Mammon [pointing to the Ttundo^i.']. Attend upon the moon — Ten thousand times deflowered by wanton tides That salt her silver image and waste her fire. Guendolen turns sloivly to the 7vindo7v and looks out. Mammon {tvhispering as he throttles Magnus]. You shall not live ! Magnus grapples with Mammon. Mammon. Contend with me ! Oswald [to the guard as he steps aside]. Now, swordsmen ! Mammon undoes Mag:^us's grasp and flings him out. Magnus [falling on the swords of the Guard, who thrust their weapons home']. Oh, God! Oh, God! [Dies. Guendolen [turni>ig from the 7uindo7v]. Oh, Prince, what have you done ? Mammon. Nothing at all. Look out upon the sea : Lean from your window and behold the moon Incrust the waves with buoyant shards of light. Gwendolen turns agai>i to tJic linnduw, 87 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. The bodies you will place together, Oswald, Upon the platform in St. Olaf's hall. Tell Florimond the nature of their deaths : The madness of the one, the accident Whereby the other fell. Enlarge on nothing. To-morrow I myself will state the truth The world must understand. Bid Florimond Send out to all the nobles in the city, To all the magnates, all the peers of God, (I mean the Abbot and his crew), to some Of every sort besides, class, mass and mob. To meet me in St. Olaf's Hall at dawn : There I shall crown myself. Oswald. At dawn, King Mammon ? Mammon. I shall do nothing as it has been done : At dawn the world and time begin anew. — The throne and the regalia, have them placed Upon the platform. No sleep for you to-night ! Breakfast for me before the sun gets up. Awake the servants : set the new world going. — Soldiers, your noble captain, Duke now in Thule, By whatsoever title pleases him. Commands my armies henceforth. Each of you Shall at your captain's eulogy and choice Receive to-morrow great preferment. — Hush ! Good-night, lord Duke ; captains and peers, good- night. [Closes and locks the door. GuENDOLEN leaves the windo7v when the door shuts and comes liesitatingly towards MAMMON. Mammon. Oh, Guendolen! And I must kill you too! 88 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON GuENDOLEN. Why must you kill me, Mammon ? Mammon. Fate : my fate, Which is myself, pleads for your death. To kill The offender is as natural to me As to undo the offence : no brother's blood Of mine shall spring in you ; no sainted widow Furnish the treachery of Christian sots With sentimental worship. GuENDOLEN. I will not die ! I cannot — must not ! Mammon. You shall sleep and dream ; And in your dreams embalmed, be still alive. Since you will never waken. Dread no pain. No horror in your death. GuENDOLEN. I'm goiug to live ; I wish to sleep and waken many times ; It's wonderful to fall asleep at night, And waken in the morning ! I'll not be killed ! Mammon. Oh, Guendolen, you seem to me so much, So wholly, woman that I sometimes think, There was not and will never be another I You are all fantasy, all hope and fear. All tenderness, all intellect, all trust, All beauty, all simplicity, delight. The perfect half of being — the deep sweet west : The orient, I, that should have made with you A world of man and woman impossible Before, because we were not ; and I, it is, Must kill you. Guendolen. You, it is, must not I The thing You thought of, spoke of, dreaded, cannot be : No need to kill me. Mammon, for fear of that. 89 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. For fear of what ? GuENDOLEN, Look out upoii the moon— The constant moon, that like a woman's love Waxes and wanes and hides behind the night, But ceases not attendance on the earth. — Your brother's blood will never spring- in me. Mammon. You cannot tell yet : and there's deadlier cause. Were you to live I dare not trust myself ; For even here I might undo my deeds. Mammon comes after no man : you must die. GuENDOLEN. Comcs after no man ! Thought of that is all The thought of men ; its figure, all they see. Mammon. How often did he kiss you ? How many turns — Turns ?— death ! — How many petals of your rose Have fallen? GuENDOLEN. Hc kisscd me many times. My rose ? Unplucked, unblown, no petal opened yet, No spikenard shed. Mammon. These immaterial thoughts I understand : the Christian double-dealing— Unchastity that virtuously seduced Instinctive passion so superb as yours. Crushed in my brother's arms to him you gave Your soul— oh, very sweetly, doubtless !— but Your blood, your brain, your marrow, fibre, nerve. And every organ of your body, swelling In one full diapason of desire, Throbbed with the music of your love for me. By me and by my love, I have half a mind 90 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON To torture you :— to keep you in a cage Garnished with nails like pork clove-stuck, or like — Damnation ! — images of horror haunt The dungeons of my thought — and all For love of you ! Princess, your death will ease A tension that might snap me, like a string O'erstrung and chafed by too inspired a bow. The future of the world which I prepare, Like a new flower will spring from out your tomb, And not a lady's name be sung but yours, Of all the beauties, harlots, heroines, From the beginning to the end of time. GuENDOLEN. But Magnus would not take my soul. Oh strange ! You understand ; you know the truth of love ! Mammon. My father and my brother and Guendolen ? It fills my purpose out : the death of these Inscribes the triple period of the past, As with a pen dipped in the blood of kings. Guendolen. We speak athwart each other's minds like tongues Storm-tossed that answer wild.— Where's Magnus? Why That icy scream of his, that shuddering groan ? King Christian ! — If he finds you here ! And me ! But tell me quickly, Marrimon : — Beauty of soul, Its sanctity, are neither touched nor stained By anything between in perfect marriage ? You know that, too ? Oh, leave me ! Mercy, Mammon ! Mammon. I know that perfect love destroys the cup Rather than drink dregs of another's draught. 91 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON GuENDOLEN. Another's draught ! Mammon. You must lie down and sleep. GuENDOLEN. Ncver to waken ? No! — Dregsofacup, You said : but no one ever drank my cup ; None of my cups— my body or my soul. Mammon [seises the lamp and holds it to Guendolens face}. Neither your body nor your soul ? Then what Was Magnus chanting all the hour I strove For manhood ? GuENDOLEN. Strove for manhood ? What you mean You know. And what I did I know : — I saved My christened soul which Magnus sought to wound : I am a virgin still. Mammon. Both out of bed ; The bed but little tumbled, when I broke in ! If this is true ! It may be : hope of it With rapture strangles me, as when the sun Shone once upon a holiday that frowned Throughout the morning. Guendolen ! Light I Light ! [Sets down the lamp and switches on several lights ; then taki?ig Guendolen by the shoulders he searches her face again.'] I know how fear will turn and wind about, And snatch the respite of a dexterous lie. Guendolen. I fear not death, although I wish to live. You will not kill me now, I being a maid. Mammon. If you're a maid I'll kill you, but with love's Luxurious martyrdom of passionate years. So high this lifts me that belief delays, Entranced on hovering wings in sun-steeped air Above a banquet where a desert spread. 92 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON GuENDOLEN. Where's Magnus? And King Chris- tian, where is he ? Mammon. They are together : they ask not after us. GuENDOLEN. Oh, Mammon, are they dead ? Mammon. Both dead. GuENDOLEN. Who killed them ? Mammon. They killed themselves ; they thwarted me and died. To thwart me is to die. Forget them, love. In Thule now there works no will but mine. [Takes her hand. How cold you are ! — Get into bed. I say. To bed I GWENDOLEN [goes quichly into bed and ivraps herself in the bedclothes]. Foredoomed, I wrestled with my fate : It throws me here on corpses pillowed : blood With terror spiced, my bridal cup ; and death The faded harvest of my honeymoon. Mammon. You make voluptuous phantom play with words. Presuming all disaster in a deep Despondence. Love like fire from Heaven new-drawn ; Life's heavy fruitage, and imperial nights When naked darkness gluts the sky with stars ; Days of desire, maturing in the sun ; Begetting and conceiving, birth and death ; The joy, the greatness and the agony !— Oh, Guendolen ! [Kisses her and lays his hand on her bro7i'.] Guendolen. Your fingers burn me. Mammon — And your mouth : you brand me for your own. 93 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. Look at me : tell me :— what did Magnus do? GuENDOLEN. Nothing. He offered to profane me, thinking That Christian love, like lust, engaged in deeds Unchaste, ungodly, direful. I arose. And stood at bay debating till you came. Mammon. I have your secret now, high-hearted maid ! That mystic fancy blossomed in your blood. Which was my faith in boyhood : haughty minds And virginal put forth such flowers at first. GuENDOLEN. I thought you wore it still. Mammon. Where? In my eyes? Nor breaks that pale fantastic bloom in yours, But sapphire buds and ardours of the sky. Guendolen. Something you said. Mammon. Of body and of soul ? Yes ; but I cannot speak the thing I mean. Words have a past significance : ghosts are They, things of death that haunt the living thought : I dream and guess, imagine, shape, invent. What is, and has been, and will always be, But never dawned before in consciousness. Guendolen. My soul begins to totter in its sphere ; My world on doomsday wakes. — Is it not true That Christian children spring from Christian love Of souls united by the power of God, Without the bodies being joined like beasts ? Mammon. Strange, I should have to tell you gravely : — No ; Not true. 94 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON GuENDOLEN. Then there's no God ! Mammon. That follows, sure As light at break of day. GuENDOLEN. No God, no soul : That follows too ? Mammon. A sequence absolute ! GuENDOLEN. No Heavcn, no Hell, and no hereafter? Mammon. None. GuENDOLEN. But I belicve in God and Heaven and Hell. Mammon. Not from to-night. GuENDOLEN. What is there, then, if God Is not ? Mammon. That which we are. GuENDOLEN. And what is that ? Mammon. The Universe. GuENDOLEN. Am I the Universe? Mammon. You and the beasts, and everything that is. In every organ, function, grain and drop, In every quivering ion, Universe. This is the thing the world is waiting for, This that I tell you. GuENDOLEN. But to be a beast ! Mammon. To be a beast ?— it is to be a star ! Nothing is bestial, nothing mean or base ; For all is Universe, an infinite Ethereal way and being of myriad-minded Matter : substance and soul, all matter, wanton As lightning, chaste as light, diverse as sin. GUENDOLEN. Blackuess of darkness. Mammon; that is all You show me. 9S THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. Yes, because your Heaven, your Hell, That lit a paltry space above, below, Are now extinct, like feeble rushlights burnt To nothing ; and your quaint divinity. Your botched atonement — clumsy, bloody work ! — Returned to their discarnate emptiness. Wherein with it they perish. Gas v/as nobler Than smoky dips and filthy rags in oil ; [Switches on all the remaining lights and the room is dazzlingly brighf.'\ But lo, the lightning ! — matter bisexual (Whence we, and all the elements whereof We are, proceed) wired in our subtle snare. Like some wild, wandering, shy hermaphrodite, And taught to serve us bravely ! Thus and thus. Of Other World, of God, of Heaven and Hell, I couch your eyes as of a cataract — These crystal windows of the Universe From spirit, myth and immaterial dream I bid all things be free ; and at my word — Watch, Guendolen ! — like leprosy, the soul With all its noisome blotches, ulcers, blains Of evil conscience, penances, remorse. Contrition, sloughs and crumbles into nought. Leaving the proud sweet body, clean and pure. The wholesome earth, the sun, the Universe, Infinite loveliness, ethereal power. Guendolen. Oh, Mammon, what is love? Mammon. You love me, then ? Guendolen. I love you. Mammon: all my soul has flown As thrice before it fled — I know not where. 