The World-Saver
By Edgar Lee Masters
If the grim Fates, to stave ennui,
Play whips for fun, or snares for game,
The liar full of ease goes free,
And Socrates must bear the shame.
With the blunt sage he stands despised,
The Pharisees salute him not;
Laughter awaits the truth he prized,
And Judas profits by his plot.
A million angels kneel and pray,
And sue for grace that he may win -
Eternal Jove prepares the day,
And sternly sets the fateful gin.
Satan, who hates the light, is fain,
To back his virtuous enterprise;
The omnipotent powers alone refrain,
Only the Lord of hosts denies.
Whatever of woven argument,
Lacks warp to hold the woof in place,
Smothers his honest discontent,
But leaves to view his woeful face.
Fling forth the flag, devour the land,
Grasp destiny and use the law;
But dodge the epigram's keen brand,
And fall not by the ass's jaw.
The idiot snicker strikes more down,
Than fell at Troy or Waterloo;
Still, still he meets it with a frown,
And argues loudly for "the True."
Injustice lengthens out her chain,
Greed, yet ahungered, calls for more;
But while the eons wax and wane,
He storms the barricaded door.
Wisdom and peace and fair intent,
Are tedious as a tale twice told;
One thing increases being spent -
Perennial youth belongs to gold.
At Weehawken the soul set free,
Rules the high realm of Bunker Hill,
Drink life from that philosophy,
And flourish by the age's will.
If he shall toil to clear the field,
Fate's children seize the prosperous year;
Boldly he fashions some new shield,
And naked feels the victor's spear.
He rolls the world up into day,
He finds the grain, and gets the hull.
He sees his own mind in the sway,
And Progress tiptoes on his skull.
Angels and fiends behold the wrong,
And execrate his losing fight;
While Jove amidst the choral song
Smiles, and the heavens glow with light!
- Trueblood
*****
Trueblood is bewitched to write a drama -
Only one drama, then to die. Enough
To win the heights but once! He writes me letters,
These later days marked "Opened by the Censor,"
About his drama, asks me what I think
About this point of view, and that approach,
And whether to etch in his hero's soul
By etching in his hero's enemies,
Or luminate his hero by enshadowing
His hero's enemies. How shall I tell him
Which is the actual and the larger theme,
His hero or his hero's enemies?
And through it all I see that Trueblood's mind
Runs to the under-dog, the fallen Titan
The god misunderstood, the lover of man
Destroyed by heaven for his love of man.
In July, 1914, while in London
He took me to his house to dine and showed me
The verses as above. And while I read
He left the room, returned, I heard him move
The ash trays on the table where we sat
And set some object on the table.
Then
As I looked up from reading I discovered
A skull and bony hand upon the table.
And Trueblood said: "Look at the loft brow!
And what a hand was this! A right hand too.
Those fingers in the flesh did miracles.
And when I have my hero's skull before me,
His hand that moulded peoples, I should write
The drama that possesses all my thought.
You'd think the spirit of the man would come
And show me how to find the key that fits
The story of his life, reveal its secret.
I know the secrets, but I want the secret.
You'd think his spirit out of gratitude
Would start me off. It's something, I insist,
To find a haven with a dramatist
After your bones have crossed the sea, and after
Passing from hand to hand they reach seclusion,
And reverent housing.
Dying in New York
He lay for ten years in a lonely grave
Somewhere along the Hudson, I believe.
No grave yard in the city would receive him.
Neither a banker nor a friend of banks,
Nor falling in a duel to awake
Indignant sorrow, space in Trinity
Was not so much as offered. He was poor,
And never had a tomb like Washington.
Of course he wasn't Washington - but still,
Study that skull a little! In ten years
A mad admirer living here in England
Went to America and dug him up,
And brought his bones to Liverpool. Just then
Our country was in turmoil over France -
(The details are so rich I lose my head,
And can't construct my acts.) - hell's flaming here,
And we are fighting back the roaring fire
That France had lighted. England would abort
The era she embraced. Here is a point
That vexes me in laying out the scenes,
And persons of the play. For parliament
Went into fury that these bones were here
On British soil. The city raged. They took
The poor town-crier, gave him nine months' prison
For crying on the streets the bones' arrival.
I'd like to put that crier in my play.
The scene of his arrest would thrill, in case
I put it on a background understood,
And showing why the fellow was arrested,
And what a high offence to heaven it was.
Then here's another thing: The monument
This zealous friend had planned was never raised.
The city wouldn't have it - you can guess
The brain that filled this skull and moved this hand
Had given England trouble. Yes, believe me!
He roused rebellion and he scattered pamphlets.
He had the English gift of writing pamphlets.
He stirred up peoples with his English gift
Against the mother country. How to show this
In action, not in talk, is difficult.
Well, then here is our friend who has these bones
And cannot honor them in burial.
And so he keeps them, then becomes a bankrupt.
And look! the bones pass to our friend's receiver.
