 Section 1 of the Testaments of John Davidson This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org. Read by Sean Coupagy. The Testament of a Vivus Sector Note, the Testament of a Vivus Sector, the first of a series of poems which I propose publishing at intervals in this forum, will hardly recommend itself to Vivus Sector or Anti-Vivus Sector, and the new statement of materialism which it contains is likely to offend both the religious and the irreligious mind. This poem, therefore, and its successors, my Testaments, are addressed to those who are willing to place all ideas in the crucible, and who are not afraid to fathom what is subconscious in themselves and others, John Davidson. The Vivus Sector appraise me, you, Christian of any stock, suave Catholic, whose haunting art avails, though fires are damped and sophistry undone, evangelists with starved and barren brain, preying on evil consciousness, or you, courageous angelican, the well-beloved enfiothed with the freehold in the city of God, and happy here upon commuted tithes, your vested interests snug in ancient lights, or you, agnostic, fearing yes and no, paltrune upon conviction, you nor you, vendor of poem or philosophheme, patriot, gossip, warrior, all in profits, dabbling, in affairs of men, not one of you with impulse or intent to think my thought, how can you judge my life? Who knows the savor of forbidden fruit, the zest of inquisition when the world delivers whole, unchallenged and exempt, who never begs that truth should benefit, or be at least inoxious, but frequents the labyrinth fires of solitude, wherein the thinker, parched in charred, outlives millenniums in a moment, who reveres himself and with superb despite maltreats the loving kindnesses of men, divine ideas and abstractions fond he, he alone may measure and endure my headstrong passion and austerity, to love and understand the prattlement of amorous, begetters, family folk, inevitably mean and golless hacks of wealth, who ape imagined providence, chief end of man, the ultimate design of intellect, is knowledge undefiled with use or use of fruct, matter unknown, unknowing, crawled and groped through grade on grade of faculty, till thought came forth at last with power to sift the elements, chief end of matter, of the earth aware in us as of that greater matter, orb'd in lit throughout eternal night, is ever more self-knowledge. Thought achieved, the unconscious will, which matter is, empowered it, and enslaved with endless lust of life triumphantly, that knowledge might endure, entart it on this thought, or lustful thinker, man to know under a penalty without reprieve of character and title manifold, discomfort, pain, affliction, agony, inclement, skies, antagonism in love, engrossing hunger from the willing earth, one easy knowledge apt for instant use, luxury, fashion, tribal, vanity, desire of power, disease, the fear of death, extorted many a secret, quaintly masked, embarrassed and provocative, or pent inscrutably in substance, singlet less, but chiefly death inspired the slavish thought with terror stricken zeal to penetrate the only mystery, matter mutable, eternal, infinite in being, power, and semblance. Matters dread the restless thought, knit up with flesh of men that builds and weaves, bakes brews and fights and heels, that would express the very seed of gold and tamely sought elixir, paragon of vanities, and matters masterpiece in high chicane, that, not content with offspring, men must scheme to propagate their own peculiar woe, this helpless thought, solacing unbeknown the passion of self-knowledge, crown and flower of that unconscious will which matter is, always the stolid will matter supreme. I say, this anguished thought, this mind of man, organ of matter's consciousness, rebelled, and with wanton populace of gods, adrift of elves, and rout of forms obscene, slandered material truth, more traitorous still, perverted and obscured the clear unknown, with the immaterial imagined god alone, spirit and a hereafter pitched sublimely in the imperian heaven, in the abyss, profoundly hollowed hell, salvation or damnation, thought aspired, so I escape from matter's galling yoke, thus the tormented common mind of man, a mode of matter warring with itself, but at all times a more reliant thought, a strength of brain, a remnant less than man and greater, in the jargon of the herd, hateful to God and to God's enemies, fulfilled the bent of matter willingly and sought out knowledge for its very sake. It might be shrewdly as a livelihood, or to delight or help mankind or make a name at first, but in the end to know, merely to know, was the consuming fire of these strong minds, delivered and elect. In the high sphere of knowledge which I haunt, when I began to hue the living flesh I seemed to seek, I seemed for who can tell, the drift of aim's utility distorts, the mitigation of disease, not long a bias of humanity deflects advancement in the true materialist, my thought that shared the contumacy men display if feminine in things material, began to turn to matter lustfully, with masculine intent, you start and stare, how shall I cut and thrust, conviction through and through you, now I know, this impress asks a sheet unsoiled, oh for a sudden end of palimcesses, expunge the o'erscored script that blurs the mind with poetry and prose of every age and yield it gladly up, for me to carve with knowledge and to seal with matter's signet. Listen now and think, daily I pass a common shaft ensigned, by weeks of headlong heat, a rotten hack, compunctious, hideful of rheumatic joints, lured with dung and clay, gaunt spectacle of ringbone, spave and canker, shambled about, and grazed the faded sparse, disrelished tufts that the son's tongue of flame had left half-licked, family physician, coaster, cat's meat man, these the indifferent fates who ruled his life, the last had turned him loose to dissipate a day or two of grace, but when he came the raw-faced knacker with his knuckly fists, I ransomed Dobin, pitying his case, he seemed so cheerful, maugher destiny, enfranchised in my meadow, all his hours were golden, till the end with autumn came, even with my impulse sundered husk and shell of habit and utility. Two days he lay adying and could not die, endowed with strength, affection, blood, nerve, hearing sight, laden with lust of life, of the behoof of matter, gilded, bitted, scourged, starved, dying, where could the meaning of the riddle lie? Submissively, like a some nambulist, who solves his problem in a dream, I found the atonement of it, and became its lord, lord of the riddle of the universe, aware at full of matter's stolid will in me, accomplishing its useless aim. The whipsman felt no keener ecstasy when a fair harlot of the cart's tail shrieked, and rags of flesh with blood-soaked tawdry lace girdled her shuddering loins, no hallowed awe that ever wrapped a pale inquisitor, beholding pangs of stubborn heresy. A sweat upon the rack surpassed the fiercest exalted anguish of my thought. I fixed the creature impotent and moribund, with gag and fetter, sheared his filthy mane, cut a foot's length, tissue and tendon, twixed his pole and festering withers, and hammered out three arches of his spine. In ropey bulk stripped to my forceps, marrow matters pith itself. A twitch, a needle's faint appeal recall the Gelding's life, supplied each stop and register of sense with vibrant power, and made this faithful, dying loathsome drudge one diapsan of intensest pain, sublime and terrible in martyrdom. I study pain, measure it, and invent I and my compiers, for I hold again that every passionate materialist who rends the living's subject soon is purged of vulgar tenderness, indeligent, delighted tormentory of bird and beast, and conscious or unconscious of his aim fulfills the will of matter, cutting out a path to knowledge, undefiled with use or use of fruct, by matter's own resource, pain, alchohest of all intelligence. I study pain, pain only. I broach and tap the agony of matter, and work its will detecting useless items. I and those who tortured, forescore solopeds to carve a scale of feeling on the spinal cord, quilted with nails and mangled flights of foul, litters and nests of vermin happily throughout a year, discerning in the end that anguished breath and breath of healthy ease differ in function by a jot, perhaps, or pizon, doctors whom the Florentine furnished with criminals from a gentler doom withdrawn to undergo anatomy and masters who, before the world grew tame, enjoyed the handling in their honored troughs of countless men and women alive and well. Have I no pain? I live alone. My wife forsook me and my daughters. In the night, from silted fountains, sprung insurgent tears arouse me. A marauder in the past, against my will, one of the nightly gang, impressed by sleep to serve insomnia, the queen of waking dreams, caught in her snare, the mantrap memory towards the recreate hour. When life is at the ebb, I rise and think to end it now, but always stay my hand, because we cannot put an end to that in which we live and move and have our being, nor anywhere escape it. Air is matter, the interstellar spaces matter cold and thin, the darksome vehicle of light. To the materialist, there is no unknown. All, all is matter pain. I am one ache, but never when I work, there matter winds, and I believe that they who delve the soil, who reap the grain, who dig and smelt the ore, the girl who plucks a rose, the sweetest voice that thrills the airwood sound, give matter pain. Thank you, the sun is happy in his flames, or that the cooling earth no anguish feels, nor quails from her contraction, rather say, the systems, constellations, galaxies that screw the ethereal waste are whirling there in agony, unutterable. Pain, it may be matter in itself is pain. Sweetened in sexual love that so mankind, the medium of matter's consciousness may never cease to know the stolid bent of matter, the infinite vanity of the universe, being ever more self-knowledge. But whether or no the world is round and he still must go through depths profound or heights of snow on virgin ground to find a grave to find a grave, for he knows very well he must trample out through heaven and hell would never add out a way of his own the world about the last ballad and other poems. A protagonist came into the marketplace and began to sing songs that had not been sung before. As soon as they perceived that the songs were new, the people asked him why did he not sing the old songs. The protagonist answered, I am dissatisfied with the old songs and wish to sing new ones. With that they held their peace and listened attentively and often with approval, because the new songs, like the old, contained many expressions of delight and hope. Besides it was exactly the superficial complexion of things that this people, like most peoples, loved to contemplate. Wherefore, when pain and terror, which are the blood and nerve, the entrails and inmost complexion of the world, began more fully to inform the protagonist's songs that people bade him cease. We want the old songs they cried, the old lullabies, the old flatteries, our hearts ache for these. We never tire of these. It was indeed the case that the poetical imagination of this people dwelt fondly in the library, in the cathedral, and in the museum of antiquities, haunts of pallid legends, barren ideals, and dead gods. Pallid, barren, and dead, at least to this people, because the racial desire of comfort, even more than centuries of wistful loving kindness, ineffectual enough against the facts of life, had leeched out of legend, ideal in God, all anguish and terror, the actual base of such. I should like to sing my new songs, the protagonist said. It is true I come from homes and palaces and beautiful lands, with happiness and mirth, pleasure and enchantment, but I have also been in the wilderness, the prison house, the torture chamber, and the dark places with solitude, travail