96 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON But I am glad ; and would not call it back To fill the void up of its secret place, So deep a gulf of happiness remains. My body says, " I will, I will, I will," Though endless Hell thereafter be the price. — Not yet ! — Oh, love, you must not take me yet ! Wait ! — wait ! — and tell me what it is we do ! Beautiful, holy somehow, it must be ? Mammon. Most holy in itself, most beautiful ! Oh, love, we do as orbs that couple do. By chance conjoined beneath eternal night, Encountering swiftly from oppugnant poles In some unconstellated tract of Heaven, Some bridal precinct of ethereal space ! They smite against each other setting fire To every vapour, metal, earth whereof They are compounded ; and their bodies fuse Together into one ecstatic thought, A new light in the firmament to be A flower of glory and a well of stars. GuENDOLEN. Oh, lovB ! Oh, love 1 And since the coupled stars Rejoice together, every living thing. Much more than they, must share our ecstasy. The beasts and birds— all sweet and pure as light 1 Oh, how I love them in their happiness ! This is a great thing :— to believe that beasts Are sweet and pure and happy just like us. Mammon. One half the breeding world is joyful now Begetting and conceiving. GuENDOLEN. I think of it ! Since psychic wedding may not, cannot be, H 97 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON (You say it, Mammon, and I take your word) Myriads of happy women, millions of them In every country canopied by night. Are yielding up their wombs in ecstasy To be made mothers. Oh, the earth itself Must feel the greatness and the joy of that ! Mammon, With every heart-beat, every pulse of time, Myriads of coupled orbs together melt. Evolving light where pristine darkness reigned, In spatial wildernesses far outflung Beyond the farthest, filmy nebula ; And countless orders, throngs and drifts of being In every clime and quarter of the earth. In forests, jungles, hedgerows, heaths, ravines. Morasses, mountains, rivers, oceans, lakes. In huts and houses, inns and palaces. In caves and camps, in tenements and slums. Flowers, trees, beasts, birds and things invisible. Fishes and grasses, mosses, worms and men. Endure the passion and enjoy the lust Of ripened seed that cannot but be sown. Of love, of life that swells and buds and breaks, And will be love and life and sex and sin, Adorable, lascivious, sacrosanct, For ever and for ever and for ever. GuENDOLEN. Ycs !— yes !— love, tell me— closer ; in my ear :— My dream was to conceive the Son of Man, To be once more the mother of the Lord. What will I bear now. Mammon ? Antichrist ? Mammon. Nor Christ, nor Antichrist, divinest maid : Greater than either shall our children be ; 98 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON For that which I beget and you conceive (We two, the first of women, the first of men. To be self-consciously, what every pair, Insect or mammoth— or field or forest — are Unwittingly, the procreant Universe) : That which we make together is the whole Illimitable Universe itself. Nothing is greater anywhere than us : We form the matter of the furthest star. The matter of the earth, the sea, the sky : We are the pregnant lightning and the light ; The vapours, metals, dusts that lightning bears : — Lightning— the lightning, blood, ethereal seed, The poles, the blossom of the Universe, Sheer being, unembodied sex and womb ; And light, the rainbow soul of matter, pure As rapt virginity, elaborate As love that strains the essences of life ; We are the subtile ether, unperceived, Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. Eternal, formless, labyrinthine space Wherein the suns are stelled, whereof they are. GuENDOLEN. I know it now, I feel it in my heart — The Universe is love, is ecstasy. Mammon. That's the great passion and the swoon of it. This supersensual, writhing, drunken joy. Rich galaxies of soul leap from my veins To hide their fires in the sweet heaven of you. 99 ACT V Scene I : — A morning room in the Royal Palace, Chris- tiansiadt. It is lit ivith electric light and afire burns in the grate. Through the open ^vindovi a faint glow preceding the dawn is visible in the sky. Oswald and Florimond, 7vho carries a portfolio, stand at the fire, regarding each other moodily, while servants set breakfast. Mammon {entering qziickly]. Good morning, Oswald. Good morning, Florimond. [Sits down to breakfast. Oswald, you've thought of that? Oswald. Of what, King Mammon ? Mammon. Your dukedom, man ! What else should you remember ? Your dukedom, and your friends who shall become Your generals and mine :— have you arranged Their order ? Prounice enters, arid the servants afid she set GuEN- DOLEn's breakfast iipoti a salver. Mammon. The Queen will breakfast in her room. That's not enough : food's the great fount of passion. {Places various dishes oti the salver. Say to the Queen by the nine stars of love To think of me with every bite she eats. Prounice goes otd with the salver ; and the servants also leave the room. 100 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. How many generals, Oswald ? Oswald. Only two Are fit for high command of last night's guard. Mammox. The others shall be captains. Their titles, Oswald ? Earls ? Viscounts ? Florimond. Such advancement suddenly Announced, and of so many names unknown To the world, would rouse intense suspicion. King, Mammon. Suspicion, Florimond I What should folk suspect ? Florimond, Imaginary things : the public dreams, The press expounds its dream, and ere we know A fate is fashioned. Mammon. While I live and rule The public will have little time to dream ; For every day a new deed shall be done, Beyond the reach of public dreams or private. Florimond, These are untested men. King Mammon — soldiers On approval. Your father's veterans, war-worn To an edge and lustre, keen as frosty light, (Pardon an old man's eulogy of age) Were worthier of promotion. Mammon. Loyal worth Shall not be overlooked in any service ; But, bringing something new into the world, I must have youth to shape to my design. I trust myself, my fortune, and my fate : Oswald and I were friends ; his comrades, too, Were mine : therefore they cannot be unfit. It is the constant luck of greatest men 101 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON To have at hand their proper implements ; In everything the universal will Deflects the world to their meridian.— Oswald, you shall be Duke of Christianstadt. Oswald. Most loyally I thank you, gracious King ; And being gracious, grant me one request ;— Let me remove the bodies to the chapel. Mammon. Why, Oswald ? Oswald. Rumour in the city rings Insane alarms already, and turbulent priests. Instructed by the Abbot, urge the people Against the murderers. Mammon, Murderers ! Who's been murdered ? Oswald, Those that lie dead in Olaf's Hall, they say. Mammon. And you would hide the bodies! Set them high Upon the platform that the world may see. I'll hear no question. Do it ; do it now. Oswald goes out Mammon [confinuing his breakfasf]. Well, Flori- mond ; you want me ? Florimond {opening his portfolio\ I have here Requests for audience of Prince Mammon : all Our sects and parties build themselves on you ; And delegates who sought you yesterday, Moved by your zealous summons for the dawn. Are in attendance now, to see the King, Mammon. So ; this may help. Who are they, Flori- mond? Florimond {reading from a paper"]. "The Will-to- Power Men of the Nietzsche Guild," 102 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. Ah ! that insane belov'd philosopher ! Some say he is the spirit of the age. What think you, Florimond ? Florimond. I cannot tell : My mind was set before his boom began. Mammon. He posed as Zoroaster, and led us back To Dionysos : not our mark at all ; The past is past. And, for his prophecy ? — Why, Florimond, this Nietzsche was a Christian ; And that transvaluation of all values Was neither more nor less than transmutation Of transubstantiation :— grin, but grasp it :— His Antichrist is Christ, whose body and blood And doctrine of miraculous rebirth, Became the Overman : Back-of-beyond, Or— what's the phrase ? — Outside good-and-evil : That's his millennium, and we'll none of it. I want the world to be much more the world ; Men to be men ; and women, women — all Adventure, courage, instinct, passion, power. — Who next ? Florimond [reading from a paper], " Staff-captain Hakonsson." Mammon. Salvation Army ! The old saint-soldier of the Isles I know, Nietzsche the brave I know — world people both, And wonderful ; but not their followers. Florimond [cxhibitifig several papers]. Pressmen. Mammon. Give them the King's regards, and bid them note My speech to-day in every syllable. 10^ THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Florimond. [turning over a sheaf of papers']. De- nominations, guildries, unions, clubs. Mammon. Let them have places in the hall. Florimond [handing Mammon a paper]. Mammon. What's this? [Reading.] "A Root-and-branch Reformer from the Isles :" — I'll see him, Florimond, and his company : The Queen's compatriot. — None of all the rest. Florimond [handing Mammon a paper]. The Mayor of Christianstadt, and citizens Conjoined with him, desire — Mammon. Admit them now. What !— more ? Florimond [handing Mammon a paper]. Strange men have come this morning, clad In ancient armour : from the western coast They hail : they worship Woden and profess A Neo-paganism. Mammon. I'll see them, too. The Mayor ; this Island Revolutionist ; The Neo-pagans ; and in that order. These Are their papers? Very well. I'll broach The heart and soul of Thule, and pick its brains, That I may shape my speech to Thule's need : These chosen three will sample everything. Florimond _§-ot?5 out. Mammon [having finished breakfast leaves the table and stands at the fire.] Napoleon lost his head in the Orangery — Bewildered in the labyrinth of fate : His brother saved him : I ... I have no brother. Christ, when he might have driven his message straight 104 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON To the heart of Rome, stood silent, in a stupor. Stunned like the prophet's sheep before the shearers : Soul of the Universe, what a chance he missed ! Caesar himself, thrice proven, vvise as time, Flung- all away, declining royal honour. In whose effulgence traitors and treachery, Like darkness and the shadows of the night. Disperse and cease to be : he lost the world Through fear to lose it : had he crowned himself, Conspiracy could scarce have breathed an hour In presence of the courage and the deep Resource betokened in the lofty act ; Or if the Ides of March had seen the end. He then had done the thing for which he died. Am I like these men ? Will the human clot, That palsies genius in the nick of time, Upon the turning point of destiny Occlude my brain, and stand me swooning there, A monument of dumb distress before The bodies of my father and my brother ? Florimond re-enters -with Ole Larum, Tamber- SKELVER, ViBBE, and the other Inceptors of the Teutonic Religion. Mammon. Thrice welcome, Master Mayor. — Now let me see : {Sits and consults the Mayor's petition. " Inceptors of a new religion" :— come ! Your businesses, municipal affairs. Your families, prospects, pleasures, sickness, health — Are not these all you need ? Larum. Oh, no. King Mammon ! In times and tides of happiness and woe 105 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON We must give thanks, we must solicit strength : The soul of man subsists in prayer and praise. Mammon, Now, I remember : you are nonconfor- mist, Proud of a purer creed, a broader mind. Larum. Loathing a dead creed and a narrow mind. Mammon. All creeds must die : why have a creed at all? Larum. King, we must worship something. Fur- thermore, Eternity in front of us extorts The world-cry of the spirit, "whither? whither?" We are religious, and immortal soul Turns to a fount immortal as itself. Mammon. But I deny your immortality : Immortal mayors, immortal aldermen ! Think of the being you despise the most — Some jack-in-office, parasite or pimp : Would you have him immortal ?— except in Hell : You see I — But you are earnest men : expound This new religion briefly. Larlm. Tamberskelver, Our Head-inceptor, is our spokesman. Mammon. Speak, Head-inceptor Tamberskelver. Tamberskelver. King Mammon, Our confident appeal is dashed at once If you deny man's immortality. Our aspiration and our travail soar Aloft, and toil towards everlasting life For every individual soul of man. Mammon. And whence arose this confidence in me ? 1 06 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Tamberskelver. You walked, deliberate, out of Christendom, The first of princes to disown the past. Mammon. That's the whole past, man's immortality : 'Twas out of that I came. Tamberskelver. Have you not studied My treatises on soul ? Mammon. I've never seen them. Tamberskelver. I sent them.— And my letters? Were they not read ? Mammon. I never had your letters. Tamberskelver. They went unsigned. You would not know them mine. Mammon. A vagrant mass Of anonymity from every land Followed me round the world.— You, Master Mayor, Speak you. Your Tamberskelver misses fire. Larum. But all I know I learnt from Tamberskelver. Mammon. That matters nothing : a foolish husband- man May sow a fertile plot ; a bird, a wind Impregnate homely soil with brilliant flowers. Come, Master Mayor. Larum. My statement will be crude. Mammon. The better ! I love all crudeness : truth is crude. Larum. It's difficult.- On both sides of the Atlantic Teutonic folk, and in the southern seas And lands afar, are ripe to have a god Of their own race : pubescence of the soul — That's our great phrase : — Mammon. Ah ! Tamberskelver's ? 