Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. A MIGHTIER THAN MAMMON, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. A MIGHTIER THAN MAMMON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: At last, after centuries, when the tension and strain
Last Line: And they achieved a real distinction, and the finest kind of aristocracy.
Subject(s): Humanity; Modern Life; Nations; Wealth; Riches; Fortunes


AT last, after centuries, when the tension and strain of the old society
can go no further, and ruin on every side seems impending,
Behold! behind and beneath it all, in dim prefigurement, yet clear and not
to be mistaken—the Outline and Draft of a new order.

When Machinery has made affluence possible for everybody, and yet the
scramble for Wealth is keener than ever, the line between rich and poor as
sharp;
When locomotion and intercommunication practically make the whole World
one, and yet the Nations stand round armed tooth and claw, and glaring at each
other;
When it is recognised that culture and manual labor are not only compatible
but necessary in combination with each other, and yet society remains divided
into brutalised workers and cultivated nincompoops;
When men and women everywhere are hungering for community of life, to pass
freely, to love and be loved; and yet they remain frozen up, starched, starved,
coffined, each in their own little cells of propriety, respectability, dirty
property, and dismal poverty;
When the cells are alive and in pain, because the body is lifeless;
When thousands of pulpits preach religion, and there is not a word of
religion in it;
When the great web and framework of the old order, Law, is collapsing with
its own weight—myriads and myriads of statutes, overlapping, overlying,
precedents, principles, instances, tumbled buried one behind another in
inextricable confusion—and yet never before in the history of the world was
there such a rigid brute-pharisaical apparatus of police, military and prisons
to enforce the 'heads or tails' of the Courts, and the cant of the 'superior'
classes;
When the Millionaire appears on the scene—a new type of human
being—as the Dinosaur may have appeared age ago upon the Earth, gigantic,
lumbering, fateful and dangerous; yet destined perhaps finally to break down the
ancient jungle of 'Government,' and the barriers of the old Nationalities; and
to be a link in the evolution of the future;
When Art is divorced from Life, Science from human feeling, Marriage from
Love, Education from Affection;
When to work freely at one's own chosen trade and to interchange freely the
products with others is what almost everybody really desires—and is
obviously the indicated social form of the future; and yet when nearly everyone
is a wage-slave or works at work which he detests!
When the longing for the life of Nature, for the Air and the Sun, for the
freedom of the Earth and the waters, for liberation, wildness, spontaneity, is
upon folk as perhaps it never was before; and yet they are mewed up more than
ever in houses, clothes, 'business,' and general asphyxia and futility.
When similarly the longing for freedom of Sex is upon people, for purity of
love, unashamed, unshackled, creating its own law—and yet love is
everywhere shamed and shackled and impure;
When the Electric Tension in every direction, owing to this separation of
polarities, is becoming so great that the luminous spark, the lightning, the
vital flash, has become inevitable;
Then at last, not to be mistaken, the outline and draft of the new creature
appears—
The soul that soon shall knit the growing limbs glides in.

A new conception of Life—yet ancient as creation (since indeed,
properly speaking, there is no other)—
The life of the Heart, the life of friendship and attachment:
Society forming freely everywhere round this—knit together by this,
rather than by the old Cash-nexus:
The love and pride of race, of clan, of family, the free sacrifice of life
for these, the commemoration of these in grand works and deeds;
The dedication of Humanity, the wider embrace that passes all barriers of
class and race;
And the innumerable personal affection in all its forms—
These, and a proud beautiful sane utterance and enduring expression of
them, first; and the other things to follow.

The love of men for each other—so tender, heroic, constant;
That has come all down the ages, in every clime, in every nation,
Always so true, so well assured of itself, overleaping barriers of age, of
rank, of distance,
Flag of the camp of Freedom;
The love of women for each other—so rapt, intense, so confiding-close,
so burning-passionate,
To unheard deeds of sacrifice, of daring and devotion, prompting;
And (not less) the love of men for women, and of women for men—on a
newer greater scale than it has hitherto been conceived;
Grand, free and equal—gracious yet ever incommensurable—
The soul of Comradeship glides in.

The young heir goes to inspect the works of one of his tenants;
[Once more the king's son loves the shepherd lad;]
In the shed the fireman is shovelling coal into the boiler furnace. He is
neither specially handsome nor specially intelligent, yet when he turns, from
under his dark lids rimmed with coal-dust shoots something so human, so
loving-near, it makes the other tremble.
They only speak a few words, and lo! underneath all the differences of
class and speech, of muscle and manhood, their souls are knit together.

