Tower of Ivory/Our Lady of Troy
TOWER OF IVORY
OUR LADY OF TROY
Students [singing]
In dulce jubilo—
Drink and be merry, oh!
Wine is old laughter.
Whoso will rise again
Sickens and dies again
Here and hereafter.
No immortality
But this reality
Lasts a day longer.
Drink and be merry, oh!
In dulce jubilo—
Death is the stronger.
Christopher
Better lads! Some'at better,—you there, Fritz,
Your diatonics would make Ockenheim
Writhe i' the worms. You should have Ah—not Ah—
On that first jubilo—o—o.
Matthiolus
Hush you! We stopped the stranger in his tale.
He'd glimpsed at Eden from the Caucasus
When you two started Dulce—'tis a tune
I can't forbear the taste of—jubilo!
But come, good Doctor; here's to Eden. Health!
Saw you the serpent?
Faustus
I saw naught to fear.
There's naught to fear from Heaven through to Hell;
Nothing that mind can't solve. Mind is the king—
Fritz
And queen too—ah the gold and scarlet minds
O' Lasses! Hey lads? And the golden lips
Of many golden tunes,—how goes the song?—
"Bursts the red grape, sweet oh sweet!
Lips o' maid are sweeter."
Christopher
Be still, Fritz! That's an evil tune,—thin tune,
No true antiphony. Grant him a space
To save himself from craggy Caucasus
Before you make a rainbow of a maid.
Faustus
Ah, you've the true mathesis, sir, the pure
Sciential. Step by step your logic mind
Works to the core of things; seeks me out first
An elixation, seething of the thoughts
Hot in the stew-pan of the brain before
Elixir's had. All true philosophy
Progresses thus; expulsion here, and here
Assation till the pure digested truth
Turns into fire,—else there is myopsy
And phantoms seen.
Christopher
The true mathesis, Fritz!
You mark? I'm hailed philosopher.
Fritz
His eye
Reflects a certain doubt upon his tongue.
Faustus
The Epicuran, Leo Decimus,
Had such a mind. He questioned how the soul
Which was not, was, and then was not again
Should be immortal; so he summoned him
His doctors and his clerks and bade them speak
Backward and forward, he digesting all
Their doctrines and logomachies and rules,
Believing here, denying there, and ending
With Gallus': "Redit in nihilum quod ante
Nihil." And judged uncommon well. The soul,
Or, as your Paracelsus saith, the four
Seed covers of the spirit—what are these
But thought ill-elixate, a crapula
Troubling the brain?
But I digress somewhat
From Eden; so did mother Eve, but she
Was woman. Man must ever set his face
Toward the sunset, make his pilgrim way
Into the West. There is no pause for dream
With all the shining kingdom of the mind,
All truth, all science, all the stars to reap,
And Time forever clattering at heel
Like bones the children tie to yelping curs.
So then, our true mathesis, next and next!
From Caucasus I wandered back to Rome—
Three days in the Vatican invisible,
Ate with the Pope, snatched from his holy dish
Beneath his holy fingers, stole his cup
Out from his stretching hand; oh saints! to see
Him grasp for wine to cool a burning tongue,
Blistered with meat, and miss the cup and stare
Mouth open at its sudden flight toward Heaven,
While all the table thumbed their beads and gasped
Nunc dimittis, and crossed at brow and chin.
They rang the bells three hours to flout the devil.
Christopher
They blamed the devil, then.—It's so at Rome:
Lack food, lack gold, lack kisses, blame the devil!
Matthiolus
The fools! I follow Scaliger, who says
The devil's dead. Old Trismegistus' self
Ne'er saw him—only hoofspore in the sand,
His ass no doubt. And as for your nine orders,
Beelzebub, Apollo Pythius,
Belial, Asmodaeus, and Abaddon,
Diabalos, Meresin, Satan, Mammon,—
Your hierarchy of sprites terrestrial,
Sublunary, aquatic,—earth and sky,
I'll none of 'em.
Faustus
Your sciolist in truth!
Your true agnosticus! "Unseen, Unknown"
Is sacred text for schoolmen. I myself
With deepest cabalistic—metaphysic—
What have I found o' midnights in the flame?