Are they an asset? Our Lord Chancellor
Does not regard them so. I'd like to work
Some humor in my drama at this point,
And satirize his lordship just a little.
Though you can scarcely call a skull an asset
If it be of a man who helped to cost you
The loss of half the world. So the receiver
Cast out the bones and for a time a laborer
Took care of them. He sold them to a man
Who dealt in furniture. The empty coffin
About this time turned up in Guilford - then
It's 1854, the man is dead
Near forty years, when just the skull and hand
Are owned by Rev. Ainslie, who evades
All questions touching on that ownership,
And where the ribs, spine, arms and thigh bones are -
The rest in short.
And as for me - no matter
Who sold them, gave them to me, loaned them to me.
Behold the good right hand, behold the skull
Of Thomas Paine, theo-philanthropist,
Of Quaker parents, born in England! Look,
That is the hand that wrote the Crisis, wrote
The Age of Reason, Common Sense, and rallied
Americans against the mother country,
With just that English gift of pamphleteering.
You see I'd have to bring George Washington,
And James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson
Upon the stage, and put into their mouths
The eulogies they spoke on Thomas Paine,
To get before the audience that they thought
He did as much as any man to win
Your independence; that your Declaration
Was founded on his writings, even inspired
A clause against your negro slavery - how -
Look at this hand! - he was the first to write
United States of America - there's the hand
That was the first to write those words. Good Lord
This drama would out-last a Chinese drama
If I put all the story in. But tell me
What to omit, and what to stress?
And still
I'd have the greatest drama in the world
If I could prove he was dishonored, hunted,
Neglected, libeled, buried like a beast,
His bones dug up, thrown in and out of Chancery.
And show these horrors overtook Tom Paine
Because he was too great, and by this showing
Instruct the world to honor its torch bearers
For time to come. No? Well, that can't be done -
I know that; but it puzzles me to think
That Hamilton - we'll say, is so revered,
So lauded, toasted, all his papers studied
On tariffs and on banks, evoking ahs!
Great genius! and so forth - and there's the Crisis
And Common Sense which only little Shelleys
Haunting the dusty book shops read at all.
It wasn't that he liked his rum and drank
Too much at times, or chased a pretty skirt -
For Hamilton did that. Paine never mixed
In money matters to another's wrong
For his sake or a system's. Yes, I know
The world cares more for chastity and temperance
Than for a faultless life in money matters.
No use to dramatize that vital contrast,
The world to-day is what it always was.
But you don't call this Hamilton an artist
And Paine a mere logician and a wrangler?
Your artist soul gets limed in this mad world
As much as any. There is Leonardo -
The point's not here.
I think it's more like this:
Some men are Titans and some men are gods,
And some are gods who fall while climbing back
Up to Olympus whence they came. And some
While fighting for the race fall into holes
Where to return and rescue them is death.
Why look you here! You'd think America
Had gone to war to cheat the guillotine
Of Thomas Paine, in fiery gratitude.
He's there in France's national assembly,
And votes to save King Louis with this phrase:
Don't kill the man but kill the kingly office.
They think him faithless to the revolution
For words like these - and clap! the prison door
Shuts on our Thomas. So he writes a letter
To president - of what! to Washington
President of the United States of America,
A title which Paine coined in seventy-seven
Now lettered on a monstrous seal of state!
And Washington is silent, never answers,
And leaves our Thomas shivering in a cell,
Who hears the guillotine go slash and click!
Perhaps this is the nucleus of my drama.
Or else to show that Washington was wise
Respecting England's hatred of our Thomas,
And wise to lift no finger to save Thomas,
Incurring England's wrath, who hated Thomas
For pamphlets like the "Crisis" "Common Sense."
That may be just the story for my drama.
Old Homer satirized the human race
For warring for the rescue of a Cyprian.
But there's not stuff for satire in a war
Ensuing on the insult for the rescue
Of nothing but a fellow who wrote pamphlets,
And won a continent for the rescuer.
That's tragedy, the more so if the fellow
Likes rum and writes that Jesus was a man.
This crushing of poor Thomas in the hate
Of England and her power, America's
Great fear and lowered strength might make a drama
As showing how the more you do in life
The greater shall you suffer. This is true,
If what you battered down gets hold of you.
This drama almost drives me mad at times.
I have his story at my fingers' ends.
But it won't take a shape. It flies my hands.
I think I'll have to give it up. What's that?
Well, if an audience of to-day would turn
From seeing Thomas Paine upon the stage
What is the use to write it, if they'd turn
No matter how you wrote it? I believe
They wouldn't like it in America,
Nor England either, maybe - you are right!
A drama with no audience is a failure.
But here's this skull. What shall I do with it?
If I should have it cased in solid silver
There is no shrine to take it - no Cologne
For skulls like this.
Well, I must die sometime,
And who will get it then? Look at this skull!
This bony hand! Then look at me, my friend:
A man who has a theme the world despises!