and pain, bitter laughter and despair. I have told you the testaments of the vivisector and of the man forbid. I am now about to tell you the testament of the empire builder. Afterwards, I wish to tell you the testaments of the harlot, the artist, the Christian, the mendicant, the criminal, the millionaire, the proletarian, the convertite, the evolutionist, the deliverer, and others that are eager to be told. I understand that these testaments are likely to displease religious and irreligious minds, the pessimists and the optimists alike. I therefore invite the attention of free intelligences, and, if it may be, of intelligences which, although not free, are yet able to elude the vigilance of whatever creed system or theory has them in charge. A huge moiety of the crowd drew off, and thought no more of him, of those who remain the majority, whether they approved or not, honored themselves and him by their attention. But some began to stone him with right goodwill. I was broken on the wheel in fuel twelve years ago, he told them cheerfully. The executioner, knowing his business and loving it well, proceeded in a leisurely manner that I might realize and savor the torture, and be maddened with anticipation of each ensuing stroke. But when he had smitten me on the breast, and left me for dead, there came by one who undid the chains which found me to the wheel, whereupon, although all my limbs were broken, and my bosom staved in, having within me that material power formally fabled of the gods, I arose and came down here into the marketplace and began to sing again. A man who has been broken on the wheel no longer feels pain, your stones hurt me not, but the lapidation accommodates me much. Desist, I pray you. However, his reflective auditors with placid austerity counseled him against petulance, and those who stoned him insisted with great good humor that they were not stoning him. We are only trying to make out your meaning, they said, and so it seemed to them, for they were very honest people, but in the world where this happened it is in the nature of things, that the apparent deed is often entirely different from the actual one, so that men constantly kill each other without knowing it. The protagonist, reassured, resumed his testaments, and his audience, the reflective portion having not withdrawn, continued to make out his meaning by stoning him. When they had killed the protagonist, they were struck with astonishment, and exclaimed to each other, Why, the protagonist is dead, who can have done this? It is the nature of things that killed him, declared an ancient, who had been the first to throw a stone at him. I wish he had finished his testaments, said he who had given him the death blow. What were they about? I suppose we shall never know. I know, said the ancient, they were parts of one great song. What is the name of this great song? Men of judgment who know its name never tell it, because to hear or to speak the name of this song is to be filled with desire to sing it, and no protagonist or man will ever be allowed to do so. What hinders the singing of this song? The nature of things, but the truth of this parable has not been established yet. John Davidson, the testament of an empire builder. We are the mightiest, the heirs of Rome, and with the power there lies a ruthless obligation on our souls to be despotic for the world's behoof ruthless I say, because the destinies admit no compromise. We must be first, though everlasting war cement each course of empire with our blood. To break with all the ragged past and be the demurege of order and a time stamped with my image is to chafe mankind and mark my power and daring, carved in deep amazement, and a world wide frown is to re-triumph in a storm of hate, selfs the man. You must not let me lie so long, three score and ten, self-knowledge ends in self-contempt, man can be too familiar with himself. Let me not lie so long, recumbent nerve evolve sublime designs, quintessences of wit and strokes of power, where the veins swell and tighten muscles twain, but in my head the turbid leaves of blood settle in fume and harass me with dreams. Last night I saw the universe in visions more intense than any scene my memory can recall, of things beheld and done, while voices quaint or awful in my sleeping ears conversed, I seemed to pace beside an olive brook that slumbered in a wood, the water bore a wandering arabesque of harvest leaves, crimson and saffron ebony, burnished gold and in its bosom coily stowed away fantastic shadows, odds and ends of cloud, sunbeams and purple patches of the sky, under a chestnut tree, whose candles all were out, and scounces broad from green to bronze transmuted. Nenuk, frosty furred, addressed a group of beasts, my lord the elephant, the lion, grave and watchful as a man, aboma, umber-colored, ringed and pied, with stable stains and silver worshipped once, a dreaded deity and a hawk, the vulture king with wings as innocent and die as fleur-de-lis, yet guilt adorned with rose and violet and ephedil engrailed upon his head and sinewy neck, splendor and beauty are the flower and scent, the crown and sign of epicures in blood, beside these humbly nilt, the groundling ape, the rusty hackney truant from his cab, the patient mastiff, and the placid skunk in stalward order, strong against the world. Said Frosty Nenuk, swaying plentegrade upon his foreshadowed souls, the rumor runs that as the rational, unbeastial skill of man develops energies profound and in matter latent, all the earth must pass beneath his feeble heel, and all the tribes of noble beasts in native strength superb be rooted out by him, whether they range malarial of marshes, brilliant deserts laced with ivory skeletons, precipitous essences, remote ravines, bends valleys coasts, inclement, steaming jungles spicy hot, in wove with gorgeous flowers, with lustrous wings, the frozen sea, the silent waste of snow, iceberg and red volcano north and south, regions inhabited to him unarmed, by him untenable were they his, as even the envied quarters of the world forever are to miscreated man of mean inventions stripped, the fangless, wretch, unhappy, clawless, hoofless, tailless, pall'd betrayer of the beasts, infirm, malign usurper, only strong in artifice, how think you, is it true? The mastiff bade, indutably man will oust you all, I know him, selfish as the jealous god his orient outcasts made, no perch of earth will in the end escape his ruthless tools. Alas, cried Nenuk, shall the heavenly dance illumine, swarthy skies with sheaves of light, masses of splendid fire in diverse hues, in purpled, carmine, ruby splashed with gold, deep violet sapphire, emerald orange red, in arched or pulsing crystalline, a-thorked, the darksome firmament, and none of us, huge-footed, serpent-headed polar-bearers, to revel in the arctic glory, feast on blubbered seals that slumber on the flows, outspeed the salmon in his element, and for the kingdom of the icy strand, defeat in battle, swift the sullen morse, a flea ensconced behind the mastiff's ear, chirripped aloud, and Nenuk, my friend, take heart, I, for example, must be soundly squelched, but the idea of the flea remains, for race continues always, permanence of species is established theory. Established nonsense-neighbor, hold your tongue, snorted the domineering elephant, few are the species that endure beyond their geologic period, answer this, where are the giant beasts of ancient fame, the labyrinthodon, the pleosaur, dinornus, mammoth, megatherium, I, the great ox, and the dodo both extant within the memory of the swan, the torteth and the raven, lisp the skunk, allow the wind, good brother, beasts stand off, said the groundling ape, the troglodyte, existence by itself abolishes the ill-equipped of every time and style, or if archaic specimens impede the fantasy of matter thronged with shapes and cataclysms, catastrophes of fire, subversions, aqueous, and glacial drifts, those stubborn prodigies are swallowed up to clear the way for fresh experiment, but this be sure of every horn and hoof, and every insect feather, fur, and fin of use to man survives while man survives, one gallant race besides the simian stock, to which I have the honor to belong of no utility for drought or food, the science and the vanity of man will foster to the end, because by it he swears when he propounds his progress fast from sarcoid origins and a new beloved hypothesis of evolution. Shame, the skunk rejoined with simulated zeal and brandish tail, if man were worth his thought, there would not now be left a single ape, macaque or limmer, lorry or kelethrisk, baboon or gibbon, to twit him with descent from lewd, abominable, quadromains, mimics of men whose pitiful burlesque has helped creation's lord to theorize, ignobally of himself, base troglodyte, I spurn the theory, and I hold your tribe the foulest zoological debauch, the misbegotten brood of some insane unholy prehistoric human race, in loatham coberth, with pernicious beasts, catastrophes and cataclysms indeed, I tell you, troglodyte, mankind will rise, a natural convulsion more devout than pilgrimage, higheera or crusade, more general from the monkeys than the flood, and in the panic of aesthetic ire obliterate the libel of himself. May I be there to see the vulture yept, as will I what I will be, very sure the vultures and their kindred must outlive all other things in order to devour the putrid carcass of the world at last. Nay, hisst aboma in his silken tones, uncoiling sumptuous wreaths of serpent, men will see the vultures out, my ancestors were gods in Anach, I prophecy the final overthrow of bestial power. Gods, gods, cried Frosty and Anook, what are gods? Aboma answered, stock or stone, beast bird, insect or flame or star, shadow of man, or fancied spirit, whom the humans hold responsible, on whom they lightly lay the intolerable burden of their sins. Their sins went, Anook, mystery, what are sins? Aboma then, the quaint abortion, man possesses conscience. Hearing, feeling, taste, sight, scent are shared alike by him and us, but what this conscious is, no beast can tell, unless it be some special cowardice in honor held by man's perverted heart. Certain it is that necessary deeds, the lustful propagation of his kind or happy slaughter of his enemies, this moldering conscious turns to mortal sin. Even in his war on us, sin palsied him, until he made his affable deity. Appoint him, regent, to subdue the earth, with perfect power over all fish, flesh, fowl, and over all the earth, and everything that moves upon the earth, no mortal beast can fathom the fatuity of man. We can, the dusty hackney, we know what conscious is, it is the lash, the lash, and the corroding memory of the lash, how out of horses to contrive machines that shall excel machinery as an art, excels the rule of thumb. Man's problem rose, you put the cart before yourself, my friend, wheels, wear an afterthought, aboma hissed. It may be so, but let me speak my mind, give me my head for once, the hackney, how might enduring memory be evoked in free forgetful stallions, thunder hoofed on prairie pampas, heath and tartar step, exempt as winds that round the vagrant world. Pursue their idle fancies, or in dreams enabre Rome the starry wilderness, how might an agnominious sense of shame? Invade the treasure-laden loins surcharged with proud posterity, those valiant hearts triumphant in the combat of the mirrors, when the great miracle of grass begins, and simple emerald blades elaborate the soul of earth, the virtue of the sun replenishing the sexes, how might they, those hearts of stallions, eager for a heaven of fragrant mains, wild glances quivering flanks, wearing to root their admirable race? How might they lose their courage, how admit the treacherous fear that undermines the will? Mnemonics and a discipline adept in conscious rearing man, the traitor wrought with grisly human craft upon himself, the thing that