No satyrs, cacodemons, foliots,
No Bel of Babylon, no Greek Astartes,
No fairies such as Paracelsus saw,
Nor naiads that Olaus Magnus met
And feasted with on some moon-stricken shore,
Nothing of these,—but one who is sheer mind,
The globing crystal of the world wherein
All knowledge gleams and darkens, one who knows
The eagle's way in air, the snake's on sand,
And man's way who is eagle both and worm.
Matthiolus
A marvel truly—was't Vergilius
The sorcerer of Rome?
Christopher
Was't Aristotle?
Wagner
I pray you, master, hearken how the storm
Breathes in the hush, and troubled thunder crawls
Along the rim of earth. 'Tis almost time,
'Tis almost midnight. Hearken!
Faustus
So, my boy!
'Twill be at midnight. Naming of a name
Ne'er brought Shekinah sooner to the ark.
Wagner [hurriedly]
You told them, master, how the bells were rung
At Rome to flout the devil. Tell them now
How you became Mahomet.
Faustus
Ha! Mahomet!
To see me clad in linen setting forth
A crocodility of hours and houris!
The sultan prayed to me; but Moslem faith
Is no theology for scholars. Phew!
I'll warrant there were heretics enough
Fouling the sacred porches where I taught.
Wagner
And then the serpent!
Faustus
Ah, the golden snake
I turned to gold.
Wagner
The burning fiery ice!
Faustus
Here, lad, you're puffing out the tale. 'Twas fire
I froze to ice—the crystal phlogiston.—
[To Matthiolus]
You, sir, will understand. But ice on fire!
Not Vergil's self had science to do that.
Wagner
And how you made king Alexander walk!
Faustus
Hush! Hush! The emperor was not o'erpleased
And all of Innsbruck chattered in its bed.
Fritz
King Alexander! Nay, we heard the tale.—
A certain Faustus, a philosopher,
Who had a magic to restore the dead
And make them rise. Are you—
Christopher
King Alexander!
And did he speak? Was't Greek? What said he then?
Faustus
No word. You understand my science ill
Who think I raise the dead. The dead are dead.
They lie who say that Iamblicus once wrought
Centurions of Cæsar out of air,
That battled and were stricken and could strike.
The dead are dead;—but metaphysic knows
How smoke may shine like armor and be blown
To features of dead kings. 'Tis so with all
Man knows or ever shall know to the end.
Mind shall be king, shall break in through the glass
That shows itself, itself; shall analyse
And test and know and fashion into word
The thing that Is; but no thought ever shall,
Until this siderated sphere be burst
Into a million twinklings, build new thing,
Nor call up life or beauty from the void,
Nor make the dead whose flesh is dead, alive.
Fritz
I wallow in old ignorance. But still
There's miracle in that apparent smoke
You hold so lightly.
Christopher
Aye, that's miracle
To make their hair move. Show us but a glimpse
Of that smoke-Alexander, and your name
Shall ride with Nostradamus' Pleiades
Down to the end of Time.
Matthiolus
By Heaven, Yes!
I'll write you in clear latin, with a boss
Of gold and crimson, on the parchment roll
Of Wittenberg's immortals. But no smoke
Of Alexander. 'Twas a tearful king,
A bulk of griefs.
Christopher
The Apostate Julian
Declares his soul had entered into flesh
Before he conquered Persia. He would be
No better than a lion.
Fritz
Circe then!
We'll have a woman. What's an age-dead man?
Old heroes are as thick as water-cress.
But women, Ah!—the roses that are fallen,
Stars that are dust, old sorrows and old songs!
What woman?
Matthiolus
Helen of Troy!
All
Helen of Troy!
Come, call her back for us, let us see Helen!
Faustus
Nay, she would be but smoke, a puff of smoke,
Smoke and a shadow, woman and no flesh;
What fool desires a woman that no arms
May crush the wine of, and no lips find sweet?
All
Helen of Troy, Call Helen up, Call Helen!
Matthiolus
Show us that mind can fashion out of air
The beauty that the flesh surrendered up.
Wagner
Nay master, let these necromancies be,
These magics out of air, these vaporous
Appearances of flesh long turned to mould.
The clock whirs for the hour. Oh make your peace
With heaven, if there still be—
Faustus
Silence thou!
