Festus · Scene 9 (2/2) (2/3)

| Festus | The future will have glory not the less. I can conceive a time when the world shall be Much better visibly, and when, as far As social life and its relations tend, Men, morals, manners shall be lifted up To a pure height we know not of nor dream;⁠— When all men’s rights and duties shall be clear, And charitably exercised and borne; When education, conscience, and good deeds Shall have just equal sway, and civil claims;⁠— Great crimes shall be cast out, as were of old Devils possessing madmen:⁠—Truth shall reign, Nature shall be rethroned, and man sublimed. | | Student | Oh! then may Heaven come down again to earth; And dwell with her, as once, like to a friend. | | Lucifer | As like each other as a sword and scythe. Oh! then shall lions mew and lambkins roar! | | Festus | And having studied⁠—what next? | | Student | Much I long To view the capital city of the world. The mountains, the great cities, and the sea, Are each an era in the life of youth. | | Festus | There to get worldly ways, and thoughts, and schemes; To learn to detect, distrust, despise mankind⁠— To ken a false factitious glare amid much That shines with seeming saintlike purity⁠— To gloss misdeeds⁠—to trifle with great truths⁠— To pit the brain against the heart, and plead Wit before wisdom⁠—these are the world’s ways: It learns us to lose that in crowds which we Must after seek alone⁠—our innocence; And when the crowd is gone. | | Student | Not only that: There all great things are round one. Interests. Mighty and mountainous of estimate, Are daily heaped or scattered ’neath the eye. Great deeds, great thoughts, great schemes, and crimes, and all Which is in purpose, or in practice, great Of human nature⁠—there are common things. Men make themselves be deathless as in spite; As if they waged some lineal feud with time; As though their fathers were immortal, too, And immortality an every-day Accomplishment. | | Festus | Fie! fie! ’tis more for this: Amid gayer people and more wanton ways, To give a loose to all the lists of youth⁠— To tr your passion flowers high ahead, And bind them on your brow as others do. The mornlit revel and the shameless mate⁠— The tabled hues of darkness and of blood⁠— The published bosom and the crowning smile⁠— The cup excessive; and if aught there be More vain than these or wanton⁠—that to have⁠— Have all but always in intent, effect, Or fact. Nay, nay, deny it not: I know. Youth hath a strange and strong desire to try All feelings on the heart: it is very wrong, And dangerous, and deadly: strive against it! | | Student | It might be some old sage was warning us. | | Festus | Youth might be wise. We suffer less from pains Than pleasures. | | Student | I should like to see the world, And gain that knowledge which is⁠— | | Festus | Barrener Than ice; possessing and producing nought But means and forms of death or vanity. The world is just as hollow as an eggshell. It is a surface not a solid, mind: And all this boasted knowledge of the world To me seems but to mean acquaintance with Low things, or evil, or indifferent. | | Farmer | Much more is said of knowledge than it’s worth. A man may gain all knowledge here, and yet Be, after death, as much in the dark as I. | | Lucifer | What makes you know of living after death? | | Farmer | Why, nothing that I know; and there it is⁠— But something I am told has told me so. No angel ever came to me to prove it; And all my friends have died, and left no ghosts. | | Festus | All that is good a man may learn from himself; And much, too, that is bad. | | Parson | Nay, let me speak! Aught that is good the soul receives of God When He hath made it His; and until then Man cannot know, nor do, nor be, aught good. Oh! there is nought on earth worth being known But God and our own souls⁠—the God we have Within our hearts; for it is not the hope, Nor faith, nap fear, nor notions others have Of God can serve us, but the sense and soul We have of Him within us; and, for men, God loves us men each individually, And deals with us in order, soul by soul. | | Lucifer | What are your politics? | | Farmer | I have none. | | Lucifer | Good. | | Farmer | I have my thoughts. I am no party man. I care for measures more than men, but think Some little may depend upon the men; Something in fires depends upon the grate. | | First Boy | What are your colours? | | Second Boy | Blue as Heaven. | | Third Boy | And mine Are yellow as the sun. | | First Boy | Mine, green as grass. | | Second Boy | Green’s forsaken, and yellow’s forsworn, And blue’s the colour that shall be worn. | | Student | As to religion, politics, law, and war, But little need be said. All are required, And all are well enough. Of liberty, And slavery, and tyranny we hear Much; but the human mind affects extremes. The heart is in the middle of the system; And all affections gather round the truth, The moderated joys and woes of life. I love my God, my country, kind and kin, Nor would I see a dog wronged of his bone. My country! if a wretch should e’er arise, Out of thy countless sons, who would