never ceases to corrode, that makes a memory, anguish is the soil, the root, the stem of conscious, and the flower, the late heat scorched upon the shoulder blades, the slit snout, eyeless sockets, lettered cheeks, cropped ears, main members, mouthless, tongueless maws, in boughs of agony and seas of blood, impalements, flailings, faggots, cauldrons, wheels, man thrust and braided, seed encarved in man a memory and a conscience, so in us, a scalpel to the pride of life, the chief utilitarian sin that man commits, a rim of iron for the narrow way, nailed to the dull blunt foot that might have trod the yielding turf, in fence-less deserts free, for all time, with spitting talons armed, had met her, dreamed us in her warrior mood, a curb of iron in the helpless mouth, a captive's meager fare, and all day long between the shafts, before the wheels, beneath the conscientious, the memorial lash, the torture of the intermittent rack, with super-subtle cunning self-applied, out of the stallion, thus they carved the nag, and crowned him with a conscience, terrible solicitude in labyrinthine streets, and stifling throngs of noxious men usurped the shrouded glance that matched the morning once, a menace, and a somber mystery haunt the sunlight and the shadow, everywhere impalpable, remorseless duty kills. With that, the watchful lion grave and still in leveled tones began he overcomes, within his brittle frame and tender flesh, resides a shameful power that bids him veil his nature from himself, wherefore he swas his genial gifts, and muffles trunk and limbs in lying garments, while his thoughts and deeds, and all the thoughts and deeds of men and beast are purely evil matter-nose, endued with moral liveries, masks disguised as names, parade his world of old hypocrisy as like themselves as men are like baboons, this shameful power to us unthinkable that sees things other than they are inflicts a sanction, as our wise aboma told, on sheer necessities the evil use whereof delights us to the marrow, soul, the virtuous, title, for this poison gland, armament, pestilence, I know not what, that conquers and with loathsome sanction, taints the noble evil of the universe, assembles speed and strength, your mass and weight, my lord, abomas coiling subtly, the skunks, mephitic odour, ninook's grip and hardy hood, the sorry hackney's sense of duty, troglodyte's presumptuous ease, the mastus, courage, bland, would swifter flight, and keener scent than yours, brother and king of vultures into one essential force whose dire enchantment felt in every nerve is all we know of that strange sorcery, because, the undaunted flea exclaimed, the soul partakes, agility phenomenal, outstripping me, well said illustrious peer, the lion laughed, did I forget you friend, not least ingenious give the elephant your salutary power, behold the soul, as near bestial fancy may conceive, but now the lion rose and lifted up a stormy mournful voice, man overcomes, no hope, no help for us, and no escape, for soul invades the furthest nook of earth, and out of earth, not soul itself discerns an airy path to some uncursed abode, how long the race of lions shall endure, aboma cannot tell, but this we know, the desert, darkness, and the quaking things that leave their dens aghast, when the stunned belt and shattered air transmit through circling leagues, the heavy summons, Leonine, that bids reluctant flesh to supper, once again shall hear that bodeful utterance, as the last uncaptured lion falls, then nevermore, behind the bars, the remnant, oh, how long, behind unyielding bars, penned in, and starved on mortals, savorless, a gazing stock of majesty made impotent of old incarnate dread, diurnally abused by human eyes like pygmies, arrows stuck in every pore, or scourged and branded, tamed and disciplined, tame lions, caged and lashed, attempting human tricks, how long sat earth, and afterwards, no lions anywhere, but this, this strangles thought and speech, the soul that cannot but prevail, no scruple nose of self-impugned magnanimity, but like a savage conqueror destroys all record of the foe, the subtle means of our oblivion began, before the soul grew conscious of profound design, if any consciousness of soul belongs, when in the zodiac his art impaled, a constellation of perforated stars, naming it Leo, and with the forgery of monstrous spinks, a lion's limbs and trunk, with eagle's pinions, and the vacant face, an insolent bosom of his woman kind, these treacherous images, significant, with centuries of thought, adorned with dreams, and studied fancy of the nations, steeped in infinite emotion, as in a sea that cross with jewels sunken derelicts, shall be devoutly cherished, as the soul's beloved offspring, when the splendid name of lion, standing once for actual might of matter's own great origin, has ceased to signify, that breaks my heart, my liege, Obama hissed, suave courtier lowly coiled, the soul of man, incontinent in art, protein as omibah, capable of self-division as the inelids, hives off in form and legend manifold, alike in every guise, yet always new, most true it is, that tritons, flaming, drakes, mermaidens, satyrs, harpies, hippogriffs, chimera, charian, serious, minotaur, shell in imagination, overlive, the beast they libel, but the punishment of that incontinence of soul pursues, with like defeat, the victor, victim, man, his Caesar, Christ, Mohammed, Tamerlane, are featureless to him, because the soul, embarrassed by their memory, fearing yet, were impotent to cast them out, invests their proper figure and significance, with increments of fond humanity, for all the world as china mussels, tricked by pious fraud, with automatic slime, their incomodious images, veneer, moreover sire, his best beloved are these, Hamlet the Dane, and the ingenious knight, Don Quixote de Alimenta, shapes unreal as sphinx, or centaur, boyk, or ladly worm, and thus his soul betrayed, condemned and lost, yet nothing knows of all its wantonness, abortive fantasy, and life and death. I, said the lion, grave and still once more, it breaks my heart, to think my race must pine in infamy, and wither out at last, to irrepreable oblivion doomed darkness, and then a road wherein I walked, an old, known road in England near the sea, between its bevelled slopes a silence went, like a full river, gliding unperturbed and moored upon the silence or adrift, the woodland noises floated, carnival rehearsings of that savage epicure, the throttle, who delights to tune his throat with tortured snails from battered houses torn, dramatic interludes of gluttonous starlings who gobble shell and all, with drums and cymbals of some stubborn hammering, nathatch, or follow chat, busy among the wood mites and weevils beak and claw, but soon said human tones and leaden steps, discordant wheels and thudding hoofs broke up the tuneful silence, one strong voice I heard that uttered eager sayings by the way, my voice it seemed, and yet my lips were still, myself I seemed, and yet both young and old, and thus the voice transmuted into speech, the music of the murderous singing birds, with odour nourished, penetrating roots of cleanly flowers and scrupulous select, essential virtue to enthrall mankind with passionate hue and scent, by alchemy innate sublimed as love sublimes a blush, in faces virginal distilled as love distills a wandering sigh from innocence, but I would daub a rose, with noisome filth in celebration of its birth and state, for a badge in beauty's stomacher impale a skull and crossbones, to portend that love and death are one I would and plunge up to the shoulder, fingers, hands and arms, in the world's entrails, a psychometer who knows what spirit is, lets songsters kill and banquet sumptuously as nature bids. The pangs of mollusks, if they suffer pangs, are well endured, that plant throats may gem the air at random, rubies emeralds in squandered largesse pour, and richly pave the woodland paths with chrysalite than pearl, since knowledge kills or cures untie the scarf from love's weak sight, and bid him then be strong, beholding grossly origins uncouth, the havoc of his triumph and the vat of blood he steeps the world in, ancient news, the world's aware, is it so short a while since Cain killed Abel, since Bethsheba's son, deciphered in a thousand ladies eyes the rubric of the preacher, or so long since Gaelia slashed, like fabled behemoth, her bluest veins in fierce self-surgery, the hardy world derides its growing pains, even as the hardy soul despise, desert the cities where nonchalant steeplejacks miraculously keep the clocks behind a century or so, desert the roads the highways laid with broken hearts of men, and country lanes with tear-slaked ashes strewn the latticed hedges, chosen cage of birds and rustic leer yulean graven rusts, the liveried lightnings conduit manifold, luxuriant banks by traffic well manured, where yellow dandelions, all ablaze, and cuckoo buds of saffron light enrich a violet studded ground with ivy scrolled, dull labor trudges here ill-favored wives, whose bodies no no respite, breast or womb abuse with offspring while their season lasts, on errands, shambles, foolish couples creep from shadow into shadow, when the moon dapples the hedge-grow path, or in the ditch on starless nights uneasily forestall a licensed, more convenient bridal bed and blame the egalantines alluring scent as potent as a filter in the blood, hear woeful children odds and ends of life grotesquely play, and hear my lady bung rolls in her landow, she who joined her strain, matured of old on plundered abbey lands, with modern stock fattened to peerage point by drunkards witting not their final cause, hear huntsman gypsy's funeral's picnic spans between the hedges taint the virgin air with human effluence, hateful to a mind, intervail and alone, out of it all, at once my dream achieved a lonely hill wherefrom I saw the ocean welter-wide, like silver founded in a hollow mold, whose confines were the jangling seaboard strung with cords of pebble and the magical horizon's glittering brink, a vapor twirled upon the potter's wheel, the earth that shapes for pity or applause the very clouds rose like a fragile urn enveloping the spacious air, above its rounded mouth, the firmament, a disk of amethyst, received and echoed back in golden showers the lark's continual fugue, this vaporous urn wherein I stand coping its hill-crowned base, diverse of silver sea and emerald land, like glass annealed in water, suddenly upon some flaw of wind or scratch of light, crumbled together and became a cloud that wrapped me round, a loft, a tempest, bore the cloud in me, then whirled the cloud away and left me standing on the verge of heaven, the native air thereof flattered my cheek with velvet wings more sweet and delicate than new-blown zephyrs when the barley bends its egrets to the ocean-tempered breath of mundane summers or touched me and grew still like scented eyelids of an oisk profoundly learned in love, subdued and dumb with passion, in the honeyed-orient night I watched the figures of the blessed dead who wandered in the forests or reposed beside the brooks in glens of amaranth that shamed the rainbow and in fragrance bore the bell from valley lilies and the rose. There were the great who triumphed easily in thought and glance, in word and deed supreme, also the agonists who kept their arms, hatred and envy burnished bright with use, who in their bosoms drove intolerance home and let it rust, making a cankered wound to ring their hearts with rage and wind them up as eastern lovers leased their valiant love should slumber but a moment in their flesh engraft a poignard for a talisman and so transcending wake and bleed to death. There were the warriors they who knew that war can deify disgrace, project and charge ignoble causes into golden grounds, who sought their foes instinctively as bees with fervid song in search of honey roam, whose daily business was the battlefield, their hour