A Masque of Reason Read online

  The Masque of Death

  by Robert Frost

  Copyright 1945 Robert Frost

  This edition published by Reading Essentials

  All Rights Reserved

  A MASQUE

  OF REASON

  BY

  ROBERT FROST

  A MASQUE OF REASON

  A fair oasis in the purest desert.

  A man sits leaning back against a palm.

  His wife lies by him looking at the sky.

  Man

  You’re not asleep?

  Wife

  No, I can hear you. Why?

  Man

  I said the incense tree’s on fire again.

  Wife

  You mean the Burning Bush?

  Man

  The Christmas Tree.

  Wife

  I shouldn’t be surprised.

  Man

  The strangest light!

  Wife

  There’s a strange light on everything today.

  Man

  The myrrh tree gives it. Smell the rosin burning?

  The ornaments the Greek artificers

  Made for the Emperor Alexius,

  The Star of Bethlehem, the pomegranates,

  The birds, seem all on fire with Paradise.

  And hark, the gold enameled nightingales

  Are singing. Yes, and look, the Tree is troubled.

  Someone’s caught in the branches.

  Wife

  So there is.

  He can’t get out.

  Man

  He’s loose! He’s out!

  Wife

  It’s God.

  I’d know Him by Blake’s picture anywhere.

  Now what’s He doing?

  Man

  Pitching throne, I guess,

  Here by our atoll.

  Wife

  Something Byzantine.

  (The throne’s a plywood flat, prefabricated,

  That God pulls lightly upright on its hinges

  And stands beside, supporting it in place.)

  Perhaps for an Olympic Tournament,

  Or Court of Love.

  Man

  More likely Royal Court—

  Or Court of Law, and this is Judgment Day.

  I trust it is. Here’s where I lay aside

  My varying opinion of myself

  And come to rest in an official verdict.

  Suffer yourself to be admired, my love,

  As Waller says.

  Wife

  Or not admired. Go over

  And speak to Him before the others come.

  Tell Him He may remember you: you’re Job.

  God

  Oh, I remember well: you’re Job, my Patient.

  How are you now? I trust you’re quite recovered,

  And feel no ill effects from what I gave you.

  Job

  Gave me in truth: I like the frank admission.

  I am a name for being put upon.

  But, yes, I’m fine, except for now and then

  A reminiscent twinge of rheumatism.

  The let-up’s heavenly. You perhaps will tell us

  If that is all there is to be of Heaven,

  Escape from so great pains of life on earth

  It gives a sense of let-up calculated

  To last a fellow to Eternity.

  God

  Yes, by and by. But first a larger matter.

  I’ve had you on my mind a thousand years

  To thank you someday for the way you helped me

  Establish once for all the principle

  There’s no connection man can reason out

  Between his just deserts and what he gets.

  Virtue may fail and wickedness succeed.

  ’Twas a great demonstration we put on.

  I should have spoken sooner had I found

  The word I wanted. You would have supposed

  One who in the beginning was the Word

  Would be in a position to command it.

  I have to wait for words like anyone.

  Too long I’ve owed you this apology

  For the apparently unmeaning sorrow

  You were afflicted with in those old days.

  But it was of the essence of the trial

  You shouldn’t understand it at the time.

  It had to seem unmeaning to have meaning.

  And it came out all right. I have no doubt

  You realize by now the part you played

  To stultify the Deuteronomist

  And change the tenor of religious thought.

  My thanks are to you for releasing me

  From moral bondage to the human race.

  The only free will there at first was man’s,

  Who could do good or evil as he chose.

  I had no choice but I must follow him

  With forfeits and rewards he understood—

  Unless I liked to suffer loss of worship.

  I had to prosper good and punish evil.

  You changed all that. You set me free to reign.

  You are the Emancipator of your God,

  And as such I promote you to a saint.

  Job

  You hear him, Thyatira: we’re a saint.

  Salvation in our case is retroactive.

  We’re saved, we’re saved, whatever else it means.

  Job’s Wife

  Well, after all these years!

  Job

  This is my wife.

  Job’s Wife

  If You’re the deity I assume You are—

  (I’d know You by Blake’s picture anywhere)—

  God

  The best, I’m told, I ever have had taken.

  Job’s Wife

  —I have a protest I would lodge with You.

  I want to ask You if it stands to reason

  That women prophets should be burned as witches

  Whereas men prophets are received with honor.

  Job

  Except in their own country, Thyatira.

  God

  You’re not a witch?