107 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Larum. Yes. This spiritual puberty of ours Will sow the Universe with God : it must Beget a God, or waste the seed of soul In worshipping- dead gods— which is a sort Of psychic sodomy. We of the north From age to age, since Olaf set the cross up, Continued this unnatural vice (like all The rest of Christendom), protesting still Against the lusciousness of incense ; art In the church— immoral music, coloured glass ; The prurience of confession ; virgin-worship, Saints, transubstantiation, and the pomp Whereby the wretched Latin races make A mistress of religion : (although I change The metaphor I keep within the sphere Of sex, for that's illuminative in things Religious). A decent, necessary wife Our worship was ; but now she's dead, and we, A few determined burghers of Christianstadt, Refuse to bake our bread in a cold oven. Mammon. Audacious !— What killed her. Master Mayor ? Larum. Her womb Prolapsed : that is to say — out of the Christian Theory of creation the bottom fell ; And when your theory of creation goes Your God goes. Mammon. Certain ! I like you. Master Mayor. Larum. A foreign God, too, at the best, was curs- Jehovah, one and single once, but one And triple since, a kind of Cerberus. lo8 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON We're tired of that — all that : we're tired of it. And the long gestant Teuton vengeance, cognate With puberty of soul that swells our thought, Dethrones the decadent neo-Hebraism Which Christianity is, and with its new Cosmogony of uncreated worlds Begins to shape a non-creating God. Mammon. All this intrigues me. And this God of yours ? Larum. That's Tamberskelver's great discovery. Gods Are racial ; and as long as races are, We cannot have a world-god. Languages Are races : that's understood ; blood's little ; words Are most when gods are canvassed or incept. Mammon. Incept ? — Begetters of a God may risk Neologisms. — Proceed ! Larum. The gods of old Evolved unconsciously in racial speech, And are, in every cult, naive, human monsters, Of incoherent and incongruous parts Miraculously knit. For the first time In the world's record, we of Christianstadt, Unworthy but resolved inceptors, start A God whose evolution shall be conscious : No world-god, but a god Teutonic, foe Of Latin races, Slavs and yellow men. Of negroes, Hebrews, every other folk A god whom we can worship, being ours. And only ours. We did our best to like The God converted negroes pray to, Celts, Italians, Spaniards— people we despise : 109 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON But none of us could stomach it : a God Common to all the world is too debased, Too vulgar, too adulterous for us. In days and nights of prayer we steeped our souls, And blanched them clear of preconception — Mammon. Yes, Master Mayor. I know enough now. Gods Are at a discount : Tamberskelver's plan Is proof and pudding of it. A machine-made God ? A fattened ^od—a.piU^defoisgras For overnice religious epicures ! An end of divination ! If any sign Were wanting that the day of gods is done, 'Tis just this scheme to grow one locally Under a forcing-frame. What the world needs Is change : it's tired — as tired as you and I Of all the past. But he who speaks to you Is change incarnate, operant and crowned ; And you shall hear to-day when I address The states the word you wait for. I approve Your earnestness, your courage, your direct Intelligence, authentic characters. — Our revolutionists now. Tamberskelver. There must be God I Teuton, we call him : Teuton, God of us ! Pubescent soul in every age and clime Produces God — Mammon. You think so since you must. But who would worship Tamberskelver's God ? Try and unthink that, friend. Larum, Tamberskelver, and the other Inceptors^o out. no THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. My rebels now, My worthy enemies. Florimond. They call themselves Reformers. Worthy ? No reform is worth A king's applause. Crawford, Vibbe, Jelke and the other Reformers enter. Mammon. He from the Isles— which is he? Crawford. I, King- Mammon. Mammon. Why did you leave your country ? Crawford. Because reform is automatic there : Nothing can drive it on, nothing delay : The caucuses between them grind it out ; Upper or nether stone alternately. According as the surly islanders Abuse their power and change the thing at will. In Thule we expect catastrophe. Mammon. And you're the man for that ? Crawford. For action, King. Mammon. What do you want ? Crawford. In our memorial, all Is well set out. Mammon. I haven't read it yet ; Nor shall I.— Speak : what do you want, you five? Crawford. We want the Revolution. Mammon. State it, then. An end of kings, of course. And afterwards ? Crawford. More than an end of kings. We want an end Of lordship, titles, all gentility ; We want an end of punishment, of crime ; We want an end of service and respect ; III THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Of property and poverty ; of war — Mammon. Yes, yes ; an end of everything : I know ; For when the king goes all goes at the last. What do you want begun ? Crawford. We want the world Begun anew. Mammon. And so do I, and so Does every man. Having the world in hand, What follows ? Crawford. Comfort follows first of all : Food, shelter, clothes for every being born, Insane or criminal, unfit or fit. Idle or diligent — a corporate duty That undertakes responsibility In all relations : happiness itself, For every human being as he is. Mammon. What right have rascals to be happy ? Crawford. Right And wrong are nothing : there they are, alive — Desirous, envious, hungry, lustful men — By no choice of their own. Mammon. That I deny. For men beget themselves ; they are the passion Of their parentage. —Well, after happiness For every blessed body, v.hat ensues ? Crawford. The breeding of a higher type of man. Mammon. By what device ? Crawford. Unnatural selection : I mean to say, by mating men and women As horses are and cattle, poultry, dogs. Instead of that old natural selection By passionate love. Then, sterilizing fools, 112 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Degenerates, weaklings, all who should not breed. Mammon. And what of happiness ? Crawford. Oh, folk may pair And have the satisfaction of their senses In barren beds by means w^ell known to all ! Majimon. Most loathsome ! What a hideous tyranny Your world would be ! — Why have you come to me ? Crawford. We thought you were an anarch. Mammon. An anarch ? I ? The stark unchristened foe of anarchy ! Jelke. I take you for an evolutionist. In our memorial you will find it said, "The Christian times being past, there now begins The new Darwinian era." We desire — Mammon. 'Tis I shall give a title to the age. An evolutionist ? No more than he Who makes religion serve him in the world May be pronounced a saint. This evolution, The errantry of nature, is known, is caught : Soon, tamed, apprenticed, disciplined and drilled, 'Twill be our most obedient minister. ViBBE. But has our King no passion for the poor ; No settled mind to dower disabled age ; To ease the burden on the back of labour That every decade doubles ; to provide An equal chance for every man ; to draw The poison-fangs of bloated capital, That python gorged with proletary prey ? Mammon. That python gorged with proletary prey ! Park-eloquence, good friend. The world of men Is as an organism : — a python ? — true ; It sheds an annual slough of idlers, sots, I II-; THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Incompetents, degenerates, criminals ; Or since the tissue of the macrocosm You call society is knit of men. As men are knit of divers plasmic cells, I take the failures for the excrement, The defecation of the commonwealth. In antique times such human garbage strewed With other ordure populous streets, but now. Express as drainage in our more alert, More wholesome, more elaborate period, hides Our household refuse out of sight and mind, The hospital, asylum, poorhouse, jail. Sewers and cesspools of the social world, Relieve our towns of waste humanity, And keep the urban air as fresh as fresh. Crawford. But there must be no waste humanity ! Mammon. No life then ; only constipated death, A world by its own feculence undone. Crawford Are we the feculence — Mammon. Dispose of waste Becomingly— ever more decently As knowledge grows ; but have it out, and hence. Crawford. Are we the feculence of the world. Sir King? Mammon. You dabble in it. A traveller of the Isles, Your famous Gulliver, in Laputa found A yellow-faced projector up to the eyes In merd, pursuing the most ancient study Of all Laputan science, how to reduce The excrement of men to food again : A symbol of your socialists, who smear The proud and wealthy world with nastiness, 114 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Still fumbling at the emunctories of the state (I mean its economic processes) And churning up the stuff of the latrines (The broken men, the skilless and unskilled, The unemployed, the unemployable) In quest of menstruums to decoct from dung The sweetness of the rose, spindles to twist A silken fibre from putrescence, art And a cunning culture, a magic spell To rear in filth the unsown staff of life, To raise the dead and make perdition pay. Crawford. You slander men, King Mammon ; the rich, the poor, The wise, the foolish, all are equal. Mammon. Yes ? All men are equal, . . . You were going to say ? Crawford. I was about to say, in the sight of God. Mammon. But not in yours ? Crawford. No, not in any man's ; Therefore we say, in God's. Mammon. Therefore you say In God's : that is, in Fairyland, in Heaven, In limbo, in Utopia — anywhere Save in this actual world of life and power ! There is no other thing to say. I love Your honesty, and hope to make you mine ; But not as Socialists— or Isocrats Of any breed. Isocracy : a rule Of all for all ? Impossible while men Like Caesar, hke Napoleon, like myself. Are born into the world. Crawford. But we would have THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Us all Napoleon, King. Mammon. And if you had, Forthwith would come a greater than Napoleon. The world's magnificent ; and plot by plot To turn it into routine on behalf Of weaker folk, incapable beyond A jog-trot use-and-wont, evaporates In presence of a monarch. Kill a whale With pin-pricks ; whistle on a lion ; catch A golden eagle in a spider's web ! This socialism is mere misanthropy Erected to a creed ; the evil smell Of Christendom, long dead and rotten, kept In salts and sponges to resuscitate The hopes of hungry malice ; the fishy glow Upon the putrid carcass of religion — Crawford. Oh, King, oh. King, I cry red shame upon you ! Mammon. Bold, and I need such comrades ! None the less. The children of revulsion, of revolution — Communist, anarchist, nihilist — all these Are wriggling maggots in the fetid corpse Of Christendom : their sayings Jesus said — A futile message to a beaten race Under the heel of Rome ; but not for us. The master people of the earth— nor yet For them, instinctive Jews that killed Him. I— You hear that word— I, Mammon, mean to make This mighty world a hundredfold itself. There shall be deeper depths of poverty, A more distressing toil, more warlike war, ii6 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON An ag-ony of spirit deadlier Than that which drenched Gethsemane in blood ; A rapture of dominion hitherto Unfelt by conquerors, kings or priests ; a power, A beauty and a glory of the world Emerged from Christendom, like love's belov'd With April from the wrinkled womb of death. Delivered fresh to Aphrodite's arms. The omnisolvent ether melt that imag-e For ever from my mind ! My meaning hides Behind the past like truth behind the veil In Isis' temple. — I thank you, gentlemen, — Or men, or fellow-men ; you make me know What I must say. Soon in St. Olaf 's Hall I shall announce to Thule and the world The very secret and the soul of me. Await me there. — Our Neo-pagans now. Crawford^ Vibbe, Jelke and the other Reformers go out, RiBOLT, Rolf and the Neo- Pagans enter, and prostrate themselves before Mammon. Mammon. What mummery is this ? Rise ; rise, I say I No man must kneel to me. Though I am king And absolute, the grosser adulation Angers me. — Will you stand up, sirs ! Florimond, Are these men deaf ? Florimond. Not deaf, but mad, I think. RlBOLT, Rolf and the others raise their heads, but remain 7ipon their knees. Mammon. A powerful face ! Yes ; you that look so strong, 117 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Why do you kneel ? You also are a man, Of the same matter as the stars and me. RiBOLT. Hail, Baldur, Woden's son, and god of light. Mammon. Fantastic man ! RiBOLT [fo Rolf and the others]. Did I not talk of this? Rolf, You told how Baldur would not know himself. RiBOLT. I said it ; and you see.