of rest, the tedious interval between two victories, who upset the world and deluged earth with blood, and there were those whose craft was silence mainly and magpie speech, whose apparatus of innuendo, nod and supercilious lightning, cabinet chicaneery and documented glows, did and undid and never could get undone, but kept them still on top, and those whose prey was honesty and scruple, foolish greed and sore necessity, who paved with souls a friend and foe their desolate path to wealth. Kings, statement, emperors, proconsoles, popes, dishonest brokers, robbers, millionaires, there too were those who fought the conquerors and would not yield at all, and those who died, contempt and poor, but straining to the last for power and wealth, or at their proper hands refusing life because they failed to break the world's hard heart, and for a traveling rug strip off its glossy hide, the fallen, the slain, the captives, mad men, bankrupt suicides, kings, mistresses in separate arbores sat, sedately happy to be left alone, and harlots of the street in joyful herds, haunted the breaks and perlues wild of heaven, bevvies of mothers beautiful as dawn went up the shadowy aisles, queens of the earth who yielded willing harvest of their wombs, or dynasties time garners proudly yet with simple wives who loved their spouse as well and bore their chubby brats while nature would. I saw, besides, women renowned of old devout adorers of their own delight who treasured health and trained their sensual powers with that innate prerogative of lust, desirous of a world of virile deed which made their chamber doors the porch of death their tumbled beds to bloody beers transformed implacably renewing eager youth by slaughter of successive paramours. All these I saw at home in heaven, all these, and all who challenged fate and staked their lives to win or lose the prize they coveted, who took their stand upon the earth and drew deep virtue from the center, helped themselves desire the world and willed what matter would. A while I slaked my thirsty sight with drafts of heavenly vision till harmonious news assailed my ears with music deeply stained and sweeter than the scent of asphodel. It seemed inherent in the imperial air attuned my pitch to heavens, transpierced my soul with rapture at the thought of agony, and made me search the depths for Tartarus where those stupendous panes of wind-driven wheels recoiling stones of water born and sieves of famished mouths with ghostly delicates deluded momentally were want to ring Exion, Sisyphus, the impious host and those sweet fifty all-save one who slew their virgin bridegrooms in their wedding beds. Nowhere beholding these antique sights my eyes began to ransack space for hell and Christian torments of the damned I looked and looked again to see the city of Dis where heretics their heresies regret of scorn eternal pain regretting not entombed in sepulchures of fire unpaved till judgment to be sealed forever then or the deep sighing forest ominous where suicides like thorns and briars grow uncouth and barren wildings rookery obscene of mongrel birds or to overhear that storm instinct with lamentation shrill where souls of tender lovers world about in utter darkness on the unstable air uplift unhollowed voices loud against the withering blast and terror of their flight like a swift pang of hell it stung my mind there is no hell all these courageous ones Exion lover of the queen of heaven the furgian humorous to who cooked strange flesh to test immortal palates coordinates lord who mocked at death and laid him by the heels the nuptial homicides of Argos strong to keep their maiden heads for whom they chose arrogant Farinata the capwan blind betrayed but master of his fate and all who paired unwed their seed time having come and hear with me an everlasting joy but that sweet music in my heart of hearts as vibrant as the octave bell that hums harmonic mirths to hear his neighbor chime be tokened agony as certainly as braided strains of mundane sound denote a pitiable ambition broken gang of drilled executants an orchestra announced a hell however peopled ruled and wrought to such delight assured I scan the wide domain of heaven and in the midst be held a seated figure richly clad in purple the golden haired with luminous eyes and deep he played upon a dazzling range of adamantine notes chromatic male of chrisulbaril ruby sardonyx topaz an emerald and many a gem unknown plaited the intermediate keys a loom of strings or groove of tuneful pipes I know where saw only in heaven's mist the jeweled keyboard on a jasper plinth and the celestial one who played there on at random glancing by the music held an ecstasy I marked far off and faint as from the earth the galaxy appears a glimmering color diaper the light where in the ethereal powers of heaven were hung thrusting my wedded eyes authority abyss for on the instant I foreboded hell import tune my vision first defined a nebula that girt the firmament then like a tapestry seemed the thickening haze an arus cloth with human eyes embossed with glaring eyes thereafter as a cliff precipitous a tongue abastioned steep encompassing afar the golden climb and vigilant with a million million eyes at last my gaze dynamic groan I saw that this remote environment of heaven tear upon tear of flesh from base to crown this human amputator was hell itself constructed of its denzians my knitted brows and roofed hands swept the vast eternal cirque of heinous agony still as an icy frontier in the moon except that groups and terraces of folk distended myriad mouse of every key the gracious player struck like drifts and flaws of wandering air that ripple summer tides the transient multitudinous gape and cry flickered about the pallid wall I knew as though myself had been the artificer the whole design in every bone and nerve in every sinew and pulse of those that built perdition up the faculty of hell more vehemnant than flame intensely wrought perpetual and intolerable woe and subtler than the torturer's poison used to palsy action and invigorate sense in bloody groupings of the roots of life mortis each body and soul in ordered rank inhibiting spontaneous deed or sound the gracious player on the jeweled keys by power celestial loosed with every touch imprisoned horror and massive cry tuned to the fingered note while winnowing space mellowed the shriek of women and the roar of men into immortal harmony the inelectable beatitude that molded the demeanor of the blessed and lit their faces with eternal look subtle and sweet of malice gratified the salt of beauty and the exquisite original of all felicity materials of hell the altruists agnostic streamers idiots cripples dwarfs all kinds of cowards who eluded fact dwellers and legend borrowers in myth the merciful the meek and mild the poor and spirit christians who in very deed were christians pessimistic celibates the feeble minds the souls called beautiful the slaves the laborers the mendicants survivors of defeat the little clans that posed and fussed in ignomy left by apathetic powers the greater part of all the swarthy all the tawny tribes degenerates the desolatory folk in pleasure art vocation commerce craft and all deniers of the will to live and all who shun the strife for wealth and power for every soul that had been damned on earth was damned in hell set there replete with pangs to watch eternally the infinite delight of heaven extorted from himself and those beside him in the rampart built eternal justice it was good to see divi's in heaven and lazarus in hell mager two thousand years of christian them a dream of blasphemous inspiration no if justice is then there is justice now what is will always be if justice is do i believe in heaven in hell i do we have them here the world is nothing else beauty and power and splendor and delight of chosen ones elect airtime began in loathsomness debility disgrace humiliation travail terror whoa of multitudes of mere medans of all laborer soldiers servants rooted deep he is a slave a prisoner damned in hell whose daily bread depends on toil approved for me i clamored into heaven at once and stayed there joined the warfare of the times in corner trust and syndicate up heaved a furrow hissing through the angry world a red hot plow share in a frozen gleeb and reaped my millions long before my prime then being english one of the elect above all folks within me fate grew strong the authentic mandate of imperial doom silenced the drowsy lullaby of love though now my turbid blood and nerves disused complain of mystery unrevealed and haunt imagination day and night with looks with beckoning looks soft arms and fragrant breath for even in heaven each ransomed soul frequency private and inevitable hell undid my simple immature design and made me what tenfold a criminal no other name for hastings clive and me i broke your slothful dream of folded wings of work achieved an empire circumscribed dispelled the treacherous flatteries of peace and thrust upon you in your dull despite the one thing needful half a continent of habitable land the english hell forever crowds upon the english heaven secure your birthright set the world at not confront your fate regard the naked deed enlarge your hell preserve it in repair only a splendid hell keeps heaven fair end of section two of the testaments of john davidson section three of the testaments of john davidson this is a leverbox recording all leverbox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit the leverbox.org the testament of a prime minister a year ago the secret thing befell that lays me in my grave no name device atonement faith can help a man to die upon myself alone i lane my deeds my thoughts that which i know and am mistake me not i go despairing down to dust and deep oblivion once indeed it seemed to me no stronger brain than mine repelled the problems of the universe that none so proud against obsession bade belief produced its passport none despised opinion so profoundly served and groomed the nature so anointed to shake off the venom of remorse yet here i lie a broken man who stood a year ago the foremost of his time the heart and brain of britain and her empire unassailed by columny by every faction mourned last victim of the old conspiracy the plot eternal none unravels pierced by nameless foes impalpable unseen yet omnipresent yet omnipotent undone by mystery smitten by a thought a poisoned arrow from the infinite or is it that my spirit slays itself a doubter always i and doubt is death therefore to be desired since all things end death is desirable but not by doubt the doom of doubt is to be pressed to death by awful certainty as now i lie spectator sufferer auditor of pangs unbearable stretched out in deepest hell under the overpowering universe when i became the master of the world it seemed indeed an admirable ruse for always ruse in compromise i thought whereby the state in magic leading strings of dialect moped and roamed about its labyrinthine businesses or hung and heating on the brink of anarchy miraculous too it was to hear men lie against each other as the only means in menstruum of truth to watch debate lexiviate matters till the recruitment appeared the perfect smooth exhausted sludge that blinds the electorate and chokes it off this was the legacy of patriotism and still i deemed it the adjusted helm of government forgetting folk forget that greatness but a moment dominates the wayward chance of systems as of men inevitable decadence of powers political and english battlefields established fostered oft with native blood matured in parliaments and dying now debased survivals starved amid the rank usurping thicket of the fourth estate publicity that overthrows cabal affords opinions nostrums men and things of every standing opportunity and is the only true tyrant aside this decadence of parliament i thought an aftermath a precious vertigris a genial mellowing in the weathered bronze of our palladium