Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MOTHER; A SONG DRAMA, by FORD MADOX FORD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MOTHER; A SONG DRAMA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: It's I have conquered you
Last Line: Curtain.
Alternate Author Name(s): Hueffer, Ford Hermann; Hueffer, Ford Madox
Subject(s): Dust; Grass; Mothers; Nature; Plays & Playwrights ; Dramatists


Characters
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
THE MOTHER.
THE LITTLE BLADES OF GRASS.
THE LITTLE GRAINS OF SAND AND OF DUST.
SCENE.—Just outside a great city. Battalions of staring, dun-
coloured, brick houses, newly finished, with vacant windows, bluish slate roofs
and yellow chimney pots, march on the fields which are blackened and shrouded
with fog. Innumerable lines of railway disappear among them, gleaming in
parallel curves. Fog signals sound and three trains pass on different levels;
the lights in their windows an orange blur. A continuous hooting of railway
engines. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, leaning on the brick parapet of the upper
embankment, speaks towards THE MOTHER, who is unseen in the fog above the
fields.

The Spirit of the Age.
IT'S I have conquered you.
It is over and done with your green and over and done with your blue.
Conquered you. Where is your sky?
Where is the green that your gown had of late?

The Mother.
Wait.
The Spirit of the Age.
I have trampled you down, you must die.
It is only begun
Yet it's over and done
With the green of your grass and the blue of your sky.
Even your great constellations
Blaze vainly, are hid by the dun
Of the smoke of my fires. ...

The Mother.
I wait; I have patience.

The Spirit of the Age.
The smoke of my fires,
The dun of the lives and desires
Of the millions and millions who live
And who strive.
Only to trample you down, blot you out, foul your face and forget.

The Mother.
Ah, and yet.
[The fog to the north lifts a little and discloses clouds of smoke like a pall
above a forest of chimney stacks; a square Board School playground where
children are running through puddles on the wet asphalt.

The Spirit of the Age.
And behold, they are toiling and moiling
And soiling
Your winds and your rains; yea, and hark to the noise
Of the girls and the boys
Of untold generations.

The Mother.
I wait. I have patience.

The Spirit of the Age.
They play in the waters
I grant them, the daughters
Of fog-dripped smut-showers.
Would they thank you for flowers
Or know how to play by your Ocean's blown billows?
Who never met you,
Whose sires forget you,
These nations and nations
Who never saw sea nor the riverside willows.

The Mother.
I wait; I have patience.

The Spirit of the Age.
Old Silence, wait; old Sleeper, use your patience.
You are dead and forgotten
As a corpse that was rotten
A twelvemonth and more;
As dead as the Empires of yore,
As dead and forgotten.

The Little Blades of Grass (whispering).
Listen, listen.

The Little Grains of Sand (whispering).
Ah, we hear; you'll see us glisten
When the Wind shall set us whirling.

The Spirit of the Age.
I am here and I shall stay
To the utter, utter day;
Tell me, you who've lived for ever,
Saw you ever such a fever,
Such a madness of gold-getting,
Such forgetting
Of the Thing that you called Truth—
Such contempt, such lack of ruth,
For your leisure and your dalliance,
As since Time and I joined alliance?
I shall rule and falter never,
You are dead and gone for ever.

(He pauses. THE MOTHER says nothing.)
The Little Blades of Grass (whispering).
Are you there, O all ye others?

The Little Grains of Sand.
We are here, O little brothers.

The Spirit of the Age.
Old Silence, speak!
I had not thought to find you half so weak
In argument. Acknowledge I am he
That ever more shall be.
Be just; confess that I have won
And that your race is run.

[She still keeps silence. He goes on, excitedly.
D'you think that I am frightened by your fools
Who with their rules
And rusty saws from musty stools
In dusty schools,
Squeak." In the very nature of the case,
Unless the sequence of the immobile earth
Shall change, the sun and tides stand still and all
The vast phenomena of peoples, kings,
And mighty Empires be for you reversed,
That day must come when your world-sway declines"?

The Little Blades of Grass.
Hearken, hearken:
Brothers, are ye there?

The Little Grains of Sand.
Brothers, when that wind blows we shall darken
All the air.