— Unconscious God, The fatal Norns who nightly haunt my pillow. Command me to reveal to you your godhead, Baldur, the winsomest, the most belov'd Among immortals and the sons of men. Behold the dreary twilight of the gods. The twenty centuries of Christendom, Expiring now, the golden age returns. With you, our fairest god, to reign on earth A thousand years. First of the Neo-pagans, We kneel before you, desiring for ourselves To be your priests, your guards, your ministers. Mammon. How did your sect arise among the many That gnaw the rotten bones of Christendom ? RiBOLT. A fisherman, religious, old and wistful. Bent on eternity far-seeing eyes Of healthy age, and no asylum found, No house, no harbour for a soul like his. Salt as the sea and rough with storm and toil, In any petty chapel-and-drawing-room Apocalyptic Heaven of mother-church. The saga of the north, in fragments known, Beset his quickened mind : Hymir he loved That splintered granite columns with his glance ; ii8 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Woden and Thor, and Surtur of Muspelheim Whose fervent sword set fire to the Universe, When gods and giants met at Ragnarok. But chief in fancy's aftermath there grew A great uplifted vision of war-worn heroes Winning Valhalla by a fiery death When battle failed them. Mammon. And did he ? Did he ? RiBOLT. What, Oh, Baldur, god of light ? Mammon. This moves me, grips Me firmly ! Did he die like the old vikings, Upon his funeral pyre sailing the sea ? RiBOLT. He died even so. Mammon. When was this greatness wrought ? RiBOLT. Last night, oh sinless one ! Mammon. So men should die ! It shall become again a shameful thing To wait in debile age, a pap-fed dotard. Shunning disdainful death. Men enter life Unconscious, but the power accrues to leave it, Hale, sane and self-possessed ; therefore they should. My pagans, you are welcomest to me Of all my folk. I feel how you became : Such dreams I had in boyhood. I understand Your thought of me as Baldur, and love you well For bringing me such beauty from the past. Such elemental strength of the old time — Which never yet was old, nor will be old ! But I am I, not Baldur : I am the king. Greater than Baldur, greater than all the gods, The first of men to be self-conscious. Man 119 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Has come ! The former cry was, or the hope, The gods arrive, the heroes at their heels ; But I announce, at last, self-conscious man, Greater than devil, angel, hero, god. RiBOLT [/o Rolf and the others]. Baldur, or Mam- mon ? King or God ? Rolf. We want A god again ! The Others. We want a god ! a god ! Mammon. You shall have me. Await me in the hall. Give them a special place that I may see them. RiBOLT, Rolf atid the others rise and go out, accom- panied by Florimond. Mammon. Why did I set them out ? The madness ! Need There is to be foolhardy in the things That hap without inventing ambuscades To trip and throttle us ! I've made a morgue Of Olaf's Hall ! It seemed so great last night : — And great it is ; and I am fit for it. If they should bleed ! An ancient fallacy, A Christian thing :— but they were Christians !— there- fore They'll bleed ? Let them ! And let them point at me, And wink with sluggish lids and sightless eyes As murdered folk were wont to do— in books ! I would be tested every way to learn What limits shackle my material soul — If there be limits to the power of one Who knows himself unhuman.— Where am I now? What mincemeat do I make ? To argue out A question like a Christian casuist doomed 120 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON For ever to eschew instinctive deeds ! I shame myself when not the utter shame Of being ashamed should shame me. May it be That I'm too young, and not adjusted yet In mood and mind to my polarity ? 'Twas in his thirtieth year the Son of Man Began to turn the water into wine — Napoleon's age when first he challenged fate And leapt into the saddle of the world ; Mohammed knew the gauge of forty years Before he set himself against mankind ; And Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon, Was old — an old, old man compared with me, Who am not twenty-five. The Macedon ?— Yes, young and seminal, but sowing seed At second-hand, a cultured person. I Alone, since time began, bring with me news. No mate I find among the mighty dead ; The greatest man of all the ages, youth Commends me to my happy destiny : No doubt perturbs me ; prosperously I shall Adjust the world's polarity to mine. [Goes out 121 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Scene II :-SL Olaf's Hall, Christianstadt. Upoji a catafalque, a little lower than the platform and in front of it, the bodies of King Christian and Magnus are displayed. A contimiojis stream of people passes slowly before the catafalque to view the bodies. A throne stands near the centre of the platform, and on a table at hand a cushion lies with the regalia of Thule. The area of the hall is occupied by the nobles, the clergy, and the wealthy people of Thule, the galleries are filled with the representatives of the middle and working classes. The Mayor with Tam- BERSKELVER and the other Inceptors of the Teutonic Religion are seated in the area near the front. RiBOLT and the Neo-Pagans, Crawford and the Reformers sit upon the steps on either side of the platform. Soldiers keep the gangzvays. A noise of cotiversation and discussion fills the hall. There are three doors : two entering upon the platform, and one into the hall. When the scene begins Gottlieb, Anselm and several of the clergy near the centre of the area, having risen, whisper together earnestly. They then leave their places atid press forward to the catafalque. Gottlieb [uncovering the bodies]. You see— three savage blows ; and the young Prince Hacked like a butcher's block 1 A Priest. a madman's work ! Anselm. Some one must act, some one must warn the world, Or ere we know these overwhelming deeds, 122 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Interpreted by Mammon's subtle tongue, Will clothe him with romance, and horror pass Unnoted in a cloak of darkness woven By magic eloquence. A Priest. All's so monstrous, so Unheard-of! Anselm. Speak, lord Abbot ! A Priest. Ay, and speak out ! Gottlieb. I must ; — I must ; — God's proxy, I must speak. [There is a crtisJi about the catafalque and the gang- 7vays are blocked. People stand up oti the seats ; expressions of grief and horror are heard on all sides. The soldiers look at each other in per- plexity, until at last one of them ascends the platforyn and goes out by the door on the right. Ladies and Lords of Thule, brethren in Christ, My people and the children of my soul, I supplicate no favour ; I demand A patient hearing in the name of God. I bid you all be silent while I speak : Be seated there ; and you that press to view These murderous wounds, stand still : let every one Lay hold upon his mind, and ponder well The dreadful meaning of the things I say. \_The noise dies doivn ; those "who had risen resume their seats, and the pressure ceases about the catafalque. Nothing in Thule's history or the world's. Nor in the process of the newest states. Exhibits any precedent or guide : The doings of the night, our meeting here 123 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Defy conception and astound our hearts, As if some giant power of fabulous times, Delivered from a sealed and sunken urn, Had come, transcending law, to exercise An unaccountable, remorseless will. Mammon, attended by Florimond ««rfo//ze/' ministers a7id courtiers, enters at the back of the platform. Oswald, with the officers o/ his staff, enters 07i the right. Anselm. Lord Abbot — Gottlieb, Hush ! not now ! Anselm. But look behind ! Gottlieb [turns to Mammon]. O monster, come to gloat upon your work ! [To the audience,] This is that will, that soulless, godless thing. Let loose in Thule to raven and destroy ! [Shouts, cries and groans break from the over- 7v ro ugh t au dien ce. Mammon ["whispering -with Oswald]. You fall in my regard, Oswald. What have I done ? Mammon. Why are the bodies placed beneath ? I said. Upon the platform. Oswald. I thought— Mammon. You never thought ! Humanity, the nightmare of the bold. Plebeian pathos, overrode your mind. Beside the throne the bodies should have lain : So did I see this scene ; so order it. 124 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Oswald, I feared for you : by many treacherous signs Murder itself betrays the murderer. His bosom bled— the Prince's bosom bled. Mammon. At your approach ? Oswald. I helped the mutes to dress The bodies :— twenty things at once were doing ; I saw to all :— these in their stereoed craft Would ne'er be done : I urged them ; lent a hand ; And at my touch ('twas half to prove my courage) His wounds, they seemed to mutter, and his paps Were seethed in blood. Mammon. The motion of the dressing: This fable bleeds to death ; your hand was guiltless. Oswald. But I consented in the Prince's— Mammon. You ! Consented ! Pious bridles, bits and curbs Wherewith your mystagogues and psychopomps Lead people by the nose : the soul's the nose, {So ; you can laugh !) a thing that dullards follow. Oswald. What must I do ? Mammon. My will ! We work by force : Too swift, too violent you cannot be ; Nor too successful : make the means suffice. Oswald. Must I remove the bodies, their wounds exposed ? Majlmon. No ; let them be. But build our triumph sure. You are new to power : use it and learn that men Who do and never doubt accomplish all They undertake. I'll hold the hall here. Fill The square with arms and guard the doors, the ways. 125 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Remember our achievement : we uplift The christened world from out that sepulchre Where for two thousand years, inhumed alive, Shrouded it lay, tormented and tormenting.— Send me a message when the guards are set, The hall surrounded, and a squadron flung Within the lofty bezel of the square— The signet of my heart, the arms of Thule, To print my crimson seal upon the age. Oswald, -with the officers of his staff, goes out. Mammon {raises his hand, and the hail becotnes quiet]. Lord Abbot, make an end of your discourse. {Sits upon the throne. Gottlieb. God give me inspiration, give me power ! Murder :— murder :— murder ! My voice is theirs. King Christian's and his son's. Late in the night, A mournful cry arose, «' King Christian's dead !" So gentle with his people, so august Before the world, so great against his foes. So humble in the presence of his God, Our good Christian dead ! It smote our hearts As if they had been worn upon our sleeves. And struck at ruthlessly by passers-by. Next came a loathsome voice, a mumbling tongue, That whispered in the dark, "He killed himself." I say, a lie, gigantic as the crime That laid King Christian low— the triple crime. For thrice the murderer drove determined death Deep in his father's heart. RiBOLT [to Rolf]. Superb ! A god ! All gods are parricides— the Christian God Excepted, he who killed his son instead. 126 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Gottlieb. No man could deal himself three deadly wounds : There sits the thing that took King- Christian's life. — Stifle your groans, and let your leaping hearts Grow great with agony till all is known : Then rend these walls with outcry, blast his soul Who thought himself immune, but trembles now Dazzled and dumb with fear. Mammon. I tremble not. I marvel at the noxious fantasies Malignant piety can forge so well. Proceed, Lord Abbot. Gottlieb. You shall be broken yet ; Passed underneath the harrow of your deeds, And in reverberant flames of conscious guilt A seven times heated penance suffer long. People of Thule, watch him while I speak ; Fix on him potent looks, and set your hearts To bend his stubborn will and break his pride. — This other mangled corpse :— the noblest Prince That ever heired a crown, his bosom trenched And furrowed like a carrion clawed by beasts ; His innocent life dug out with eager blades, That fought each other in his heart to win The horrible distinction of his death : — What was the cry of this ? ' ' An accident : He fell upon some swords." Where were the swords? Do clusters grow of naked scimitars On palace-floors from rugs and carpets sprung ? Will ghostly weapons, firmly clamped in air, Upon some astral swivel turn about Their tempered points for men to crash against ? 