for the sorcery that charms the soul of england party led enchanted me and held in every sphere my spirit spellbound practice and belief antipods the one in power and place the other to oppose condemn destroy the government the sinner and the sin the opposition the evangelist to break its pride to chaston scourge and turn the pageant of its power and draggled show into the narrow way the universe this species universe i thought that hangs so balanced so complete remains within and turned corrupt a hidden chaos masked with mere cosmetic wisest thought and best heroic deed most beautiful device consummate law and polity of man seem so to him but arenane and void for out of chaos only chaos comes the green and sapphire earth embossed with studs of crystal snow at either lonely pole with orient dawn with sunset in the west the sumptuous rubies of its girdle clasp and wearing gallantly day in and out its azure mantle of ethereal dust that turns at night a sable domino with stars embroidered beauty tenderness the love the passion the humanity the soul of man has wasted on the world a year ago i say this thing befell that lays me in my grave i rose in wrath against the fools and rabble of the house that picked at him the keystone of our bridge the linchpin of the wheel of government the genius of the state the very soul i had your new philosophy in mind defending him my friend his power and plan the very soul of culture now is trade thank you i love it i conservative afraid of novelty a child among the doctrinaires a stranger in the house though foremost there only at home in thought i love it not and how should that concern the automatic forces of the world the golden age returns or rather say that dream fulfills itself for waking dreams are tokens of our fate the debtor of time discharges duly in the current coin you had your age of stone your age of bronze when baffled wonder ignorance tear off together knit made up a soul in man that fenced itself about with arts and rights or found escape and refuge hope and joy in fearless fancy and heroic love then came the iron age impassioned brief a century no more it ends with us this was the age the revolution tore inhuman from the laboring womb of time inhuman or overhuman nothing at all is more inherent in humanity than in humanity this was the age that showed once more how one man's might may need the world like dough and make it in a cake and who the wise man like the fool assays to eat his cake and have it iron age specific unmistakable of guns of armor plate of engines wheels machines of iron knowledge iron thought the age wherein at last the iron book of fate lay open to the world this iron age was doomsday like a robber in the night rifling the sanctuary doomsday and a new authentic dispensation first came law thereafter love and now intelligence for now at last we know and all is now permitted not an accident nor made by any power demonic or divine but matter substance universe become self-conscious by its own innate desire invincibly impelled through trials tests of instinct and brutality man crowns the adventurous effort matter knows itself and man the organ of its knowledge bound forever on this torture wheel the earth in agony confesses what he is not god nor a devil but material stuff that knows and thinks imagines and despairs endures and wills after the iron age we reach the age of gold the dream come true of pagan and of christian soberly i say this 20th century begins no other age than the millennium and every time and climb the cry has been escape escape the future beckon still replete with immaterial happiness and stubborn man imagined things diverse from those that have been and will always be and never can be other than they are but now we know escape impossible and on the toiling of that knowledge comes the golden age millennium heaven and hell that have been always though men knew it not for knowledge to the subject of it makes the character of things oh matter means that man shall not escape and where there is by death and every leaf resolves again to inorganic dust and fumes unseen but the tree dies not and the sighing woods are powerless not to thrive i stood one day and watched a grove of beaches fluted stems with knots and bosses with a boiling sap had burst the rind with intertwining boughs as if they stood impatient for the dance and waiting on the word to break the spell that helmed them rootbound for the younger ones the slender saplings with their branches draped so gracefully about them sure the spell had been dissolved already but they too were waiting happily for the older trees to lead the way or for some idle whim and as i watched i thought the charm will soon be wrought again before these wanton plants make up their minds to trip it down the hill forsake their native grove and see the world and the sharpest remorseless acts may be their only disenchant her at a time when to be conscious of the rising sap would please them well enough to be assured only this that they are not yet dead so is it with the nations and the tribes the classes masses peoples of the earth the leaves the men and women die and rot but the trees stand goth syrathan mongol jew foolish and wise the strong men in the weak the sighing woods in the worldwide wilderness the fixed idea humankind remains until the earth becomes an icicle or falls into the bosom of the sun watching the world as once i watched the trees i think how much more happy more renowned the destiny of those whose long decay distresses tender hearts if tribes and clans man woman child in splendid unison they had themselves before their spirit broke destroyed the spell of life that held them fast the red men of the west the strength austere the adamantan nerve that worshiped pain invented cruelties and took delight to witness and to die in agony so various so protracted so intense that to the tortured indian at the stake a thing of use and want a festival the crucifixion seemed a pleasant dream or the off scouring of the eastern world the melancholy salt whom latin greek and tuton drove through europe's to the rocks the utmost aisles and precincts of the sea who fight for fighting sake and understand no meaning in defeat having no cause at heart no depth of purpose no profound desire no inspiration no belief a twilight people living in a dream a withered dream they never had themselves a faded heirloom that their fathers dreamt how much more happy these had they destroyed the spell of life at once and so escaped an unregarded martyrdom the consciousness of inefficience and the world's contempt but matter firm that man shall not escape while earth remains inhabitable knits his vehemneth spirit of material stuff of longing infinite that will exist therefore it is that with the starless time of actual knowledge and intelligence the golden age appears this docksome dawn of ours a day and night a day and day for whether earth are ready to its doom reels orbit slipped or whether decades hence or next year or tomorrow or today the weight of ice amassed at either pole shall change our axis till a deluge wipe the city the world away and glacial drift plow upon the earth and harrow it again or whether flame consumers comet struck or the earth's crust fall in or to the sun returning once it sprang our orb a feat in wound in pristine fire once more become the brilliant seed of stars to be we know that men shall cease their speech their deeds their arts the wonder of their being passion love ambition charity transcendent thought shall leave no memory token sign or sigh in any speck of dust or nook of space we know that here and now is heaven in hell this is the promised land the golden age this the millennium and the after time the fixed eternal moment sounding on so for our purpose let the passing mood suffice we enter now the golden age in early dream of matters neither formed in molten rocks antique and woven a thought methodic minerals by the wandering veins that traverse ordered masses gold implied at golden age and when it's our awoke in consciousness by simple means of truth perceived at last the metal once again an ancient ophir shown in newer lands predestined to be ours enriched the world with rivers harvests spades and pits of gold get gold get gold and be the golden age so signals matter from the earth of the earth wherever her chosen people pitch their tents religion chivalry crusade romance or war for war's own sake or art for art freedom for man and justice for the world are not or are contained in this get gold one nation must be richer than the rest let it be ours it must it will be ours if we continue matters best beloved right there it was my wandering heart over through my argument and flooded all my thought an inundation of humanity that drowned material truth the soldier starved corrupted tortured into cowardice all men are brave by nature and in health welfare and at their ease as men should be would scorn to do another's bidding souls in factory shred unwilling sex profaned our women are by nature chased as fire how otherwise could chastity be thought soft bosoms strewn with ashes tender hearts dried tanned and stretched from belted wheel to wheel and all the noisomeness that's daily cleansed in woman's tears the horror of the world where in its wealth and power are rooted fast blossom and savory fruit carnation hued and teeming with delight for every sense out of the awful and the excrement distilled the essence of humanity expressed from putrid masses of mankind this surged upon me sobbing wave on wave that throttled speech i stammered to a close then left the house born on this tide i went by the uncouth embankment where the tems in surface eddies coiling and uncoiled entangled by a myriad kegels propellers paddles turbines dredgers oars a ravelled scheme a dismal flood winds down its greasy channel past st paul's that looms above the thunder of the multitude shouldering the skies along tamots with streets of warehouse factory bank by dock and warf until i reached a lonesome region foul malodorous dark in every separate pour of noxious atmosphere a separate stench among the barges plots of pastridge like old unhealed abrasions opened up with sheep like maggots starving in the mud the reaches of the tributary lee enabled the filthily in many hues purple and faded crimson pallid gold and swarthy soot and wrinkled creases gleamed with dusky iridescence and bewitched my wounded fancy like a hellish charm ashamed i trapped the hideous watercourse and lit upon a swamp a festering swamp an ugly gusset of unholy slime where stunted hemlock fought with tufts of sedge it lay a little lower than the lee and took a ropey overflow that slunk beneath a ruined bridge tall chimney stocks on one side belching smoke the riverbank upon another on the third relays of jangling trains a piece of mother earth most woe be gone most horrible for years in prison sick with filth and fitted air irreconisable upon the bridge some human the lumber loafed a dozen men incompetent or drunken all unfit for everything except survival one an old man toothless tremulous unclean his face and temples crumpled out of shape by 70 years assay to thrust and fix his angularity in useful rounds of business eagerly haranged the group conceive it grasp it hoard it in your minds a new possession that looms all self-consciousness in my terms seamy side man is the seamy side of the universe here for a while the universe desports itself in motley cloud we're in its coat of many colors inside out the truth nearer than any saying ever came before and that fantastic image hides yes cried another drunk irrelevant ragged consumptive horrible my tears that scald my suckin cheeks salter than brine with long retention why i weep at last why here i cannot this sweated blood that brands like viturals sobs that shake the world this outcry that might rend the veil and ring through space to startle slumberous overtones unheard among the