Festus · Scene 7 (2/2) (2/3)

| Lucifer | Then I will not tell ye. You shall wait until Some angel come and stir your stagnant souls: Then plunge into yourselves and rise redeemed. Come, I’ll unroll your hearts and read them to ye. To say ye live is but to say ye have souls, That ye have paid for them and mean to play them, Till some brave pleasure wins the golden stake, And rakes it up to death as to a bank. Ye live and die on what your souls will fetch; And all are of different prices: therefore Hell Cannot well bargain for mankind in gross; But each soul must be purchased, one by one. This it is makes men rate themselves so high: While truly ye are worth little: but to God Ye are worth more than to yourselves. By sin Ye wreak your spite against God⁠—that ye know: And knowing, will it. But I pray, I beg, Act with some smack of justice to your Maker, If not unto yourselves. Do! It is enough To make the very Devil chide mankind⁠— Such baseness, such unthankfulness! Why he Thanks God he is no worse. You don’t do that. I say be just to God. Leave off these airs Know your place⁠—speak to God⁠—and say, for once, Go first, Lord! Take your finger off your eye! It blocks the universe and God from sight. Think ye your souls are worth nothing to God? Are they so small? What can be great with God? What will ye weigh against the Lord? Yourselves? Bring out your balance: get in, man by man: Add earth, heaven, hell, the universe; that’s all. God puts his finger in the other scale, And up we bounce, a bubble. Nought is great Nor small with God⁠—for none but He can make The atom indivisible, and none But He can make a world: He counts the orbs, He counts the atoms of the universe, And makes both equal⁠—both are infinite. Giving God honor, never underrate Yourselves: after Him ye are everything But mind! God’s more than everything; He is God. And what of me? No, us? no! I mean the Devil? Why see ye not he goes before both you And God? Men say⁠—as proud as Lucifer⁠— Pray who would not be proud with such a train? Hath he not all the honor of the earth? Why Mammon sits before a million hearths Where God is bolted out from every house. Well might He say He cometh as a thief; For He will break your bars and burst your doors Which slammed against Him once, and turn ye out Roofless and shivering, ’neath the doom-storm; Heaven Shall crack above ye like a bell in fire, And bury all beneath its shining shards. He calls: ye hear not. Lo! he comes⁠—ye see not. No; ye are deaf as a dead adder’s ear: No; ye are blind as never bat was blind, With a burning bloodshot blindness of the heart; A swimming, swollen senselessness of soul. Listen! Whom love ye most? Why him to whom Ye in your turn are dearest. Need I name? Oh no! But all are devils to themselves; And every man his own great foe. Hell gets Only the gleanings; earth hath the full wain; And hell is merry at its harvest home. But ye are generous to sin and grudge The gleaners nothing; ask them, push them in. Let not an ear, a grain of sin be lost; Gather it, grind it up; it is our bread: We should be ashamed to waste the gifts of God. Why is the world so mad? Why runs it thus Having and howling round the universe? Because the Devil bit it from the birth! The fault is all with him. Fear nothing, friends! It is fear which beds the far to-come with fire As the sun does the west: but the sun sets; Well; still ye tremble⁠—tremble, first at light, Then darkness. Tremble! ye dare not believe. No, cowards! sooner than believe ye would die; Die with the black lie flapping on your lips Like the soot-flake upon a burning bar. Be merry, happy if ye can: think never Of him who slays your souls, nor Him who saves. There is, time enough for that when ye are a-dying. Keep your old ways! It matters not this once. Be brave! Ye are not men whom meat and wine Serve to remind but of the sacrament; To whom sweet shapes, and tantalizing smiles Bring up the Devil and the ten commandments⁠— And so on⁠—but I said the world must end. I am sorry; it is such a pleasant world: With all it faults it is perfect⁠—to a fault: And you, of course, end with it. Now how long Will the world take to die? I know ye place Great faith upon death-bed repentances; The saddener the better. I know ye often Begin to think of praying and repenting; But second thoughts come and ye are worse than ever; As over new white snow a filthy thaw. Ye do amaze me verily. How long Will ye take heart on your own wickedness, And God’s forbearance? Have ye cast it up? Come now; the year and month, day, hour and minute, Sin’s golden cycle. Do ye know how long Exactly Heaven will grant ye? how long God⁠— Who when he had slain the world and wasted it, Hung up His bow in Heaven, as in his hall A warrior after battle⁠—will yet bear Tour contumely and scorn of His best gifts⁠— Man’s mockery of man? But never mind! Some of us are magnificently good, And hold the head up high like a giraffe; You, in particular, and you⁠—and you. Good men are here and there, I know; but then⁠— You must excuse me if I mention this⁠— My duty is to tell it you⁠—the world, Like a black block of marble, jagged with white, As with a vein of lightning petrified, Looks blacker than without such; looks in truth, So gross the heathen, gross the Christian too⁠— Like the original darkness of void space, Hardened. Instead of justice, love and grace, Each worth to man the mission of a God, Injustice, hate, uncharitableness, Triequal reign round earth, a Trinity of Hell. Ye think ye never can be bad enough: And as ye sink in sin, ye rise in hope. And let the worst come to the worst, you say, There always will be time to turn ourselves, And cry for half an hour or so to God: Salvation, sure, is not so very hard⁠— It need not take one long; and half an hour Is quite as much as we can spare for it. We have no time for pleasures. Business! business! No! ye she perish sudden and unsaved. The priest shall, dipping, die. Can man save man? Is water God? The counsellor, wise fool! Drop down amid his quirks and sacred lies⁠— The judge, while dooming unto death some wretch, Shall meet at once his own death, doom, and judge. The doctor, watch in hand, and patient’s pulse, Shall feel his own heart cease its beats⁠—and fall: Professors shall spin out, and students strain Their brains no more; art, science, toil shall cease. The world shall stand still with a rending jar, As though it struck at sea. The halls where sit The heads of nations shall be dumb with death. The ship shall after her own plummet sink, And sound the sea herself and depths, of death. At the first turn Death shall cut off the thief, And dash the gold bag in his yellow brain. The gambler, reckoning gains, shall drop a piece; Stoop down and there see death;⁠—look up, there God. The wanton, temporizing with decay, And qualifying every line which vice Writes bluntly on the brow, inviting scorn, Shall pale through plastered red: and the loose, low sot See clear, for once, through his misty, o’erbrimmed eye. The just, if there be any, die in prayer. Death shall be every where among your marts, And giving bills which no man may decline⁠— Drafts upon Hell one moment after date. Then shall your outcries tremble amid the stars: Terrors shall be about ye like a wind: And fears come down upon ye like a house. | | Festus | Yon man looks frightened. | | Lucifer | Then it is time to stop. I hope I have done no good. He will soon forget His soul. Flesh soaks it up as sponge does water. Now wait! I will rub them backwards like a cat; And you shall see them spit and sparkle up. Let us suppose a case, friends! You are men; And there is God! and I will be the Devil. Very well. I am the Devil. | | One | Says. I think you are. You look as if you lived on buttered thunder. | | Lucifer | Nay, be not wroth. Ye would crucify the Devil, I do believe, if he a moment vexed you. I know well which ye choose: but choose again! Time or eternity? Speak, Hell or Heaven? | | The Crowd | He’s a mad ranter: down with him!⁠— | | Festus | Let him be! | | Lucifer | Stand by me, Festus, and I will by thee. Why, God and man! this is the second time That I have run for my life. |