  Job’s Wife

  No.

  God

  Have you ever been one?

  Job

  Sometimes she thinks she has and gets herself

  Worked up about it. But she really hasn’t—

  Not in the sense of having to my knowledge

  Predicted anything that came to pass.

  Job’s Wife

  The witch of Endor was a friend of mine.

  God

  You wouldn’t say she fared so very badly.

  I noticed when she called up Samuel

  His spirit had to come. Apparently

  A witch was stronger than a prophet there.

  Job’s Wife

  But she was burned for witchcraft.

  God

  That is not

  Of record in my Note Book.

  Job’s Wife

  Well, she was.

  And I should like to know the reason why.

  God

  There you go asking for the very thing

  We’ve just agreed I didn’t have to give.

  (The throne collapses. But He picks it up

  And this time locks it up and leaves it.)

  Where has she been the last half hour or so?

  She wants to know why there is still injustice.

  I answer flatly: That’s the way it is,

  And bid my will avouch it like Macheth.

  We may as well go back to the beginning

  And look for justice in the case of Segub.

  Job

  Oh, Lord, let’s not go back to anything.

  God

  Because your wife’s past won’t bear looking into?
/>   In our great moment what did you do, Madam?

  What did you try to make your husband say?

  Job’s Wife

  No, let’s not live things over. I don’t care.

  I stood by Job. I may have turned on You.

  Job scratched his boils and tried to think what he

  Had done or not done to or for the poor.

  The test is always how we treat the poor.

  It’s time the poor were treated by the state

  In some way not so penal as the poorhouse.

  That’s one thing more to put on Your agenda.

  Job hadn’t done a thing, poor innocent.

  I told him not to scratch: it made it worse.

  If I said once I said a thousand times,

  Don’t scratch! And when, as rotten as his skin,

  Has tents blew all to pieces, I picked up

  Enough to build him every night a pup tent

  Around him so it wouldn’t touch and hurt him.

  I did my wifely duty. I should tremble!

  All You can seem to do is lose Your temper

  When reason-hungry mortals ask for reasons.

  Of course, in the abstract high singular

  There isn’t any universal reason;

  And no one but a man would think there was.

  You don’t catch women trying to be Plato.

  Still there must be lots of unsystematic

  Stray scraps of palliative reason

  It wouldn’t hurt You to vouchsafe the faithful.

  You thought it was agreed You needn’t give them.

  You thought to suit Yourself. I’ve not agreed

  To anything with anyone.

  Job

  There, there,

  You go to sleep. God must await events

  As well as words.

  Job’s Wife

  I’m serious. God’s had

  Aeons of time and still it’s mostly women

  Get burned for prophecy, men almost never.

  Job

  God needs time just as much as you or I

  To get things done. Reformers fail to see that.

  She’ll go to sleep. Nothing keeps her awake

  But physical activity, I find.

  Try to read to her and she drops right off.

  God

  She’s beautiful.

  Job

  Yes, she was just remarking

  She now felt younger by a thousand years

  Than the day she was born.

  God

  That’s about right,

  I should have said. You got your age reversed

  When time was found to be a space dimension

  That could, like any space, be turned around in?

  Job

  Yes, both of us: we saw to that at once.

  But, God, I have a question too to raise.

  (My wife gets in ahead of me with hers.)

  I need some help about this reason problem

  Before I am too late to be got right

  As to what reasons I agree to waive.

  I’m apt to string along with Thyatira.

  God knows—or rather, You know (God forgive me)

  I waived the reason for my ordeal—but—

  I have a question even there to ask—

  In confidence. There’s no one here but her,

  And she’s a woman: she’s not interested

  In general ideas and principles.

  God

  What are her interests, Job?

  Job

  Witch-women’s rights.

  Humor her there or she will be confirmed

  In her suspicion You’re no feminist.

  You have it in for women, she believes.

  Kipling invokes You as Lord God of Hosts.

  She’d like to know how You would take a prayer

  That started off Lord God of Hostesses.

  God

  I’m charmed with her.

  Job

  Yes, I could see You were.

  But to my question. I am much impressed

  With what You say we have established.

  Between us, You and I.

  God

  I make you see?

  It would be too bad if Columbus-like

  You failed to see the worth of your achievement.

  Job

  You call it mine.

  God

  We groped it out together.

  Any originality it showed

  I give you credit for. My forte is truth,

  Or metaphysics, long the world’s reproach

  For standing still in one place true forever;

  While science goes self-superseding on.