The Spirit of the Age.
I heard another fool with:" Time shall come
When the tired human brain,
That now already reels,
Shall utterly refuse to face again
The turmoil and the hum
Of all these wheels and wheels and wheels and wheels and wheels,
This clattering of feet
And hurrying no-whither; deem it sweet
To lie among the grasses,
Where no more shadow is than of the cloud that passes
Beneath the sun." Another squeaked of strife;
Of cataclysms, plagues; and slackening grip on life,
And pictured for us street on street on street
Re-echoing to the feet
Of one sole, panic-stricken passenger;
Pictured my houses roofless to the air,
The windows glassless, doors with ruined locks,
The owlet and the fox
Sole harbourers there;
The only sounds hawks' screaming, plover's shriek
Above the misted swamps; the rivers burst
Their banks and sweep, athirst,
My rotting city. ...Horrid!...Mother, speak;
Speak, mother, speak, who are so old and wise.

The Little Blades of Grass (tittering).
Ho, ho! ho, ho!
The braggart groweth tremulous.
The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust.
Hallo! hallo—o—o!
He is afraid of us.
The Spirit of the Age.
D'you think that I am frighted by these lies?
Old Dotard, I...
I rule; am come to stay
For ever and a day.
Behold,
Where all my million lieges toil for grime and gold.

[The fog lifts suddenly. Against a shaft of pale, golden sky, one sees the
immense City like a watery-edged silhouette. A great central dome, the outlines
wet and gilded by the rays of light; warehouses like black iron cliffs, square
along a river; black barges, with pale lights at the bows, creeping down the
glassy yellow water; forests of chimney stacks and of masts of shipping.

Answer, old witch; old silent envier of my joy,
I challenge you, old Hecate.

The Mother (very softly).
Where is Troy?

The Spirit of the Age.
What's Troy compared to me?

The Mother.
Where Carthage, Nineve,
Where Greece, where Egypt, where are all that host
Whose very names are lost?

The Little Blades of Grass (whispering).
When we crave them,
Then we have them.

The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust.
When the winds blow we o'er-ride them,
And we hide them
Silently.

The Spirit of the Age.
What were they all—all of them measured by me?
For never among the Nations
And never between the Oceans,
Were known such emanations
Of tense, strung-nerved emotions,
Such strivings,
Never such hivings
Of humans...

The Mother.
Son, those cities of the plain and of the shore!
My winds blew and their fleets were shattered,
My waves raged their harbours a-choke;
A very little their strivings mattered,
Little their tenseness; their hivings broke
For evermore.

Little one, I who am young, furnished them graves and I sung
Dirges above them. You have your millions,
Men of all nations, I have my billions and billions and billions,
Of those who are stronger than men; whose persistence,
Whose creeping on sods, and flight down the winds evades the last watch,
overpowers the hopeless resistance.

The Little Blades of Grass.
Hearken, hearken:
Brothers, are ye there?

The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust.
Brothers, when that wind blows we shall darken
All the air.

The Mother.
Son: when I turn in my slumber,
Your cities withouten number
Shall fall. ... There shall remain upon the ground
Rubble and rubbish; a rising and settling of dust all round,
Here and there a mound. ...
And the grass will come a-creeping,
And the sands come sifting, sweeping,
Down the winds and up the current.
Dry and dead and curst, abhorrent.
Grass for the cities of the plains and of the hills; sand and bitter dust for
the cities of the shore.

Little one, I who am old, hid all those strivings of yore,
Little one, I old and grey,
Bid you play,
Wrestle and worry and play in the folds of my dress,
Till you tire, and the fire of your passions fails in your earth-weariness.
Little one, I who am kind, give you time till you tire of your play,
Time till you weary and say:
"Hold; enough of our making-believe.
Ah, children, leave striving and leave
The little small things that we deemed
Above price; all the playthings that seemed
Worth a world of contriving and strife."
When the glimmer of gold loses life
And its weight groweth deader and deader,
And no one shall crave to be leader,
O'ermasterer, lord of the knife.

Little one, I who am wise, bid you go back to your play,
Play the swift game thro' the day.
When even comes you shall kneel down and pray,
And, well-content, at last lay down your head
Upon my ultimate bed
And lose the tenseness of your futile quest
In me who offer rest.
(The fog sweeps down: the city disappears. The Spirit of the Age says in a low
voice.)
Poor wand'ring proser,
Poor worn-out, mutt'ring dozer,
With your old saws
Of sempiternal laws,
The day's to me not you...
Strike down the old; cry onwards to the new.
[A train rumbles slowly past, going cautiously through the yellow fog.

The Little Blades of Grass (whispering).
Hearken, hearken:
Brothers, are ye there?

The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust (whispering back).

Brothers, when that wind blows we shall darken
All the air.

CURTAIN.





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