curtail Thy freedom, dim thy glory⁠—while he lives May an earth’s peoples curse him⁠—for of all Hast thou secured the blessing;⁠—and if me Exist who would not arm for liberty, Be he too cursed living, and when dead, Let him be buried downwards, with his face Looking to Hell, and o’er his coward grave The hare skulk in her form. | | Lucifer | Nay, gently, friend. Curse nothing, not the Devil. He’s beside you⁠— For aught you know. | | Student | I neither know nor care. | | | They pass some cardplayers. | | Festus | Kings, queens, knaves, tens would trick the world away, And it were not, now and then, for some brave ace. | | Student | You see yon wretched starved old man; his brow Grooved out with wrinkles, like the brown dry sand The tide of life is leaving? | | Lucifer | Yes, I see him. | | Student | Last week he thought he was about to die; So he bade gold be strewn beneath his pillow, Gold on a chest that he might lie and see, And gold put in a basin on his bed, That he might dabble with his fingers in. He’s going now to grope for pence or pins. He never gave a pin’s worth in his life. What would you do to him? | | Lucifer | I would have him wrought Into a living wire, which, beaten out, Might make a golden network for the world; Then melt him inch by inch and hell by hell, Where is the law of wrath. | | Student | Oh, charity! It is a thought the Devil might be proud of⁠— Once and away. Misers and spendthrifts may Torment each other in the world to come. | | Festus | Men look on death as lightning, always far Off, or in Heaven. They know not it is in Themselves, a strong and inward tendency, The soul of every atom, every hair: That nature’s infinite electric life, Escaping from each isolated frame, Up out of earth, or down from Heaven, becomes To each its proper death, and adds itself Thus to the great reunion of the whole. There is a man in mourning! What does he here? | | Student | He has just buried the only friend he had, And now comes hither to enjoy himself. | | Festus | Why will we dedicate the dead to God, And not ourselves, the living? Oft we speak, With tears of joy and trust, of some dear friend As surely up in Heaven; while that same soul, For aught we know, may be shuddering even in Hell To hear his name named; or there may be no Soul in the case⁠—and the fat icy worm, Give him a tongue, can tell us all about him. | | Student | Here is music. Stay. That simple melody Comes on the heart like infant innocence⁠— Fore feeling pure; while yet the new-bodied soul Is swinging to the motion of the heavens, And scarce hath caught, as yet, earth’s backening course. | | Festus | The heart is formed as earth was⁠—its Formless and void, and fit but for itself; Then feelings half alive, just organized, Come next⁠—then creeping sports and purposes⁠— Then animal desires, delights, and loves⁠— For love is the first and granite-like effect Of things⁠—the longest and the highest: next The wild and winged desires, youth’s saurian schemes, Which creep and fly by turns; which kill, and eat, And do disgorge each other: comes at length The mould of perfect matchless manhood⁠—then Woman divides the heart, and multiplies it. The insipidity of innocence Palls: it is guilty, happy, and undone. A death is laid upon it, and it goes⁠— Quits its green Eden for the sandy world, Where it works out its nature, as it may, In sweat, smiles, blood, tears, cursings, and what not. And giant sins possess it; and it worships Works of the hand, head, heart⁠—its own or others⁠— A creature worship, which excludeth God’s: The less thrusts out the greater. Warning comes, But the heart fears not⁠—feels not; till at last Down comes the flood from Heaven; and that heart, Broken inwards, earthlike, to its central hell; Or like the bright and burning eye we see Inly, when pressed hard backwards on the brain, Ends and begins again⁠—destroyed, is saved. Every man is the first man to himself, And Eves are just as plentiful as apples; Nor do we fall, nor are we saved by proxy. The Eden we live in is our own heart; And the first thing we do, of our free choice, Is sure and necessary to be sin. | | Lucifer | The only right me have is to be damned. What is the good of music, or the beauty? Music tells no truths. | | Festus | Oh! there is nought so sweet As lying and listening music from the hands, And singing from the lips, of one we love⁠— Lips that all others should be turned to. Then The world would all be love and song; Heaven’s harps And orbs join in: the whole be harmony⁠— Distinct, yet blended⁠—blending all in one Long and delicious tremble like a chord. But to Thee, God! all being is a harp, Whereon Thou makest mightiest melody. Hast ever been in love? | | Student | I never was. | | Festus | ’Tis love which mostly destinates our life. What makes the world it after life I know not, For our horizon alters as we age: Power only can make up for the lack of love⁠— Power of some sort. The mind at one time grows So fast, it fails; and then its stretch is more Than its strength; but, as it opes, love fills it up, Like to the stamen in the flower of