  Look at how far we’ve left the current science

  Of Genesis behind. The wisdom there though,

  Is just as good as when I uttered it.

  Still, novelty has doubtless an attraction.

  Job

  So it’s important who first thinks of things?

  God

  I’m a great stickler for the author’s name.

  By proper names I find I do my thinking.

  Job’s Wife

  God, who invented earth?

  Job

  What, still awake?

  God

  Any originality it showed

  Was of the Devil. He invented Hell,

  False premises that are the original

  Of all originality, the sin

  That felled the angels, Wolsey should have said.

  As for the earth, we groped that out together,

  Much as your husband Job and I together

  Found out the discipline man needed most

  Was to learn his submission to unreason;

  And that for man’s own sake as well as mine,

  So he won’t find it hard to take his orders

  From his inferiors in intelligence

  In peace and war—especially in war.

  Job

  So he won’t find it hard to take his war.

  God

  You have the idea. There’s not much I can tell you.

  Job

  All very splendid. I am flattered proud

  To have been in on anything with You.

  ’Twas a great demonstration if You say so.

  Though incidentally I sometimes wonder

  Why it had had to be at my expense.

  God

  It had to be at somebody’s expense.

  Society can never think things out:

  It has to see them acted out by actors,

  Devoted actors at a sacrifice—

  The ablest actors I can lay my hands on.

  Is that your answer?

  Job

  No, for I have yet

  To ask my question. We disparage reason.

  But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.

  There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.

  Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.

  The will as brakes can’t stop the will as motor

  For very long. We’re plainly made to go.

  We’re going anyway and may as well

  Have some say as to where we’re headed for;

  Just as we will be talking anyway

  And may as well throw in a little sense.

  Let’s do so now. Because I let You off

  From telling me Your reason, don’t assume

  I thought You had none. Somewhere back

  I knew You had one. But this isn’t it

  You’re giving me. You say we groped this out.

  But if You will forgive me the irreverence,

  It sounds to me as if You thought it out,

  And took Your time to it. It seems to me

  An afterthought, a long long afterthought.

  I’d give more for one least beforehand reason

  Than all the justifying ex-post-facto

  Excuses trumped up by You for theologists.

  The front of b
eing answerable to no one

  I’m with You in maintaining to the public.

  But Lord, we showed them what. The audience

  Has all gone home to bed. The play’s played out.

  Come, after all these years—to satisfy me.

  I’m curious. And I’m a grown-up man:

  I’m not a child for You to put me off

  And tantalize me with another “Oh, because.”

  You’d be the last to want me to believe

  All Your effects were merely lucky blunders.

  That would be unbelief and atheism.

  The artist in me cries out for design.

  Such devilish ingenuity of torture

  Did seem unlike You, and I tried to think

  The reason might have been some other person’s.

  But there is nothing You are not behind.

  I did not ask then, but it seems as if

  Now after all these years You might indulge me.

  Why did You hurt me so? I am reduced

  To asking flatly for a reason—outright.

  God

  I’d tell you, Job—

  Job

  All right, don’t tell me then

  If you don’t want to. I don’t want to know.

  But what is all this secrecy about?

  I fail to see what fun, what satisfaction

  A God can find in laughing at how badly

  Men fumble at the possibilities

  When left to guess forever for themselves.

  The chances are when there’s so much pretense

  Of metaphysical profundity

  The obscurity’s a fraud to cover nothing.

  I’ve come to think no so-called hidden value’s

  Worth going after. Get down into things

  It will be found there’s no more given there

  Than on the surface. If there ever was,

  The crypt was long since rifled by the Greeks.

  We don’t know where we are, or who we are.

  We don’t know one another; don’t know You;

  Don’t know what time it is. We don’t know, don’t we?

  Who says we don’t? Who got up these misgivings?

  Oh, we know well enough to go ahead with.

  I mean we seem to know enough to act on.

  It comes down to a doubt about the wisdom

  Of having children—after having had them,

  So there is nothing we can do about it

  But warn the children they perhaps should have none.

  You could end this by simply coming out

  And saying plainly and unequivocally

  Whether there’s any part of man immortal.

  Yet You don’t speak. Let fools bemuse themselves

  By being baffled for the sake of being.

  I’m sick of the whole artificial puzzle.

  Job’s Wife

  You won’t get any answers out of God.

  God

  My kingdom, what an outbreak!

  Job’s Wife

  Job is right.

  Your kingdom, yes, Your kingdom come on earth.