The Cinghalese cooly comes on board a merchant vessel at Colombo, every day
for a week or more, to do some bits of cleaning.
He is a sweet-natured bright intelligent fellow of 21 or so. One of the
engineers is decently kind and friendly with him—gives him a knife and one
or two little presents;
But the Cinghalese gives his very soul to the engineer; and worships his
white jacket and overalls as though they were the shining garment of a god.
He cannot rest; but implores to be taken on the voyage; and weeps bitterly
when he learns that the ship must sail without him.

[Ah! weep not, brown-bodied youth wandering lonely by the surf-ridden
shore—as you watch your white friend's vessel gliding into the offing,
under the sun and the sun-fringed clouds;
Out, far out to sea, with your friend whom you will never see again;
Weep not so heart-brokenly, for even your tears, gentle boy, poured now
upon the barren sand are the prophecy of amity that shall be one day between all
the races of the earth.]

And here are two women, both doctors and mature in their profession, whose
souls are knit in a curiously deep affection.
They share a practice in a large town, and live in the same house together,
exchanging all that they command, of life and affection and experience;
And this continues for twenty years—till the death of the elder
one—after which the other ceases not to visit her grave, twice every week,
till the time of her own last illness.
And this is of a poor lad born in the slums, who with aching lonely heart
once walked the streets of London.
Many spoke to him because he was fair—asked him to come and have a
drink, and so forth; but still it was no satisfaction to him; for they did not
give him that which he needed.
Then one day he saw a face in which love dwelt. It was a man twice his own
age, captain of a sailing vessel—a large free man, well acquainted with the
world, capable and kindly.
And the moment the lad saw him his heart was given to him, and he could not
rest but must needs follow the man up and down—yet daring not to speak to
him, and the other knowing nothing of it all.
And this continued—till the time came for the man to go another
voyage. Then he disappeared; and the youth, still not knowing who or whence he
was, fell into worse misery and loneliness than ever, for a whole year.
Till at last one day—or one evening rather—to his great joy he
saw his friend going into a public house. It was in a little street off Mile-end
Road. He slipped in and sat beside him.
And the man spoke to him, and was kind, but nothing more. And presently, as
the hour was getting late, got up and said Goodnight, and went out at the door.
And the lad, suddenly seized with a panic fear that he might never see his
friend again, hurried after him, and when they came to a quiet spot, ran up and
seized him by the hand, and hardly knowing what he was doing fell on his knees
on the pavement, and held him.
And the man at first thought this was a ruse or a mere conspiracy, but when
he lifted the lad and looked in his face he understood, for he saw love written
there. And he straightway loved and received him.

And this is of a boy who sat in school.
The masters talked about Greek accidence and quadratic equations, and the
boys talked about lobs and byes and bases and goals; but of that which was
nearest to his heart no one said a word.
It was laughed at—or left unspoken.
Yet when the boy stood near some of his comrades in the cricket-field or
sat next them in school, he stocked and stammered, because of some winged
glorious thing which stood or sat between him and them.
And again the laughter came, because he had forgotten what he was doing;
and he shrank into himself, and the walls round him grew, so that he was pent
and lonely like a prisoner.
Till one day to him weeping, Love full-grown, all-glorious, pure,
unashamed, unshackled, came like a god into his little cell, and swore to break
the barriers.
And when the boy through his tears asked him how he would do that, Love
answered not, but turning drew with his finger on the walls of the cell.
And as he drew, lo! beneath his finger sprang all forms of beauty, an
endless host—outlines and colors of all that is, transfigured;
And, as he drew, the cell-walls widened—a new world rose—and folk
came trooping in to gaze,
And the barriers had vanished.

Wonderful, beautiful, the Soul that knits the Body's life passed in,
And the barriers had vanished.

Everywhere under the surface the streamers shoot, auroral,
Strands and tissues of a new life forming.
Already the monstrous accumulations of private wealth seem useless and a
burden—
At best to be absorbed in new formations.
The young woman from an upper class of society builds up her girls' club;
the young man organises his boys from the slums. Untiring is their care; but
something more, more personal and close, than philanthropy inspires them.
The little guilds of workers are animated by a new spirit; to have pleasure
in good work seems something worth living for; the home-colonists turn their
backs on civilisation if only they may realise a friendly life with Nature and
each other; the girls in the dress-making shop stand in a new relation to their
mistress, and work so gladly for her and with her; the employer of labor begins
to doubt whether he gets any satisfaction by grinding the faces of his
men—a new idea is germinating in his mind; even to the landlord it occurs
that to create a glad and free village life upon his estate would be more
pleasure than to shoot over it.
As to the millionaire, having spent his life in scheming for Wealth, he
cannot but continue in the web which himself has woven; yet is heartily sick of
it, and longs in a kind of vague way for something simple and unembarrassed. He
is pestered to death by sharks, parasites, poor relations, politicians,
adventurers, lawyers, company-promoters, begging letters and business
correspondence, society functions, charitable and philanthropic schemes, town
and country houses, stewards, bailiffs, flunkeys, and the care of endless
possessions; and sees that to cast all these aside and devote his wealth if
possible to the realisation of a grand life for the mass-peoples of the Earth
were indeed his best hope and happiness.
The graduate from Cambridge is a warm-hearted impulsive little woman,
genuine and human to the core. Having escaped from high and dry home-circles,
she found curiously the answer of her heart in a wage-worker of an East London
workshop—a calm broad-browed woman, strong, clearheaded, somewhat sad in
expression, and a bit of a leader among her trade-mates.
Having got into touch with each other, the two came at last to live
together; and immediately on doing so found themselves a focus and centre of
activities—like opposite poles of a battery through which when in contact
the electricity streams.
So the news and interests of the two classes of society streamed through
them. Through them too, folk from either side, especially women, came into touch
with each other, and discovered a common cause and sympathy amid many surface
Thus by a thousand needs beside their own compelled, was their love
assured, their little home made sacred.