silent sinful spheres except when woe awakens them these avoucher christian and the wine press of his creed i last of all the christians trembling yet upon the verge in crumbling brink of hell assaulted momently by doubts and fears despite the proven panoply of faith and tortured out of all similitude to humankind can pray this meager prayer lord i believe help thou mine unbelief he knelt unnoticed by the rest for these were heedless of each other stripped in flade of all save personality for me another cried i'm eight years stock a god would long ago have killed me i being i a mystery of iniquity and i said one snuffling with half a palette lips of shapeless sponge and rotting nose i say there is a god i know his andi work i bear his marks about me not a god that shifts and doubles with the moods of men but he that is the old remorseless jew who took his pound of flesh on calvary in my belief in well another cried a squint at me what do you think of us great men i wager mate strange men at least how will you sift it out and cast away by being grateful thus the eager wretch who thought humanity the seamy side of matter gratitude sheer gratitude destroys the courage eats the soul out stuffs the pockets of the wise who feel it not be grateful if you must but never tell or else the world will use your gratitude to starve you out and slave or mendicant will be your doom astonishing i said to find a humorist here a humorist l snorted the monster that believed in god no humorists here we are the men who know your belatoristic prattle what a lie that humor is the salt of literature the truest truth of life the book of books come what's the humor here what's dantes grim the humor of the crucifixion true the brilliant humor of the fire of l and as you said the humorousness of us how can you live i cry how dare to live we are the only folk who are alive their eldest spokesman said the seamy side the naked naves of matter matter loves its aches and pains it knows itself thereby we ate to labor love to brood and dream work cures or kills us but we won't be cured matter has need of drunken idolers fit to loaf and think to understand the world and be its fiercest pains of consciousness let our men said the atheist class or mass tread on the mouths of cowards scorn success reject imaginative solace dreams delusions of desire abandon hope and sick or sound in prison or exempt or chained or tortured daily mock the doom of humankind with a lewd grimace deride the covert nakedness of fate so thinly clad so foolish or shy my soul group halled but i spoke oh fools unhollowed outcasts spirits petrified and evil human lumber self removed self damned do something worried but to fight among yourselves and find out which is first forget that men like you afflict the world think of the great ones such a husky noise broke out about me spluttering like a vat or a cloyed with heat that boils its surface off bestowed upon a sudden great ones l we are the great ones we above beneath about me or within nothing is great or i only i am great greater than thought spirit and flesh my casual qualities but i the individual i am more than soul and body in submissive me the ego ha the ego who shall name who say it who define why every man is every instant instantly himself exactly what he is no more nor less i am the only individual i the truth itself is nothing to believe the highest truth would be to abdicate the individual all things disappear before the sovereign me from out those cries of personality upon the rack a mellow voice a voice sustained arose with one who stood ahead above the rest up starting from a silent session he alone of those who hung about the bridge in tune with fate and master of the mood i knew the greatest man that ever lived he said and all gave place nodding their heads in quick approval as at something found by happy chance when diligence had failed i knew the greatest man that ever lived first let me ask you have you felt at all the torment of the mind when life depends on pleasing others rain mint food abode extorted by the labor of the ends from grudging capital or won by toil of fettered brains abuse of gift or waste of patience in some idle service theft direct deceit or mendicancy no how can i make you truly apprehend the eating cancer in the soul of man dependent for a livelihood unsin the sumptuous worships empires orders arts are established nourished drunken maunt and mad the inevitable never pardoned sin of procreants who fill the earth with souls that must be slaves it is the only sin to thrust a human being on the world i say it simply inconceivable this agony of indigence no tongue no sound can utter it absorbent pain that from the blood of iron color draws precludes the rich distillment of the seed units the sinews patches up the eye consumes unspent the treasury of thought the fund of bullion mint and coin of speech pauses the silent wing of fantasy and sucks the marrow from the soul itself man is the slave of everything he makes this golden silver stamped and milled for ease of business has become his sole concern enough is not enough we cannot breathe without it limpid water healthy air our costly luxuries the world has fallen so helplessly within the mean control of money our the symbol still usurps authority in every province mask the figure drains the life of actual things no vampire like ideas put to use this thing cannot be said but eat the man i call the greatest showed the universe the acme of despair and navvy all the brute by own blood and barn brows like an apes hawk's head sad eyes deep sunk mouth leonine the incarnation of the will to live an instinct absolute at 20 years with pick and shovel none could touch his skill none face him end to end none eat and drink with appetite so ravenous so staunch such malt-proof brains more glibly lewd in speech than creatures of debauch all gone to sex but virginal and fancy and indeed one evening in his 20th year he sat beneath the orthorn in the bottom glade that fringed the northern suburb where he lived pwn its tranquil shadow every tree in golden light stood up an emerald dome a vagrant wind that idled through the world fingering the lucent foliage wantonly about the quaint suburb and valley trailed the scalloped oak leaves bronzed and fallen long that caught its rustling mantle as it passed trees with their wrinkled oids their many ridged compacted bowls their heavy creaking bows their myriad leaves the green tough thick and sweet cream of earth up risen through featherm depths of soil and sap remembrances of these our natal house and only rafters once a corporate board in bed a heritage oculent in brain and blood and guess by him my man of men begot a passionate sense of everlastingness as old as young as purdurable as earth itself he couched him in the wood and aired and felt an on the traveling music of the street that distance can etherealize a rose among the workmen's houses overhead old vogue anew melodious tune or harsh high hammered in the village softly stole a down the neighboring valley deep remote antique eternal as the world old mood of him that listened dreaming every tree upon its shadow stood a thought the bows the wind uncertain side the mellow tune like jeweled mist descended moted shafts of dusky light escaped the journey in clouds that in the ample sun and left his beams a deeper heel of topaz chryso spam to milk the earth with harvest thick as dots a thunder of hoops went by for grazing axe by some unwanted shadow on the land perturbed a skirt a glancing step a shriek a ravished woman and my man of men at one with nature in the ancient way began his tragic course a decade spent in prison turned him out insane corrupt the sheet decayed the weapon dim and act the broken bits the refuse of himself but with a purpose smothering in the dust the ashes embers brands that had been once a proper furnace and a glowing fire with perilous temper in the worn out blade with wallflower on the ruins a branch of stars to light the outcast in the sunless pit and music beaten in the broken art he sought the ravished woman and made her is for now the world to him was sex alone and she the other moiety of the world none other she the woman of his deed is fate the only woman he had known they lived beside the valley sacrosanct to him by a reason of his sudden crime for crime can huddle precincts titles tides as certainly his cavalry remains the holiest sport on earth sometimes he wrought with pick and shovel like a thing wound up sometimes in lethargy his days were sunk sometimes his passion for the woman world like founts of living color founts of fire that steep the clary west in paradise three years went by a child with every year then fate abruptly gripped him by the throat and asked him of the deeds done in the flesh to feed and clothe the woman his fiercest toil required him still to starve himself four mouths beside his own the hunger of his art the fury of his appetite the blood that would ferment and flower the toil the pain the hopeless time to come for him and is when the third child was 12 months old and she the lusty mother come here every day an orchard tree would blossom and with fruit sweet-scented and mature this man of men unwitting how the world shall cease to be and we and all our purpose passion power dissolve like snow and fire and leave no stein instinctively achieved the greatest deed recorded either to an answered fate with utter arrogance the thing is known you read the trial no it made no noise that such a thing should happen in the world and pass from knowledge like a shallow chest midnight beat out upon suburban bells a drowsy madagrel from tower to tower the potent summer moonbeams throng the room and when their youngest child asleep at last released the woman virginal again for every birth restores virginity and a chaste year had filled the flower of hers my hero left his couch upon the floor approached the bed where with her brood she lay and kneeling whispered in her ear she blushed how deep a crimson mantling in the light with silvery bloom like clusters of the vine she turned and kissed him smiled and dove like rose as willing as a bride outside he said and pointed to the moon wandering she went clad in her nitrous splendid in the strength of madness what men do when time and fate the rack and torture of the world have driven them mad reveals their inmost attribute for madness is the flowering of the heart the red rose of the soul so in the strength of madness splendid as a god when gods haunted the world for love of womankind he caught her up and brought her to the wood remembrance of their savage bridal hour the decades wasted womb the later times of anger rapture toil and fruitful love and that and the last year of longing unreleaved the fire and martyrdom of abstinence became a golden legend when he changed the silent alley for the whispering glade the native power and beauty of the night oh then the spicy odor of the earth the green scent of the boughs would do refreshed the miracle of fantasy attained a valiant passion and the wine of life gathered and crushed and emptied to the leaves beneath a author on a grassy couch all dappled with the blossoms of the moon that drifted earthward to the darkling tree for this unmannered love discounted fate upon the very ground these crime had blessed the altar of the coming sacrifice and final triumph of the will to live her bounteous bosom usher eager arms her burning proud insatiable sex her memories molten kisses deep drawn sighs then swift the knife across her milk white throat and the red fountain gurgling in the grass felicity for her but anguish fierce on him laid sudden hold and wrung him hard on an awful voice broke out in wrath a voice he knew not from his entrails torn the inarticulate cry of consciousness caught in the wide coils of the universe of instant mystery suddenly aware yet fronting with a deed of lautist note the mute material infinitude forthwith