127 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON No, by the furnace and the anvil, no ! The swords Prince Mag-nus stumbled on were held In hands suborned by him that sits behind me, Pallid and terrible and terrified, The murderer of his father and his brother. But speech is wasted : time it is to act. More treacherous than murder, on our hands— Mammon. I gave you leave to speak, but not to act. I wish to talk now. Gottlieb. I have not finished yet. Mammon. Get to your place, lord Abbot. Larum. Obey the King ! Gottlieb. Give him no hearing ! From the jaws of Hell Expect the scent of roses, hope for songs From cannon-mouths, and v/ine on icebergs grown, Rather than truth from him ! You sit there silent, His hideous handiwork beholding ! Up, And tear him limb-meal ! This is he who says God is not, he who would destroy the law. If deeds are wanting now, he with his army, His puissant person and his kingly power Will set up irreligion, and decree The righteousness of sin. At such a crisis We cannot choose the means. In God's great name Come after me ! Larum. Down with the Abbot ! down ! Crawford. The enemy of men ! RiBOLT. And of the gods ! Seize him and silence him I Larum. Stand by the King. 128 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Gottlieb, attemptbig itnth Anselm afid several of the clergfy to ascend the platform, is intercepted by RiBOLT and Crawford ivith their folloivers. Many in the audience seem prepared for action, but the majority are overcoine ivith amazement. Florimond and those on the platform are too perplexed to do or say anything. Mammon. Trusty reformers, splendid pagans, hold The rabid priest ! Gottlieb. While I have voice and breath I shall cry out against this godless man ! RiBOLT and Crawford silence Gottlieb. Mammon. His senile frenzy incommodes our meeting. Remove him quickly and keep him under guard. RiBOLT a7id Crawford hand Gottlieb to several soldiers, ivho take him out. Larum. I hope I speak for all assembled here. We disbelieve the Abbot's accusation : That catafalque confutes it. Who would hang The corpses of his victims round his neck, A felon's trophies, and confront a crov^d By choice and uncompelled ? No man— nor king. Mammon. I thank you. Master Mayor. — I choose my people For friend and confidant from this time forth. The world begins to-day, and what has been Shall be no longer :— theist nor atheist. Christian nor antichristian, sinner nor saint ; But men and women — they shall be, at last. I speak to men and women. I hear your hearts In generous bosoms thunder, overcharged With swelling sympathy and molten ire K 129 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON In this tempestuous time of tragic deeds ; I see the rapid lightning in your minds Illumine changeful vision, motive, cause, Gilding with wonder these unknown events : And not one heart that beats, one brain that thinks In concord with humanity, believes The frantic charge against me. If suspicion Survives in any vacillating mind. Then let the scrupulous doubter state his doubt, Inviolably privileged to speak Against his King for this one time and end. A Lady. That man is innocent ! RiBOLT. I doubt— I, Ribolt ! And my doubt is this : — Who on the stepping-stones Of these dead men ascends the height of power ? Not I ; not he ; but you, the murderer. Tell The truth. Many Voices. The truth ! the truth ! We want the truth! Ribolt. We want the truth ! Reluctant to be God, This is no man, but Baldur come again. The gods supreme have often killed their sires. Baldur, the son of Woden, reincarnate, Murders his father in the flesh. While he, King Christian, typifies the Christian God, Prince Magnus stands for Christ : Father and Son O'erthrown together by the pagan power Returned to earth once more ! A myth begun ! Confess your godhead, King ! Mammon. If I had killed The King, my father, and my brother Magnus, Would I declare it, think you ? The hearts of men 130 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Are fitter to condone a parricide Than mine to be the author of a deed The world could never sanction. RiBOLT. But we do ! We sanction ; we condone ! Mammon. Silence, g-ood pagan. - My father slew himself. Something- is gfuessed By all of you concerning' my belief. I ventured out of Christendom — for which, My enemy, the Church, contrived my downfall ; And when I boarded Thule yesterday To stop the marriag-e of my own betrothed (Compelled to falsehood in the name of Christ !) My father, wholly mad— it must be said !— (Some eating- lesion of the intellect Or carnal perturbation) goaded on By the remorseless Abbot, undertook To kill me at the altar where I hung- Tied like a carcass to the crucifix, I, being- about to die, as I believed, • Began to utter in a trance the thing's I mean to tell you. With spontaneous power, Instinctive in the ecstasy of death, I broke the fateful burden of my mind, And so essentially revealed its thought. That like a cloud between him and the sun The phantom world of spirit passed away. My father's madness, mounting in his brain. Like heavy vapours of the vaulted earth Instilled of old in chosen oracles. Upon the sudden sight of the Universe (All that immensity of power and beauty) 131 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Transported him entirely : he cut my cords, Imploring pardon ; with convulsive strength That madness gives the weakest, stabbed himself Thrice in the breast before my torpid limbs, Inured to bonds, could sense their liberty. And, banning God and Christ and Christendom With maniac curses, at my feet fell dead. RiBOLT. Truth evident ! How could a likelihood Pass for a moment in the Abbot's lie ! King Christian's suicide, like some predicted Planet, appears at last to fill the mythic Order : we had a god who slew his father ; The Church adores a God who slew his Son ; And now we have a god who slays himself ! Mammon. Forbear these heathen fancies, and be still. RiBOLT. The legend creams, fermenting in the tun : Fancy's a brewer, and a ripened head Rises upon the malt. Mammon. No legend this : Alas, I would it were ! My brother, Magnus, Loving and loved, for we were friends as well. Snared in the mesh of this conspiracy. Was last night married, against his choice and hers. To my betrothed, the Princess of the Isles. The Abbot's doing ; yet, my father's will V/ent with it ; and I cannot, dare not doubt, When the stained windows and the censer smoke Hiding the Universe were burst and blown By my apocalypse, that the despair, In which he seized so validly on death. Became then only irresistible 132 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON As the recoil of ours, whom he had doomed By holy rites to most unholy lives, Enringed his conscience with a burning lash. Had he but known ! — Impulsively I sought The room where Magnus and the Princess lodged. There went along with me the royal guard ; For corridors should ne'er be unpatroUed At midnight in a hostile, treacherous court. Where scarcely sons escape their father's knives. Finding the door unlocked I entered : there. Still unatoned, the bride and bridegroom stood, Lamenting the decree that made them one. My brother, most averse though winning victim In the state-lottery of this base cabal, O'erwhelmed with shame and horror to be caught By the imagined loser banking the proceeds, (Which yet he feared to put to usury) Rushed headlong from the room, and spilt his life Against the ready swords the sentinels Held in the half-light for my enemies. Thus died these two to my eternal grief ; And thus am I your King in weal and woe. Florimond. Long live the King ! A Few Voices. Long live the King ! Mammon. You doubt ? You disbelieve ? Tamberskelver. In this assembly. King, Unhappy thoughts prevail. Were you to touch The bodies, many an undecided mind. Devout and honest, might accept the test. Mammon. But by that test merely the murderer's presence U3 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Suffices for the bleeding- of the corpse. Their wounds are naked, and they have not bled. Tamberskelver. The test is incomplete unless the accused Handles the body. Many Voices. Let him touch the bodies ! Mammon. Bodies will bleed although no murderer — Many Voices. The test ! the test ! Mammon \_fo himself]. Through with it tightly, coward 1 {To Tamberskelver.] So be it, then. Select your witnesses. [To himself.] This has me by the throat ! What's Oswald doing ? {Desce7ids to the catafalque. Larum, iirged by Tamberskelver, steps upon the catafalque, ivhile Tamberskelver atid the other Inceptors of the Teutonic Relig-ion stand about it. Ribolt and the Neo-pagans, Crawford and the Reformers co7ne close also. Mammon. My father killed himself ; my brother died By accident : I had no hand at all In either death. \_As he is about to touch his father's body, he staggers and falls against the catafalque. The crown drops from his head. Ribolt picks up the crowti. Larum [supporting Mammon]. You faint, King Mammon ! Tamberskelver. They bleed ! The bodies bleed 1 134 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Jan Rykke [/o Tamberskelver]. I see no blood. Tamberskelver [fo Rykke]. Nor I : But others will. Larum. Why, so they do ! King Mammon ? I put no faith in this :— to pacify The simpler souls we meant it :— but they bleed ! Mammon. I stumbled, and I shook the catafalque. Larum. Would innocence have stumbled? The bodies bleed ; The murderer is here ! Florimond [having descended to the catafalque with other ministers, to Larum]. Go down, my lord. Larum [stirrendering Mammon, who is almost un- conscious, to Florimond]. Murder : — murder :— murder :— the Abbot's cry ! We have a godless murderer for king ! [Leaves the catafalque.^ The hall is now filled with noise. Mammon. Something to drink before my tongue takes fire ! Florimond [to an Attendant who goes out]. Bring wine and water quickly. RiBOLT [whispering as he crowns M.\MMOn]. Mur- derer ! Mammon. I am no murderer. RiBOLT. Will you bz our God ? Mammon. There is no God. RiBOLT. Or God or murderer : choose. Florimond and others assist Mammon to regain the platform. An Aide-de-Camp enters upon the platform. 135 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon. From Oswald? from the Duke? Speak in my ear. Aide-de-Camp. The Duke of Christianstadt com- manded me To tell the King the bezel of his ring Is jewelled and ready for the crimson seal. Mammon. The Duke's discreet and strong. Attend me closely. The Attendant re-enters with wine and water. Mammon. My mouth is like a desert. The Attendant offers 7vine. Mammon. Give me. . . . Red ? A murderer's draught ! Pour out some water— slowly. The Attendant Jills a glass with water. Mammon. Yes :— yes :— my soul's as clean as that : I swear it ! [Drinks ; then looks down upon the bodies. The wounds are as they were ! They do not bleed ! Now, I remember ; the knave who pressed the thing Took umbrage in the morning at my rebuke ! Look, Florimond ! Florimond. Too far for my old sight. Mammon. Jugglery of the senses. Florimond. A crowd will see By instigation things that are not. Mammon. Yes ; And folk will stare and stare, beholding still No true appearance unless an interest wake Discernment. Wounds, like that, look so ; And seem, with scrutiny, more murderous, Bloodier and deadlier. I'll speak of this. But first, to tell the news I came to tell, 136 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON And cleave the world in two. —People of Thule — \_The uproar in the hall ivhich had gradually de- creased breaks out again upon Mammon's attempt to speak. Meanivhile Anselm, having consulted •with Larum and others, ascends the catafalque and secures silence. Mammon \to hitnself]. Machine guns on our plat- forms to take the chair ! I'll have one in and turn the crank myself ! Many Voices. Anselm ! Anselm ! Mammon. Another orator ! Anselm. I take the Abbot's place. I stand for God. What shall become of Thule and of us Disturbs no longer righteous-hearted men ; The issue lies with Heaven : God's will be done ! Yet prayer is not the whole : the Church can act. [To Mammon.] By the authority of Almighty God, The Three in One, and of the undefiled Mother and patroness of our Saviour Christ, The Virgin Mary ; by the authority Of all celestial virtues, angels, thrones, And of the innocents who behold the Lamb Singing the new song heard in Heaven only ; By the authority of all the saints, Of all the holy and elect of God, I excommunicate the King of Thule, You, Christian, Mammon, to whichever name You answer. From the threshold of the Church Sequestered, you are now delivered up. Unless it shall repent you, to be quenched As fire is quenched in water, and your light To be put out for ever with those who cry, 137 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON *' Depart from us, O Lord ; we scorn thy ways !" May God the Father curse you, God the Son, The Holy Spirit, the eternal Virgin, And all the host of Heaven, in all your thoughts, In all your deeds, in body, mind and soul, Unless you do repent. Amen. Many Voices. Amen. Anselm. All those who stand for God will leave this place, And shake the dust of it from off their feet. [Descends from the catafalque. Larum. I join the legate ! RiBOLT. I also ! Any God Rather than godless worlds and soulless men ! Crawford. And I come too! This is the broil I want ! The Church, which is the workman and the slave— The Power against the Kingdom and the Glory. Mammon {to the Aide- de-Camp]. Tell Christianstadt to seize this treasonous legate. And for my signet ring :— Say to the Duke I love him ; say, the wax is in the flame ; Say, when the molten moment comes my seal Must delve into the bosom of the age. Aide-de-Camp. Will the Duke know this cypher message, King ? Mammon. He'll pluck the meaning from the seething w^ords. Go, and return not till the stamp's affixed. The Aide-de-Camp goes out. Anselm, as he leaves the hall, begins to chant the hundred and fortieth psalm, " Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man." The clergy^ the bulk of the people in the galleries, and many of those in the area join in the psalm, and go out after the legate. 