Everywhere a new motive of life dawns.
With the liberation of Love, and with it of Sex, with the sense that these
are things—and the joy of them—not to be dreaded or barred, but to be
made use of, wisely and freely, as a man makes use of his most honored
possession,
Comes a new gladness:
The liberation of a Motive greater than Money,
And the only motive perhaps that can finally take precedence of Money.

Men and women mate freely again;
The sacredness of sex in freedom is taught in schools and churches; the
ulcer of prostitution slowly disappears; the wasted love that flows in a morbid
stream through the streets, or desiccates in grand mansions, runs once more into
the channels of free devotion and life.
One by one, here and there, in silence perhaps, unremarked, or perhaps the
centre of a little cyclone of excited abuse, a couple, offstanding, exempt,
determined, assert their right to the highest and best that life can give.
[Fear not, gentle girl, the sneers of the womenkind, nor thou, young man,
the pointed fingers of who can credit not the truth of love.]
To lead their own lives, irrespective of all criticism and custom, and
graft into the great Heart of the world and each other.
Wild as a raven, and a free lover of Nature, is the Irish squire's
daughter. She hates all the conventions and proprieties with an instinctive
hatred—she hardly knows why. She is loved by a man whom the family consider
beneath them. He is not without his faults certainly. But when her parents turn
fiercely on her and him, she determines at all costs to stick to him. Her
sister, the dove, approved and admired by everybody, marries a young Earl just
come into the title; and she on the same day goes off with her friend, and is
forbidden to cross, and in fact never crosses, the threshold of her home again.
The newly-made wife, wedded to an army officer, finds almost immediately
after marriage that their temperaments are wholly incompatible. Instead of
sacrificing herself to 'duty' or propriety, she has the good sense to insist on
leaving him: on leaving him his freedom, and herself the same, as far as may be,
for the future.
And this is of a young man, a man about town and the clubs, and well up in
the finesse of society, but of real affectionate nature—who was truly bored
with his own pursuits and surroundings, and so for him too the barriers
vanished.
He fell in with a girl of quite rustic birth and life, but bright-looking,
and of sturdy almost stubborn common-sense and wit; and was charmed—partly
by her contrast to all that he was accustomed to.
Ultimately—and after some obstinate and exasperating refusals on her
part—he made her his wife; much to the disgust of his relatives—whose
only consolation was to find he did not intend to bring her among them!

She in fact felt (and he knew) that she could not cope with 'society' ways
and customs, and her true instinct was to spare herself the vulgarity.
They took a little house near London, and lived quietly and happily,
allowing any of their friends, who had good sense enough, to come and see
them—she meanwhile learning much about the great world, and he learning
much which he had never known before about practical work and the needs of the
people.
Then, later on, when he came into his estate, and they went down into the
country, instead of living in the ancestral wigwam they agreed it better to
build a decent-sized cottage in the grounds for their own use;
And the Hall and outbuildings they fitted up as Workshops; and gradually
getting the village lads and girls together found them employment at various
small trades and crafts
Till with the output of good and artistic work, their market became
assured, and the affair grew rapidly in extent and solidity.
And the larger rooms they adorned in every way for library and reading
purposes, and music and entertainments of all kinds; and the grounds were partly
for recreation and partly for the cultivation of produce;
So that before long the place became much known and sought after, and the
employees (who all had a share in the concern) were mighty proud of it.
Certainly the old county society felt somewhat shocked and uncomfortable,
and even the tenant-farmers thought things were being carried too far;
But the young couple stuck to their programme, and as years went on, and
after various obstacles and opposition lived down, their lives became the centre
of the love and affection of the whole neighborhood, great and small, but
especially the small;
And they achieved a real distinction, and the finest kind of aristocracy.





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