he menaced heaven stabbed at the moon shook from his homeless eyes the flood of tears good at his loins and perfected the work the youngest first upon the woman's breast he laid it softly down on either and the other two all dead crimson and white a posey for the gods sweet blood warts called at midnight in a london suburb deep his lonely sleep and dreamless in the house his hands had ravished when the morning came he gave himself to justice unperturbed as this recital ended breathlessly in every continent's debauched diseased unman a tender look and terrible from the unsounded depths of beings surged or flowed the eyes and played about the mouth and eye uncovering bent before these things that had been men and now were agony a random harp of tense's torture stretched upon a ruined bridge beside the stunned by this actual knowledge of the soul at home here in eternal torment purged of feeling judgment memory thought i trod the beaten towing path my palsy brain a magic mirror of the things i saw a well-bred gilding fallen on evil days tugged at a flashing rope that dipped and dripped a hamlet sweltered by the riverside warf sparges mounds of bricks carts gravel dross the whole riparian coil of things involved in pungencies of steaming tar manure stale water bitter smoke and plaitive once with unshorn sheep that scrabbled or a bridge bleeding to crop the pasture of the marsh like savage woodlimbs with their hair on end the pollard willows mocked the pleasure boat or athlete skimming in his shell of splints but spectral poplars in the distance kept the secrets of the wind up gathered close and on the verge where sky and suburb met with shadow teeming and with emerald light the forest beckoned on the voyager thither i hastened in my waking dream oblivious of the way the firmament in quaint mosaic sealed of porcelain azure and gray milky and olive-hued umber and flame close canopy the earth an exaltation of suburban larks against the lowering vault shattered their songs a ground be twain across the checkered plain and then the forest took me evening fell i mocked the latticework on swore the bowls of luster just nuts as i walked about and saw the trees keep up a torchlit dance in noiseless chains and figures flitting past the cuckoos beat their golden gongs throughout the echoing forest finches sparrows rend blackbirds and nightingales in every bow discanted music fresh as garlands woven in archery in hollows where the mist began to hang its ghostly tapestry out mistrustful creatures stole from tree to tree the fallow deeper come from their inner haunts to snatch a supper of the crusts and crumbs left by the london ur bird after bird for bore its song as darkness crept abroad till the last lark dropped breathless from the sky only the passionate nightingales poured out their uninterpretable carol rays of jewels dew drops gold chaplets of stars that stained the ashen dusk with diverse fire a sudden silver dissonance a bell a vesper bell destroyed my stagnant mood then those unhappy things that had been men and now in dreams of madness murder lost a dread salvation found usurped my thought into my mind nothing so terrible had plunged before nothing of utter woe until i met these outcasts by the lee had ever cleft the three piled artifice that swathed my life the eager vesper bell invited willing feet led by the sound i reached the forest church and enchanted glad as some lost soul from deep perdition snatched to serve once more its pleasant flesh and blood and every hollowed function of the sense that rooted bob and tithesis that lie twilight against the chancel casement frown and heaped upon the broidered altar cloth a ghostly diaper of colored gloom high in the organ loft a point of gold persisted in wavering flame that beamed harmonic hues of dull uncertain dye and as lamp light bathed the fingered keys the open diaxin moaned and sang like wind and sea within an ocean cave at nightfall when the new moon overrides the ebbing brands of sunset peace i prayed peace for a little give my spirit peace swift came the shattering thought to whom this prayer the surreptitious god semitic lore an arian fable foisted cuckoo wise the god hebdomadol the church exploits the god the harlot swears by common god of hucksters gossips liars hypocrites evangelists disangelists infidels the god upon whose shoulders conquerors hang the burden of their slaughter him whose will the god intoxicated tamerlane obeyed in antolia crushing down a fourfold thousand in a single tomb alive he buried them in one huge pit and heard with rapture holy is the joy he deemed high heaven partook a stifled roar a murmur and a multitudinous sigh break from the heaving bosom of the earth what god what god god of the rack the stake the big battalions and heavy purse why pray at all what's prayer the meanest mode the fond allirium power exhausted grants a grudged occasion when our utmost endeavor fails and thought is spent pray think instead what god is sanely think and what the sanguine source of our immortal hope think how some common trudging neighbor white not hercules nor a titan or the war venerian nor but any honest jack could happily beget for fifty years a hundred wholesome children annually how every rosy jill in cloister's germs of many thousand brats think this and laugh aloud delighted with the naive the rich conceit of immortality and vast exuberance of the race that swells and throbs in every man and woman strings the nerves ignites the brain and thunders in the heart with god the life eternal youth and love demand a heaven of beauty and delight a hell of wrath and fear and valor claims immortal need of victory overthrow the cross of christ who spoke i cannot tell belial or antichrist or northern blood in us that drives us still a viking far and wide we english need no ebrew god whose filthy world in blood and rams and goats uncleansed exacted finally the bland abstraction of a sacrifice divine since the reverberant fire of fantasy the furnace and the mold of blood and brain refashions heaven and earth the world about in consort with the genius of the climb the time the folk and sense imperial doom alive at last in thought indeed awakes a pride of origin and bids us tell what power in this that wins and holds the world shall we not now observantly dethrone the valetudinary god of woe the foreign god that died a shameful death whose gospel told denial and contempt of all that flesh and blood delights and all the great the beautiful the strong the wise exult instead the nerve the brain the blood the power of us victorious englishmen who glad at art invade the quartered globe possessing continents usurping seas of imagination salt and sweet that must be served with treasures and with rights still hankers after ancient images may not the never genius of the race impregnate once again her jeweled womb with the odin freya alder boulder thaw ash ark aloft the clanging clavicle the silver broad snow white stallions elms enchanted bosoms clad in virgin proof brunhilde and the choosers of the slain the cloud above the battle opens home from blood drenched desert mountain valley veldt with lightning throng and thunder hoof we ride across the rainbow to the palaces of as god and the grove of golden fur where high vahala stands heroic even of all our ancestors and shall not we we english that can melt the world up forge a brand new god in actual god at last no evil god to die upon a tree a hale triumphed god who knows no sin sorrow nor anguish nor the fear of death we have that god already have we not the rich man's god of comfort and of ease a god of health and strength the gracious god whose law is freedom and who saves his own by no election of the spirit no by natural selection and the strife for power dishonest english god proceeds his wonders to perform but there the laugh albeit genial froze about my heart because the music now began to wail a tenor bus voluntary limning clear before me as the art of music and that piled the towers of trey in storm hatched light the cross of christ on calvary as it stood a rustic spar a thought a rustic beam the sawdust powdering till the scabris bark and the aroma of the fresh cut tree shrouding the scent of blood the peasant god in every vibrant sinew every nerve convulsed endured the ardent tide of pain that whelmed and interfused him momentaly surge upon surge with every sobbing breath i saw his soul look out from pallid eaves in those dim windows of the universe his faded eyes that yet benign and shone i wept i knelt i kissed the wounded feet i knew the death of god the end of sin forthwith a rustle and a roar of drums a thunder of trumpets and the lofty shriek of strings voluptuous and intense as fire broke from the forest and church became the thoroughfare of 20th centuries barbaric conquerors armies died in blood disciplinates austere aesthetic nuns crusaders monarchs Templars tragic popes heresies tortures trances martyrdom enslavement havoc ruin and the fugue of hellish warfare endless as the winds that rave forever round the storm tossed world the 20 centuries of christendom the gorgeous mask the revelry and route the long protracted funeral rites of god the pageant and obascus of sin rolled through the aisle before me who would hoard i quarrel out is the wild orgy past a purse or two of time when fate provides so great a celebration as the death of god himself the utter end of sin how could mankind in lesser laps of years than those tremendous centuries conceive the esoteric meaning of the cross that god gave up the ghost on calvary and bore away the sin of all the world how could mankind perceive until today that god and sin existed not at all that with the death of christ there also died the two insane ideas god and sin the ghostly sphere of these illusions bursts asunder only now when age on age of war blood drunkenness the clash of creeds in human kingdoms popes hordoms hell have trained the dregs of all iniquity so that at last the passionate heart of man the proud imagination and the dream that hovers homeless as the midst decay exempt from fabulous wonder rooted deep in substance one in multi-form and breathed in all the mystery of the things that are create indomitable will to truth an open mind at home in space and time a stainless memory splendidly endowed with actual knowledge a material soul at one with the material universe the glory of a sane humanity had hardly dawned and lightened when the trump of doom exiled a long enduring sigh a sigh no louder heard and felt throughout the quaking earth and in the zenith reared the great white throne and him that sat there on a loomed space in sufferably bright against his glance the star strewn firmament and evanescent as the wreath of mist at sunrise perished utterly the dead before the throne awaited judgment books were opened in another book which is the book of life and all the dead were judged out of the matters written in the books according to their actions on the right when the eternal sentence was pronounced i saw the great ones of the earth appear magnificently confident of heaven the kings the conquerors the wise the bold the rich the proud and all the lusty lives that took their power and pleasure in the world enter ye blessed enter from the throne the high decree inherit now the realm prepared for you from the beginning ye that use the world i made superb and strength unparagoned in beauty ye that loved the haughty mourning in the radiant night that stored the brilliant hours with generous strife with sweet repose with passion and with joy glories and reveling in the gifts i gave created of the self-same stuff as i and all my sons and systems matter strained from the great staple of the universe throughout millenniums of elaborate choice conscious self-conscious free to know to think to do all ye that had my world in charge and yet yourselves to feel it with delight with noble wars with beauty and with wealth with hope for man with