The mind knows no conclusion, finds no end,
But its own seeking; and my seeking was
The true entelechy, the living seed,
The root wherefrom this universe is blown
A golden flower. Shall I stand because
Time threatens me? Shall I not rather flaunt
My learning in the face of him and say:
"Here see how I make mock of you, how I
Have digged this richest treasure from the soil
Of old forgotten centuries of time;
How I, whom you shall conquer, yet strike down
Your mystery and set this little brain
The worms shall spoil, above your awfulness—
And all with science-ashes and a smoke!"?
Shall mind fear death that knows within itself
All life and all begetting and all end?
Matthiolus
'Tis thou! Forgive me!
Christopher
O the wonderful
Sad eyes, the lips like prayer!
Fritz
Her beauty seems
As all the tides of ocean ebbing down
Out of the heart to her.
Faustus
Oh blind! blind! blind!
Ye eagerly deceived! Ye gladly tricked
To dull believing! Fools! And I have sold
My flesh and old rebellious hope of Heaven
To doubt what you run panting to believe.
I have forsworn all peace to keep aflame
The will you quench in faith—the will to try
All life and living in the Alkahest
Of thought, to set the single mind above
All seeming, all appearances, to match
With sense all emptiness, to crumble faith
Into its ignorance. This blowing smoke,
This shadow of an age-long vanished girl—
Ye gape and watch the fuming vapor twist
And call it miracle. But to the mind
That knows how light and shadow form and solve
Into each other 'tis a petty trick
Of eye on brain, a mimicry of life
As senseless as the many-seeming clouds.
Ye blind who live in darkness and believe!
I wrought the maid to mock you. Now almost
I weep that you have suffered such content
When such great light illumines. Mind has torn
The veil that hangs before the Riddler's lip,
Has found the riddle answered,—time and space
And life and very dying has the brain
Ground to their atoms and their ancient laws;
And soul, and mystery, and stuff of dream
Are rainbow-winking bubbles in the bowl
That vanish and are nothing. Lo, this ghost
That makes a mock of them! This thing of air,
Smoke-wrought and smoke-enduring! Such as she,
Appearances and shadows, are all things
That flesh may not acknowledge,—yet the mind
Has conquered even these, has found them vain,
A nothingness, an emptiness, a smoke.
[A great gust of wind shakes the house.]
Faustus [turning toward the door]
I fear you not; I've held the globing world
Of wisdom in my hand. There is no space
Of all the universe I have not won;
No door is closed—shall I then grudge the coin
That pays for this, or hoard the penny when
The ribbon's bought? It's worth the taste of death
To know that death is silence, and the dust
Is all and end of our eternity.
Nay, death has had no hostages of me;
I hope no morning from him and I fear
His darkness nothing. It is time. I wait.
Fritz
Look! Lo! She moves—her hands are raised—she speaks.
Helen
Yea, I am she whom men call Helen, maid
Of Troy. Long years the beauty Paris loved
Has been a stir of corn-flowers by that sea
Where memory is a tide and summers fade
Into the past like shadows.
Faustus
'Tis a trick!
A dream! A phantasy! The dead are dead.
These are no words! A shadow—
Helen
I am she
Whose flesh is dust, whose flesh can never die;
Helen I am, and yet not Helen, I;
The maid that was, the proud bewildered girl
A world made battle for,—she only sought
Long silence, long forgetfulness of wars,
And burning moon-fire, and the nightingales.
But even dead ye troubled me, ye brought
The wide flare of your searching through the stars
To harry me, my name was driven leaf
In winds of your great longing, I became
All songs that all men sang me, all faint dreams
That sought back into time for me, all grief
Of hearts but half-forgetting,—I am these.
I am the pain of young men memorous
Of beauty that they never knew, and loss
They never suffered. I am love that flames
Sometimes at twilight when forlorn sweet names
Of beautiful dead women make a tune
Like lost Sirenicas. I am the fire
Your passion builded, shadow of your hearts,
A fallen leaf of dusk the riding moon
Of your adoring shakes upon the grass.
Lo! I am she ye seek in every maid
Ye love and leave again. I am desire
Of woman that no man may slake in woman.
This thing am I,—a rose the world has dreamed.
[She vanishes.]
Faustus
'A rose the world has dreamed';—and I, I stood
Peak-high in those grey mountains of my mind
And saw all truth, all science, all the laws
Spread out beneath my feet. I sold all things
To know that all I knew was all the world
Of knowledge; and I bought—why, nothing then,—
Or only this at last—a space to know
That out beyond my farthest reach of thought
All knowledge shines—a radiance of stars.