life, Till for the time we well-nigh grow all love; And soon we feel the want of one kind heart To love what’s well, and to forgive what’s ill, In us⁠—that heart we play for at all risks. | | Student | How can the heart which lies embodied deep, In blood and bone, set like a ruby eye Into the breast, be made a toy for beauty, And, vane-like, blown about by every wanton sigh? How can the soul, the rich star-travelled stranger, Who here sojourneth only for a purchase, Risk all the riches of his years of toil, And his God-vouched inheritance of Heaven, For one light momentary taste of love? | | Festus | It is so; and when once you know the sport⁠— The crowded pack of passions in full cry⁠— The sweet deceits, the tempting obstacles⁠— The smile, the sigh, the tear, and the embrace⁠— All the delights of love at last in one, With kisses close as stars in the milky way, In at the death you cry, though ’twere your own! | | Student | Upon my soul, most sound morality! Nothing is thought of virtue, then, nor judgment? | | Festus | Oh! everything is thought of⁠—but not then, And⁠—judgment⁠—no! it is nowhere in the field. | | Student | Slow-paced and late arriving, still it comes. I cannot understand this love; I hear Of its idolatry, not its respect. | | Festus | Respect is what we owe; love what we give. And men would mostly rather give than pay. Morality’s the right rule for the world, Nor could society cohere without Virtue; and there are those whose spirits walk Abreast of angels and the future, here. Respect and love thou such. | | Lucifer | Of course you wish Women to love you rather than love them. It is better. Now, you say you are a student. All things take study; what more than the face⁠— Whether year own, or hers you look and long at? There are many ways to one end: here is one:⁠— You are good-looking; but that matters little: It only pleases them. To please yourself Your face may be as ugly as the⁠—. Well, well; But you must cultivate yourself: it will pay you. Study a dimple; work hard at a smile: The things most delicate require most pains. Practice the upward⁠—now the sidelong glance⁠— Now the long passionful unwinking gaze, Which beats itself at last, and sees air only. Be restless, and distress yourself for her. Take up her hand⁠—press it, and pore on it⁠— Let it drop⁠—snatch it again as though you had Let slip so much of honor or of Heaven. Swear⁠—vow by all means⁠—never miss an oath: If broken, why it only spoils itself; It is a broken oath and not an whole one. Frown⁠—toss about⁠—let her lips be for a time: But steal a kiss at last like fire from Heaven. Weep if you can, and call the tears heat-drops. Droop your head⁠—sigh deep⁠—play the fool, in short, One hour, and she will play the fool for ever. Mind! it is folly to tell women truth; They would rather live on lies so they be sweet. Never be long in one mind to one love. You change your practice with your subject. All Differ. But yet, who knows one woman well By heart, knows all. It is my experience; And I advise on good authority. So thank me for my lecture on delusion. | | Festus | Time laughs at love. It is a hateful sight, That bald old grey-beard jeering the boy, Love. But as to women: that game has two sides. Passion is om affection; and there is nought So maddening and so lowering as to have The worse in passion. Think, when one by one, Pride, love, and jealousy, and fifty more Great feelings column up to force a heart. And all are beaten back⁠—all fail⁠—all fail: The tower intact: but risk it: we must learn. To know the world, be wise and be a fool. The heart will have its swing⁠—the world its way: Who seeks to stop them, only throws himself down. We must take as we find: go as they go, Or stand aside. Let the world have the wall. How do you think, pray, to get through the world? | | Student | I mean not to get through the world at all, But over it. | | Festus | Aspiring! You will find The world is all up-hill when we would do; All down-hill when we suffer. Nay, it will part Like the Red Sea, so that the poor may pass. We make our compliments to wretchedness, And hope the poor want nothing, and are well. But I mean, what profession will you choose? Surely you will do something for a name. | | Student | Names are of much more consequence than things. | | Festus | Well; here’s our honest, all-exhorting friend The parson⁠—here the doctor. I am sure The Devil might act as moderator there, And do mankind some service. | | Lucifer | In his way. | | Student | But I care neither for men’s souls nor bodies. | | Festus | What say you to the law? are you ambitious? | | Student | Nor do I mind for other people’s business. I have no heart for their predicaments: I am for myself. I measure ever thing By, what is it to me? from which I find I have but little in common with the mass, Except my meals and so forth; dress and sleep. I have that within me I can live upon: Spider-like, spin my place out anywhere. | | Festus | To none of all die arts and sciences⁠— Astronomy nor entomology, Nor gunnery, for instance, then you feel Attracted heartily and mentally? |