138 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mammon [^o Florimond]. Let no unedited report get wing'. Be rigorous with our journals. [Tears a curtain from one of the doors of the platform and gives it to an attendant. Cover the bodies. [ While the attendant spreads the curtain over the cata- falque, the chant uninterrupted hitherto, and still heard faintly from the square, ceases suddenly and a noise of tumult breaks out. I meant so differently ! The Abbot thrust A precipice athwart my tidal wave ; And now the voyage leaps it — headlong down As deep as the unfathomable grave ! [The shattering repercussive fire of a inachine-gun is heard, accompanied by a great outcry, and suc- ceeded by profound silence. The crash of blood ! a cataract of blood Upon the pavement plunging I Secular change At every period is sprinkled so ; Nor could the portal of the world I make Escape the crimson baptism. — Still as death : — The pressure and the imprint of my seal Reaches the heart of Thule :— like a cloud At break of day the rud^y mangled mass Begins to smoulder : soon its golden light Will wreathe my brov? with chaplets of the dawn, So potently does psychic alchemy Transmute barbaric deeds in great careers To destined matter of eternal fame ! Oswald, 7vith the Aide-de-Camp a7id a company of soldiers, enters the area of the hall. Soldiers appear also in the galleries; class, mass and mob pour into all parts of the hall. 139 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Mamm. You look like one who from some deed of doom, As ineluctable as death itself, Comes conquering horror with a steadfast mind. Oswald. Oh, King, though I discourage in myself Revolted nature, I would sooner die Than do again what I have done to-day ! Mammon. If this that you lament was done for me, The burden's mine. Did you, as I desired. Detain the legate ? Oswald. Not without slaughter, King. Mammon. Is Anselm dead ? Oswald. Oh, no ! the legate waits Your pleasure, with the Abbot, under guard. Mammon. Let them be parted and securely kept.— I heard the peal of the organ-pipes of war. What struck the keynote of a fugue of death ? Oswald. Those westland men that worship Woden hung About the legate like a retinue, And blindly thrust and smote with ancient swords. Weapons appeared in other hands besides When the delirious crowd assailed the troops— Who beat them off like playmates, unused to fight Their countrymen. A rabble, then, flung up Like apparitions, or unearthly things, From urban nether worlds, savage and lewd, Began a hoarse incendiary cry That lit the lawless impulse of the rest. Against the crown, against the King they yelled : Some towards the palace turned to tear it down ; Others against the hall here madly surged. No one obeyed me, soldier or citizen ; 140 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Wherefore upon rebellion swithe I loosed With my own hand the reservoir of death. Mammon. Most resolute, most noble, most my friend ! Oswald. The soldiers knew their duty then ; the mob Dispersed like huddled shadows ; and loyal folk Returned with us to hail our rightful king-. Long live the King ! All the Soldiers. Long live the King ! Mammon. That shout Undoes the treachery that marred the day ! I am indeed your king, and greater : I (Until the world, transmuted, understands That men— that you, and she— are more than God, As much as substance more than shadow is) Shall be in Thule like a deity. Inspiring, making, moulding greatness : greatness, Which all your creeds have taught you to ascribe To something not yourselves. Oh flesh and blood. Oh gallant sex of men, sweet sex of women. High hearts and brains of power, not anywhere Is there a breath, a mote, that is not you ! I would I stood upon Mount Everest And could be heard by every son of man ! The parasites that in our bodies burrow ; The Hly and the rose whose passionate breath Perfumes our love-thoughts with the scent of love ; The tawny brutes whose anguished roar appals The desert and the jungle— they that suck The steaming blood and tear the shuddering flesh Of timid, browsing beasts ; the timid beasts Themselves ; the birds that lace the summer winds With music ; houses, harvests, merchandise ; 141 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON The woodland and the mountain and the sea ; The myriad suns that pave the Milky Way ; The furthest star, and all the stars of Heaven ; The vapours, metals, earths ; their energies ; The lightning and the light ; ethereal space : All these— all that, is us, is you and me. The conscience of the infinite Universe. No supernatural thought must cloud your minds : You have been told for twenty centuries That that which is behind the Universe, Its maker, God, or some obscurant will. Transcends substantial things ; and psychic powers, Imagination, thought— the essences Material of matter— have squandered craft Enough to make another Universe In building up nonentity, miscalled The world of spirit ! There is no such world : — I speak to minds of every calibre, And would be understood : — no spirit world ; No world but this, which is the Universe, The whole, great, everlasting Universe. And you are it — you, there, that sweep the streets, You that make music, you that make the laws, You that bear children, you that fade unloved. Oh, if there be one here despised and mean, Oppressed with self-contempt and cursed with fear, I say to him : — Not anywhere at all Is there a greater being than you— just you : You are the lustre of a million suns — The fuel of their fires, your flesh and blood ; And all the orbs that strew ethereal space Are less than you, for you can feel, can know, 142 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON Can think, can comprehend the sum of things : You are the infinite Universe itself Become intelligent and capable. Grasp it and hold it in your heart of hearts, That nothing lies behind, nothing at all. Except the ether woven from bourne to bourne — If there be spatial bournes— continually Evolving lightning, chrysosperm of space, Electric lust for ever unconsumed, Twisexed fertility that begets and breeds The divers elements whereof we are. And all the suns and all the galaxies : Nothing of thought or oversoul behind, About, above ; but you and I in front, The intellect, the passion and the dream, The flower and perfume of the Universe. You have been told for twenty centuries That man upon a transient isthmus stands Between the oceans of eternity ; And that the earth is but an academe Where the poor human acolyte prepares For joy in Heaven or penal fires of Hell, Or here begins consecutive rebirths That shall in other worlds perfection gain. I say the earth itself is Heaven and Hell, That every heart-beat is the crack of doom. And every passing moment the judgment-day ; That here and now we have eternity. Time is not ; never was : a juggling trick, A very simple one, of three tossed balls. The sun, the moon, the earth, to cheat our sense With day and night and seasons of the year. 143 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON This is eternity : here once in space The Universe is conscious in you and me ; And if the earth and all that is therein Were now to end, the task, the pain, the woe, The travail of the long millennial tides Since life began, would like a pleasant fancy Fade in the thoughtless memory of matter ; Because in me the infinite Universe Achieves at last entire self-consciousness, And could be well content to sleep again For ever, still evolving in its sleep Systems and constellations and tracts of suns. But I would have you all even as I am ! I want you to begin a world with me, Not for posterity, but for ourselves. Prophets have told that there has seized on us An agony of labour and design For those that shall come after such as no age Endured before. I, Mammon, tell you. No ! We have come after I We are posterity ! And time it is we had another world Than this in which mankind excreted soul, Sexless and used and immaterial, Upon the very threshold of the sun, To wonder why the earth should stink so ! Men Belov'd, women adored, my people, come, Devise with me a world worth living in— Not for our children and our children's children, But for our own renown, our own delight I All lofty minds, all pride, all arrogance. All passion, all excess, all craft, all power, All measureless imagination, come ! 144 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON I am your King ; come, make the world with me ! [77/(? older people regard each other dubiously ; but the soldiers and the young' folk raise a great shout as the curtain falls. Scene III : — A room in the Royal Palace, Christians tadt. Windows at the back overlook the palace yard. On the left is a piano at which GuENDOLEN sits. As the curtain rises, Prounice enters and, sitting at an open windo7V, takes up some sewing. Guendolen. What was the hurrying prattle in the air? Prounice. Machine-guns, madam, Guendolen. Oh, I feared it, Prounice ! Not half a nihilist was hurt I hope ? Prounice. People were hurt ; and some, they say, are dead. Guendolen. How mournful, Prounice, and how terrible ! Why should our happiness be dyed in blood ? Dear Heaven . . . No Heaven to call on ? No ; no Heaven : Only my own delight. The power of it ! The imperial conceit of the one world Usurps me, and uplifts my womanhood. With the new-birth and blossom of my love. — [Improvises on the keyboard, searching for a theme. How did it happen, Prounice ? Prounice. I cannot say. The King may tell you : he will soon be here. Guendolen. Unless he speaks of it, I shall not ask. — Prounice, what noise is that ? Prounice. The sentry's horse, Shaking his headstall. L 145 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON GuENDOLEN. Music IS passiofi, Prounice ; All their music : speechless, but eloquent. I sometimes think that speech can utter nothing, And only music means.— Is that the King? Prounice. I heard no sound outside. GuENDOLEN. 'Twas in my heart — A trampling cavalcade.— Listen to this. [Having found a theme that pleases her she elaborates it. You like it, Prounice ? Prounice. Buoyant, martial music. Your composition, madam ? GuENDOLEN. Impromptu, Prounice : The ether, strung and resonant in us. Makes voluntaries so -.—how soon love learns The universe by heart ! I like to braid These kindling discords, and unbraid again Their fiery strands ; to shake their tresses out With ropes of pearl, of rubies and double stars. — [Sings] A ship is on the sea With fruit and spice for me. The roses bow before me one by one. The vdsdom of the east Will gallop to the feast. A golden bell is ringing in the sun. — O Prounice, Prounice ! Prounice. Will you rest a while ? Will you lie down ? GuENDOLEN. You know I never rest. Prounice. If you rend music from your heart-strings thus, Soul of my soul, you'll break the instrument ! GUENDOLEN. No, Prounice. Dearest woman . . . listen! 146 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON \_Faint shouting is heard from the street, and shortly the sound of the royal entry in the palace yard. Prounice. The King. {Goes out. GuENDOLEN leaves the piano and looks out. Return iiig to the piano, she plays a series of triumphant chords, then rises and waits in the ceiitre of the room. Mammon ientering]. Oh, stately Queen of Thule ! Sweet queen of me ! GuENDOLEN. I haveconceived ! I have conceived a son! Mammon. How can you tell ? GuENDOLEN. How Can we tell when light Appears in Heaven and darkness dies ? Mammon. We know ! The winepress of the morning overflows ; And crimson fountains in the swarthy east, That well with dawn and vintage of the day, Replenish earth again. GUENDOLEN. Eveu SO I know A day has dawned in me : within, without, My wedded, fertile body blushes still. And morning in my swelling bosom breaks. Mammon. Oh love, we two are of such eager heart. So pregnant with the future, such devout Desirers of the world, of birth, of life, That all our thoughts anticipate events. And like a hound that courses thrice the road. Before his master gambolling sprightfully. Our minds are there and back and forth again In front of fate and time's expedient march. Last night the moon, her chin upon the sea. Watched like a woman at her window : wait Until next synod on another wave 147 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON She reassumes her vigil : tell me then Your ship is freighted for a nine months' voyage, For now you cannot know. GuENDOLEN. Oh, but I do ! With the ninth star of love, in love's ninth swoon. Most poignant, most intolerably sweet Of all the ecstasies that made of me A paradise indeed, your inmost being — I cannot speak it ! — Life took root in life : My body seemed to be eternity ; I felt a new beginning of the world Deep in my womb as in the heart of Heaven. Mammon. Infinite beauty of a woman's mind Set free ! I doubt no longer, Guendolen : The budding jewel of our lives is clasped Already in the richest casket wrought Qf the elements, the body and soul of you. Nothing can stop me now ! The fates obey My will ! Unchristened, disinherited, A prisoner bound and doomed to living death, I said I should be king in Thule and you The happy mother of my son. Behold, Although they married you and thrust their God Between us, while the labour of their minds Still racked them with the wrongs they failed to do, As if my destiny were pulped and fed To vast machinery filling in an hour The travail of the years, death found them out, You are my consort, pregnant with my iove. And I the hated outcast. King in Thule ! My thought becomes the fashion of the world Before I know ! 