hope for life with life and ever and always life partake with me to all eternity the joys of heaven on the left shuttering i saw it so the son of man and his elect appeared apostles martyrs voterists virgin saints the poor in spirit the mourners and the meek and they that hungered after righteousness the merciful and all pure and heart peacemakers and the salt of the earth i saw upon the left in sore amazement stand depart from me ye cursed from the throne the dread decree into eternal fire deniers slanders fools that turned to scorn the perfect world i made superb and strength unparagoned in beauty ye that stained the haughty mourning in the radiant night seasons and tides with litter cheese ye that stained the haughty mourning and the radiant night seasons and tides with liturgies and forms with cries and intercessions prayers and tears ashamed to use the glory i had given ye rancorous poisoners of life that found temptation only where i offered joy my splendid world a charnal house and me a god of infelicity and woe a god of everything unfit to live hating my gifts of intellect of pride of strength and freedom of the self-same stuff as i and all my sons and galaxies the purest matter sifted forth and strained from the great staple of the universe throughout millenniums of elaborate choice conscious self-conscious free to know to think to do having my world in charge yet set yourselves to drain it of delight of love of beauty passion power supplied the void with lust revenge distressed corruption hate and made my will to life a will to death ye hypocrites that with a holy lie tarnished the cleanliness immaculate of human generation soiling life on to the end from his pellicit fount and origin divine beholding earth a leperous crust of sin depart from me into eternal fire prepared for them that make my will to live a will to die all this i saw and heard and of the sight and utterance unimagined die despairing in my heart of hearts i knew as men must know whose will is set to truth the death of christ to be the tragic end of god himself that purged the world of sin a great expedient indeed ambig with all transvaluation but to think the desolating thought to apprehend the meaning of the edimentine reign and power of evolution in awful terms of god and judgment overwhelmed my soul and now that death at random tortures me and delves and fathoms like a busy mole tissue and marrow now that maggots fret my brain and worms entangle fantasy while casual darkness visits me by day the shadow of the unknown and dreams distress me nightly all my household overhears the outcry of my waking now indeed corroding consciousness of manhood gnaws and macerates the fiber of my mind with pangs of hell and impotent remorse so horrible and sick that sense of sin in all archaic jargon dying hard we're heaven to such unutterable woe it is my bones that speak my skeleton the inmost core of me the soul of soul the skeletons the soul it must be so once when i held the warden ship in hide i handled souls a cripple there of bones unsepple cured is worth a visit skull by skull i searched the infinite abyss of empty sockets till the valiant brow engraved in cleftwood sword in battle axe divulged its secret deep i dug my sight forehead to forehead i to eyeless gap as in a necromantic camera through time and times to the tempestuous strand and moonlight battle in the roaring surf between two storms the beaten saxons fell all day pursued by ominous vortimer and snared upon the threshold of the sea by hostile wind and tide their old allies become implacable antagonist thrust forth for flight war keel on war keel smote amid the ravelled water twisted prows leapt up against the billows spun aloft and burst in ragged splinters on the beach their helpless crews together madly hurled in writhing shawls they wasted myriad died the remnant towed the tide mark death behind and death in front extorting stride on stride the victors pressed them backward into the deep where dead and dying swashed against the limbs of coupled competitors and dragged them down unstable shingle tripped in coiling surge dislodged the surest foot from the torn sky the placid bosom of the barren moon chill mirror of the morning fitful light on cloven helmets flung and cleaving brands on lips that snarled in eyes instinct would fate yet all unheard war cry and weapon rang for high above the din of battle peeled the instant thunder and the brandished waves and shattering trumps and symbols of the blast while bloodshot foam and ruby tinctured scrolls unfurled and withered on the darkling shore the combat banished and a pageant throng the chamber of the skull presenting time revoked through eons of the earliest sun from nebulous stuff condensed which brimmed of yore that spacious womb the jeweled zodiac clasps ah still the biased heaven i mean the loins of ancient night with constellations girt at once in molten rings as daughter cells are cleft and cleft again to don the shape of perfect organs from the spinning mass and staple of the universe unscaled like Saturn's girdles satellites in germ earth and the neighboring worlds are known unknown adopted pagans vulcan mercury the silver venus monogram of night and morning's crest for fervid mars that tempts a mundane hail majestic jupiter that belted saturn prodigal and moons predicted urinus and neptune found within a lens deep in the brain of man upon the utmost verge of solar space con globing as they strained the million mild elastic tether gravitation gives and shedding asteroids like fiery sweat no way perplexed by vagrant comets ghosts perhaps of sun's extinct that haunt in vain the wide dynamic ether hoping still to rain re-sphered these orbs of ours so cast adrift in the infinite eternally assumed the measured pace and lonely path celestial earth delivered of its moon and chilled without and tempered to endure barbaric sculpture of the glacier shaped and viewed endured by deluges among the first of planets felt the intolerable lech and preriance of matter the mystery the viscid passion some call protoplasm and some call god a mystery known to me for what it is and whence and why unknown the universe throughout then have perceived within the dented skull as time revoked the pageant of becoming from the storm and moonlit battle in the crimson to surf to the primal nebula corrupt with life that died and rotted into us our regal sun and pensuary orbs and now that like a hive my body hums with pains and muffled business of decay a mystery deeply seen retrieved and gripped in dogged apprehension or as folk that perish hunger clung their chapped lips bathe in native blood and in their proper flesh their muzzles lock for this is i the thing i know and am tis not my mind i speak to speak one's mind the itching vanity of cancers pustules outcasts parasites it is my bones that speak my skeleton i speak the substance of the universe yet lost in sleep my memory wakes and haunts phantasmal regions ignorance of old in ecstasy invented bastion cliffs indissoluble adamant on fire by violet seas of burning sulfur washed and pierced by echoing caves of agony or islands of the evening plumed with fronds wine colored tides that in their slumberous depths mirror the purple twilight's golden shores where rhythmic billows pulse like stricken liars and happy spirits in a waking dream enjoy forever disembodied bliss yet yet i know that everywhere is matter dreams of the dreams of matter heaven and hell in massed imaginings arose and flowered from world old memories glimmering darkly still through brain and bone of phosphorus knit a cult in carbon calcium metals vaporous earths that build the body conscious and the soul self-conscious could these elements elect these changeful properties of matter one in all diversity that chance or doom delivered up to be mankind forget their burning passion in the nebula though love itself came after never doubt that visions of elysium and the abyss of fire denote enduring thoughts antique as time of that supernal ecstasy when matter incandescent filled and rent the shuttering womb of universal space material memories once a scourge of men but now resolved and known for what they are yet they torment me yes and terribly because the conscious matter which i am beginning to surrender consciousness recoils from dissolution and divorce to be dispersed in elemental sport of heedless energy the uncontrolled imagination of the universe that flashes out an instant nebulae by chance encounter in the spacious dark of ancient sun's extinct and vagrant turns to teeming wonder every water drop afflicts the human race with hope attunes the nightingale and launches in the deep the monstrous roar qual to be left once more a scattered wreck of groping elements without remembrance judgment wisdom choice perturbs the diver's stuff that men are of wherefore when sleep in mimicry of death dissolves self-consciousness the hideous dreams that wake me shrieking let them come again when sleep rehearses death or death itself takes up the queue no dreams of mine are they but matters dreams of old experience wrought in in perceptive atoms while i wake i apprehend and master time and space for this self-consciousness is master dumb end of section three of the testaments of john davidson section four of the testaments of john davidson this is a leverbox recording all leverbox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit leverbox.org an excerpt from the theatrocrat a tragic play of church and stage to the generation knocking at the door introduction words worths immorality and mine poetry is immoral it will state any and every morality it has done so there is no passion of man or passion of matter outside its province it will expound with equal zest the twice incestuous intrigue of satan sin and death and the discarnate adoration of dante for the most beautiful lady in the world's record there is no horror of deluge fire plague or war it does not rejoice to utter no evanescent hue or scent or sound it cannot catch secure and reproduce in word and rhythm the worship of aphrodite and the worship of the virgin are impossible without its ministration it will celebrate the triumph of the pride of life riding to victory rough shot over friend and foe in the flameclad glory of the martyr who lives in obliquy and dies in agony for an idea or a dream poetry is a statement of the world and of the universe as the world can know it sometimes it is of its own time sometimes it is ahead of time reaching forward to a new and newer understanding and interpretation in the later case poetry is not only immoral in the universal order but also in relation to its own division of time a great poet is very apt to be for his own age and time a great immoralist this is a hard saying in england where the current meaning of immorality is so narrow nauseous and stupid i wish to transmute this depreciated word to make it so imminent that men shall desire to be called immoralists to be immoral is to be different that says it precisely stripped of all accretions barnacles and seaweed rust and slime the keen keel swift to furrow the deep the difference is always one of conduct there is no other difference between man and man from the first breath to the last life in all its being and doing is conduct the difference may be as slight as a change in the form of political expression or the mode of wearing the hair or it may be as important as the sayings of christ as vast and significant as the french revolution and the career of napoleon nothing in life is interesting except that differentiation which is immorality the world would be a putrid stagnation without it and greatness and glory impossible morality would never have founded the british empire in india it was english piracy that rested from iberia the control of the spanish main and the kingdom of the sea war is empowered by immorality poetry is warfare end of section four of the testaments of john davidson