148 EPILOGUE EPILOGUE This book is published on the 1 1th of April, 1907, my fiftieth birthday. Nine-tenths of my time, and that which is more precious, have been wasted in the endeavour to earn a livelihood. In a world of my own making I should have been writing only what should be written. Any one who reads with attention my U?ihisforical Pastoral, the pleasure of my twentieth year, will perceive already a fresh departure It is true the matter and manner of that masque are old, although the understanding in it is new ; but there is no fault in its antiquity : a poet, especially in his youth, will celebrate the obsequies of the past— and in his old age also, if it be his mood. And it will be his mood ; for as long as life continues youth dies not in the poet's blood and brain whatever else may be destroyed. Nevertheless, the state- ment of the present and the creation of the future are the very body and soul of poetry. For half a century I have survived in a world entirely unfitted for me, and having known both 151 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON the Heaven and the Hell thereof, and being without a revenue and an army and navy to compel the nations, I begin definitely in my Testaments and Tragedies to destroy this unfit world and make it over again in my own image : in my own image, because that cannot be transcended ; all men, crossing - sweepers or Ministers of State, endeavour to their utmost to make the world to their order ; and those who identify their minds and imaginations with the Universe have unusual power and authority. Those tragic poems, my Testaments, and my tragic play, The Theatrocrat, came into being with a profound satisfaction beyond delight, beyond ecstasy. The world glanced at them and passed them by unrecognized. This age is too commer- cial, too entirely in the grip of economics : it is too immoderate in its pleasure in every kind of moral suggestion, every kind of temporary in- terest and ephemeral issue, to care for poetical drama, too abject in its haunt of dulcet romanti- cism, mystic piety and dwarfing comicality ; and although the most tragic circumstance in the history of the world is at our doors — the failure of Christendom^ namely — the mind, the imagina- tion of our time is not yet healthy enough, not yet strong enough, not serious enough, not joyful 152 EPILOGUE enough, not passionate enough, not great enough for tragedy. It is therefore impossible to make a tragedy for production on the contemporary stage. In the meantime even good plays suitable for production on the contemporary stage have no mart there. Godfrida, Self's the Man, The Knight of the Mm/pole, and my unpublished Arthurian drama, the likeliest plays written for the English stage in our day, are not produced. I pointed this out in the preface to The Theatrocrat. I shall continue to point it out until the stage credits itself with their production. The note on poetry in Holidai) mid Other Poems concludes with the following sentence : " Liter- ary criticism is in its infancy : the great crescive poem of Christendom, The Divine Comedy, took the decadent form of rhyme ; the great decadent poem of Christendom, Paradise Lost, fell upon the ascendant form of blank verse." (I note by the way that the phi-ase " literary criticism " is inaccurate. In my Rosary I had already dis- tinguished between " literary criticism " and a "criticism of literature." Literary criticism and moral censorship are akin : they are the applica- tion of letters to letters, of conduct to conduct, sterile commerce both. I desire the intercourse of an impassioned imagination with the deeds 153 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON and the wi'itings of men.) The end of Christen- dom began with the Reformation in Germany ; and, as soon as the crisis ripened, the revolt shifted to England, where men are most instinc- tive, freest, greatest, and most in earnest. (Probably we see an analogous event in our day : Is the centre of gravity of the socialistic revolu- tion, the final stage of the decadence of Christen- dom, shifting with the maximum pressure of the storm from the Reichstag to the House of Commons ?) The liberation of the mind and imagination of England upon the severance with Rome found its most fitting expression and illustration in the plays of Shakespeare ; and the poetry of that religion which had filled the fancy with the mystic sacrifice of the Host and the adoration of the Virgin is finally eliminated in the pedantic God of the decadent Paradise Lost. Between the times of Shakespeare and Milton and the times of Burns and Wordsworth there is no great English poetry. When Dryden's imagi- nation seeks for a home in the Universe it beats the air in strong low-pitched flight from a classical apotheosis of Cromwell through the doctrine of the restored Anglicanism of Charles II to the doctrine of the hot-house Catholicism of the much-maligned James ; and the rapid wing 154 EPILOGUE of Pope upon the same errand can attain no higher heaven than the " Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits." Not until Burns does a great English imagination live again in a conception of the Universe. It is the old conception : the vv^orld suspended by a hair from the floor of Heaven above a flaming Hell. And it is also the old morality in almost every respect, and especially concerning women, because a great poet is always a great lover : Burns, like Shakespeare, was much troubled with love : the passionate union of men and women seemed to him sinful without the sanction of marriage. Wordsworth's relation to Burns is parallel with Milton's relation to Shakespeare. Milton and Wordsworth wrote with affection, admiration, and a certain patronage of Shakespeare and Burns ; the austerity of both — Milton in his youth, Wordsworth in his maturity— was tempered by the wide humanity of their greater predecessors ; but religion which is emotional in Shakespeare and Burns becomes doctrinal in Milton and Wordsworth. Nevertheless, Wordsworth's popular reputation as the most original of English poets is not groundless : he sought a way out of Christendom, and hoped to find an abiding-place for his imagination in the mind of man. In the 155 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON mind of man, however, there was nothing to be found but the old spiritual world and the old morality. Wordsworth accepted the defeat, and prophesied a day when the mind of man should contain, not a symbol of the Universe, but the Universe itself, feeling a presence that disturbed him with the joy of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, AV'hose dwelling is the liglit of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air. And the blue sky and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought. And rolls through all things. A very perfect and pro})hetic account, under the old spiritual guise, of the omnipresent ether, the material source, substance and inspiration of all things. If I could make men know the meaning of that ! — the greatness and the beauty and the entire sanctity of a purely material world ! Once as I walked in Westminster a sun- beam touched the knell of noon with amber light. Touched it ? No ; the deep-throated vibrant noise, a rich integration of many sounds, mingled with the dazzling sunlight, a rich in- tegration of many a rainbow ; and the twain became one flesh ; the sound the soul of light, 156 EPILOGUE and the lio-ht the soul of the sound. When the ultimate analysis is made, it will be found, I believe, that light and sound are identical — isomers of the purest ether. Sound requires liffht for its full realization as well as for its illus- tration. Is there anything more forlorn than the tolling of a far-off bell in the dead of night, anything more terrifying than the clash of bells in the darkness ? By day the riot of a wedding- peal is the very voice of nature delighting in the union of the sexes ; in a moonless night the same bells rung with the same clangour seem to an- nounce the crown of all calamities — lonely death and the end of the world. Light requires sound that it may be fully seen and felt. The moon is merely a silver-plated cinder until the nightin- gale sings, or lovers murmur golden nothings in lanes and byways. The sun is great, but he is only half a sun until his path is paved with the songs of skylarks. One might re-establish on a new basis the old myth of the music of the spheres : — Light and sound being one flesh, and the one being incomplete, entirely dissatisfied, and its whole essence unrealized without the other, it follows that the myriads of suns that strew the beach of space must be accompanied by some choir of exquisite sound. 157 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON The mind and imagination of a greater man than Wordsworth^ Turner — the greatest man of his time in England^ I think — hved in a world of light and colour. Turner often painted with torches instead of pencils^ or if he used pencils they were of asbestos and dipped in wells of crimson fire and gold. The turbulence of his darkling pictures^ "The Angel Standing in the Sun/' " Undine and Masaniello/' the two deluges and Nebuchadnezzar's furnace ; the fui-y of imagination, and the experimental audacity of unrealized genius that endeavoured to explain the colour in which it lived and moved and had its being, by poetic legend or classic myth of Dido or Diana, by the quaint apologue of Napoleon and the limpet, and by allegoric and mystical figures and designs ; the sheer despair of getting the thing done at all that found or failed to find expression in the obscure rubric of '^The Fallacies of Hope"; all that early and late storm and stress is the thundering approach to the harmonious tune of pure colour which re- solves all discord, as in the three dawns of Baise, Lucerne and Norham Castle. These paintings were dipped out of wells of coloured fire, of prismatic light. They are sheer miracle. Ex- amine at close quarters the sunrise over Norham 158 EPILOGUE Castle. The yellow light is scraped on like butter and spread out with a dirty thumb ; a shapeless stain as of a faded ink-blot that had been hastily smudged off, and a dull smear of brownish red that might have been a drop of blood from a pricked finger, are also noted. Stepping backward you watch the thing change into a golden and opal dawn reflected in a wide shallow reach of a crystal river ; the smear of red takes the definite shape of a cow at its morn- ing draught, and the faded inkstain becomes the ethereal blue of Norham Keep. These paintings cannot be accounted for in words ; by no method can they be reproduced ; only music might tell them over again. Light is sound ; the rainbow its diatonic scale. Every one seems to feel this unconsciously, to know it intuitively. I have it here at hand in a book I have just read — Mr. Sydney Low's brilliant J'ision of India. Desci-ib- ing the Kumbh Mela or Holy Fair at Allahabad, Mr. Low says : — " The garish tints of the dyed cotton robes, orange and purple and sanguine crimson, and emerald green, coarse and crude individually, blended into an opulent harmony, from which now and again the sparkle of polished metal ornaments, or the flash of a glass bracelet, five inches deep on a rich brown arm, rose like 159 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON the high notes of a vioHn above a rolling wave of orchestral music. " This is more than imagery ; or rather, let me say, all convincing imagery is scientific truth. I leap a chasm with a hypo- thetical vaulting pole and find that sound and light are one and the same. Both are produced by impact or friction ; both are detected as a vibratory movement ; both can be analysed into seven component parts, seven tones of sound, seven colours of light ; and both have a chromatic scale of tones and half-tones, of primary and secondary colours. By another leap with the vaulting pole of hypothesis I arrive at the con- clusion that light and sound are substantive, not in entire opposition to the vibratory theory — all fluid substances move, or can be made to move in waves — but as complementary to it. I would define — I have defined — light and sound as isomeric forms of the omnipresent ether, the one inaudible, the other invisible, and both consisting of the seven elements into which the ingredients of the Universe finally resolve themselves. And there I take the greatest leap of all. Will the last analysis reduce the elements to seven .'' The salient conclusion is, at any rate, profoundly satisfying to a humane mind longing to find that there has been no waste of intellectual effort 1 60 EPILOGUE since the world began, and willing to believe that those old gropers after truth who made so much of the mystical number seven had within them subconsciously the root of the matter. Let us say, then, that the invisible, imponderable, omni- present ether is a fluid consisting of seven elements, which, in a great variety of forms, are the constituents of all matter. All matter, con- sisting of the ether in its tangible forms, is also saturated with the ether in its intangible fluid form. By impact and by friction the ether with which matter is saturated is set free to be heard as sound and music ; to be seen as light and colour. Scratch a lucifer or smite two extinct suns together and you have sound and light ; and as long as the effect of the impact or friction continues in the flame of the match or the fire of the nebula, the ether with which all matter is saturated appears as light and is heard in the sound of burning. But when these isomeric forms of the omnipresent ether, so intimately associated, are disentangled, you have on the one hand the intense, white, noiseless, hungry glow of electricity, and on the other the intensely appealing sound of the violin. By this theory Newton's corpuscular hypothesis of light requires again consideration, and the new discoveries in M I&I THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON the radiation of matter give colour to both. The charm of the idea is irresistible. Light is matter ; and sound, being isomeric with light, is also matter. It is much more credible that sound, being audible, and light, being visible, exist materially, than that the ether, in its primitive form, invisible, inaudible, intangible, and im- ponderable, exists at all. To conceive light and sound as visible and audible isomers of the ether is a beautiful help to the conception of the in- visible, inaudible ether itself. I say again, light and sound are isomeric forms of the ether ; and Watts, when he painted his " Dweller in the Innermost," designed unconsciously an allegoric figure of the ether, the material source of all things, representing it in a harmonious blending of its two most perfect manifestations, light and sound. The flesh of "The Dweller" is a tissue of emeralds and sapphires ; a heart of a single ruby glows on her breast ; a white star shines in her hair, and in her hand is a trumpet : Light and colour, sound and music, the ethereal warp and woof of the matter of which we ourselves are woven. There is no change in the substance of English poetry from Chaucer's time to mine : it subsists hitherto in two worlds, a material world and a 162 EPILOGUE spiritual world, the latter allowing and disallowing the former ; Chaucer remains as modern as Burns, Tennyson as antique as Spenser, and the plays of Shakespeare hold the stage. It is as impossible to say how great Shakespeare was as it is un- necessary to rake a sordid story out of the sonnets. The autobiographies of all artists will be found in their works, in their pictures, their plays and poems, sonatas and operas. The men whose lives I wish to know thoroughly are warriors, kings, statesmen, financiers, explorers, because their work is their conduct ; it is their behaviour in the world that counts ; whereas with the artist it is what he transmutes his life into that counts. Villon was a souteneur and a thief : he translated one of the most luckless lives into the most beautiful and enduring poetry. If Shakespeare, as some would make out, was a pandar and a pederast, so much the greater artist he to have grown all that strength and beauty with such misfortune gnawing at the roots. For me he is great enough without these ascriptions and almost as happy as Homer in the oblivion that has swallowed up his life. A poet's work is born with his life, certain ; but time puts away the life as a midwife disposes of a caul : we forget the inchoate wrappage, and remember 163 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON only the art ; and Shakespeare is so great that his art would have sunk deep into the eternal memory of the world even had he been as un- happy as his worst detractors could desire. To have had to write Macbeth would have killed such men as Tennyson and Browning ; but after Macbeth Shakespeare passed through the agony of Lear, the naive and awful passion of Othello, the bitter dead-sea brine of Timon, the intel- lectual wantonness and world tumult of Antony and Cleopatra, and the lust and shambles of Troilus and Cressida. He passed through that and came out of it sane, sweet, tender and majestical in the enchanted isle of The Tempest ; therefore Shakespeare is loved of all man. Shakespeare delivered himself up without reserve or afterthought to the dual world of his time, and to the undiscovered worlds of wonder upon the earth itself: we forget sometimes that the world was not always known ; nor can the most detach- able imagination ever again realize what it meant to live upon an earth two-thirds of which were still unexplored. Shakespeare's mind and imagi- nation lived more intensely than any other man's in Heaven and Hell, and in the mythical realm of gods and fairies ; and his passion beat against the iron bars of religion and morality never 164 EPILOGUE dreaming of a way out of Christendom. In the great plays I have mentioned^ and in Hamlet and the others, man is shown once for all comporting himself in Christendom ; and as the English stage still lives and moves and has its being in the Christian economy, fable and morality, there is no occasion to write great plays for it : it is impossible to supersede Shakespeare in his own world. Shakespeare is the limit in the literature of the past ; we must have a new world in order that the utmost may once more achieve itself in literature. If it v.ere only that there might be a new drama it would be necessary to have a new cosmogony. But it is not necessary that a new drama in a new order of the Universe should deviate outwardly from the general form of all drama ; nor is there any need, in England at least, to invent a new style of utterance. We have blank verse : age cannot wither it nor custom stale its infinite variety. Dramatic blank verse is omnigenous — rhetorical, colloquial, lyrical, declamatory, as the mood requires. It rings every change within the compass of one scene, sometimes within the compass of one speech. The greatest advantage of verse in drama is its dissimilarity to the real speech of men. All dramatic art must be as unlike life as possible : it M 2 165 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON must be as unlike life as a tree is unlike the root from which it springs. Dramatic art, tragic or comic, is the transmutation of life by imagination. Prose is perhaps better adapted to comedy ; but even with prose the form of the comic dialogue and the projection of the comic event are very unlike actual speech and actual happening. In disaster the actual speech is itself removed from everyday converse by stress of emotion, so that in transmuting tragic incident into tragedy, an unusual form of dialogue, such as blank verse provides, becomes imperative. In all drama the charred embers of life must be changed into the jewels of art ; and this figure holds especially of tragedy, because tragic art is forged in such fires and shaped by such intolerable strain and pressure as the chief of gems, the adamant, endures in its evolution. There has been talk in connection with my later writings of metaphysical and philosophical poetry, and of a new metaphysic, a new phil- osophy and a new theology. Such talk proceeds from inattentive reading : the preface to The Theatrocrat disposes of all that. There can be no metaphysical or philosophical poetry : a poet may employ metaphysic and philosophy as he may employ history and science, but all poetry is 1 66 EPILOGUE poetical. It is not a new metaphysic^ a new philosophy or a new theology which I begin : raetaphysic, theology and philosophy itself in its esoteric sense, are to me fallacies, as each insists on a dual world of matter and spirit. It is a new poetry I begin, a new cosmogony, a new habita- tion for the imagination of men. By Faith, by Imagination, by Vanity men live : it is the salt and the savour. I point out the identity of Faith, Imagination and Vanity, the varying name for the radiation of the omnipresent ether in man. When this pleases the aesthetic sense it is called Imagination ; when it pleases the religious sense it is called Faith. Those who are less endowed, and are on that account envious, call it Vanity; those also who, having abundance, are jealous of abundance in others, call that Vanity in their rivals which in themselves they christen Faith, or virtuously differentiate as Imagination. Not mainly, nor even specially of the brain or intellect, it is of the whole body, of the limbs and the viscera, and very importantly of the testes and the ovaries, the anthers and the stigmas, the pollen and the perfume of the race. Most abundant in human beings in men of genius, it is sometimes called Inspiration— like the other names I have to use, a word of the dual world. 167 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON All beasts have genius from the lowest forms of life to the highest apes. By the extraordinary development of intellect in man genius became a superfluity for him^ and by the prompt economy of nature men are therefore without it in general. Genius in the human race is a hisjis naturae; a tremendous throwback^ the atavism of it goes into the remotest past: probably as the human race tends more and more to work out to a net product^ genius, which requires the gross sum of the whole nature, not the net sum of the intellec- tual powers only, will become rarer and rarer in civilized nations. Genius is a thing brut, not a thing net ; hence all men know something of it in brutal conditions, namely, in childhood, when they are in love or in battle, when they are hurt or sick, and when they come to die. This awakening of the whole nature is the permanent state of beasts. Genius in man is the same as instinct in other animals, a diapason of all the powers of body, mind and soul, which permits the radiation of the whole volume of the ether of Avhich the participant is capable. Furthermore, in the greatest men, genius is supplemented, an irresponsibility introduced, a handicap imposed, and the pace made, by some nervous disorder, or other permanent malady: Buddha, Jesus and i6S EPILOGUE Socrates were mattoids ; Caesar and Mahomet, epileptics ; Raphael had consumption, Michael Angelo and Turner some inhibitory neurosis ; Shakespeare's insomnia, Wagner's petulance, spell heart-disease ; Beethoven was riddled with inherited syphilis ; both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were mad. Before man became fully conscious, this radiation of the ether, and the virtue that went out of him through some open wound in mind or body, became in his troubled Vanity, Olympus and Hades, Asgard and Nifel- heim. Heaven and Hell, with God and the Devil, and gods and goddesses. Now since we have become fully conscious, and know that man is pure matter, that all his intellectual and physical powers are manifestations of the various energies of matter, and that the ether radiates into the ether, our Faith, our Imagination, our Vanity begins to find a home not in a symbol of the Universe, but in the Universe itself. There has also been talk in connection with my writings of a "worship of matter." We cannot worship matter. The lover will worship his mistress, the young mother her baby; but in an uncreated world intelligence cannot worship any- thing: the Universe is matter, and man, being the Universe become conscious, will not worship 169 THE TRIUMPH OF MAMMON himself. Worship, except in such brutal forms as sexual and maternal love, adorable madnesses known to all animals, is not at all a desirable thing. Worship, culture is the letter that destroys : exhausted air, breathed many times and heavily carbonized, it kills by asphyxiation. Knowledge is always virgin soil and the air of the mountains. We cannot know too many things. We cannot know enough that the forms of matter of which we consist are the substance of the furthest star, and of all the stars. We can never sufficiently realize that no thought or fancy of man, however extravagant in seeming, can be in essence an error : matter can never belie itself. The search and the name were often wrong : wireless telegraphy is much more wonderful than sorcery ; lightning, light, radiation are much more wonderful than spirit; the imponderable, invisible, inaudible ether is much more wonderful than God: the omnipresent, omnicontinent ether which fills space, and out of which the elements evolve, secreted by the tingling nerves of the bisexual lightning, to become systems and suns and men. We can never know enough that man is the Universe capable of self-consciousness, that there is nothing higher than man. This is the know- ledge that will change the world. 170 PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRHNDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles T^i*! book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 1^ JGTllW EC 2 1 196^ YBL ^PR 5 1)0 -25m-8,'46(9852)444 THE LIBKAKY TTXTTVERSITY G? CAi^IFOR^iA AA 000 369 092 2 lill nil iill: aiiiiH iijii