by Robert Frost
The Masque of Death
by Robert Frost
Copyright 1945 Robert Frost
This edition published by Reading Essentials
All Rights Reserved
A MASQUE
OF REASON
BY
ROBERT FROST
A MASQUE OF REASON
A fair oasis in the purest desert.
A man sits leaning back against a palm.
His wife lies by him looking at the sky.
Man
You’re not asleep?
Wife
No, I can hear you. Why?
Man
I said the incense tree’s on fire again.
Wife
You mean the Burning Bush?
Man
The Christmas Tree.
Wife
I shouldn’t be surprised.
Man
The strangest light!
Wife
There’s a strange light on everything today.
Man
The myrrh tree gives it. Smell the rosin burning?
The ornaments the Greek artificers
Made for the Emperor Alexius,
The Star of Bethlehem, the pomegranates,
The birds, seem all on fire with Paradise.
And hark, the gold enameled nightingales
Are singing. Yes, and look, the Tree is troubled.
Someone’s caught in the branches.
Wife
So there is.
He can’t get out.
Man
He’s loose! He’s out!
Wife
It’s God.
I’d know Him by Blake’s picture anywhere.
Now what’s He doing?
Man
Pitching throne, I guess,
Here by our atoll.
Wife
Something Byzantine.
(The throne’s a plywood flat, prefabricated,
That God pulls lightly upright on its hinges
And stands beside, supporting it in place.)
Perhaps for an Olympic Tournament,
Or Court of Love.
Man
More likely Royal Court—
Or Court of Law, and this is Judgment Day.
I trust it is. Here’s where I lay aside
My varying opinion of myself
And come to rest in an official verdict.
Suffer yourself to be admired, my love,
As Waller says.
Wife
Or not admired. Go over
And speak to Him before the others come.
Tell Him He may remember you: you’re Job.
God
Oh, I remember well: you’re Job, my Patient.
How are you now? I trust you’re quite recovered,
And feel no ill effects from what I gave you.
Job
Gave me in truth: I like the frank admission.
I am a name for being put upon.
But, yes, I’m fine, except for now and then
A reminiscent twinge of rheumatism.
The let-up’s heavenly. You perhaps will tell us
If that is all there is to be of Heaven,
Escape from so great pains of life on earth
It gives a sense of let-up calculated
To last a fellow to Eternity.
God
Yes, by and by. But first a larger matter.
I’ve had you on my mind a thousand years
To thank you someday for the way you helped me
Establish once for all the principle
There’s no connection man can reason out
Between his just deserts and what he gets.
Virtue may fail and wickedness succeed.
’Twas a great demonstration we put on.
I should have spoken sooner had I found
The word I wanted. You would have supposed
One who in the beginning was the Word
Would be in a position to command it.
I have to wait for words like anyone.
Too long I’ve owed you this apology
For the apparently unmeaning sorrow
You were afflicted with in those old days.
But it was of the essence of the trial
You shouldn’t understand it at the time.
It had to seem unmeaning to have meaning.
And it came out all right. I have no doubt
You realize by now the part you played
To stultify the Deuteronomist
And change the tenor of religious thought.
My thanks are to you for releasing me
From moral bondage to the human race.
The only free will there at first was man’s,
Who could do good or evil as he chose.
I had no choice but I must follow him
With forfeits and rewards he understood—
Unless I liked to suffer loss of worship.
I had to prosper good and punish evil.
You changed all that. You set me free to reign.
You are the Emancipator of your God,
And as such I promote you to a saint.
Job
You hear him, Thyatira: we’re a saint.
Salvation in our case is retroactive.
We’re saved, we’re saved, whatever else it means.
Job’s Wife
Well, after all these years!
Job
This is my wife.
Job’s Wife
If You’re the deity I assume You are—
(I’d know You by Blake’s picture anywhere)—
God
The best, I’m told, I ever have had taken.
Job’s Wife
—I have a protest I would lodge with You.
I want to ask You if it stands to reason
That women prophets should be burned as witches
Whereas men prophets are received with honor.
Job
Except in their own country, Thyatira.
God
You’re not a witch?
Job’s Wife
No.
God
Have you ever been one?
Job
Sometimes she thinks she has and gets herself
Worked up about it. But she really hasn’t—
Not in the sense of having to my knowledge
Predicted anything that came to pass.
Job’s Wife
The witch of Endor was a friend of mine.
God
You wouldn’t say she fared so very badly.
I noticed when she called up Samuel
His spirit had to come. Apparently
A witch was stronger than a prophet there.
Job’s Wife
But she was burned for witchcraft.
God
That is not
Of record in my Note Book.
Job’s Wife
Well, she was.
And I should like to know the reason why.
God
There you go asking for the very thing
We’ve just agreed I didn’t have to give.
(The throne collapses. But He picks it up
And this time locks it up and leaves it.)
Where has she been the last half hour or so?
She wants to know why there is still injustice.
I answer flatly: That’s the way it is,
And bid my will avouch it like Macheth.
We may as well go back to the beginning
And look for justice in the case of Segub.
Job
Oh, Lord, let’s not go back to anything.
God
Because your wife’s past won’t bear looking into?
What did you try to make your husband say?
Job’s Wife
No, let’s not live things over. I don’t care.
I stood by Job. I may have turned on You.
Job scratched his boils and tried to think what he
Had done or not done to or for the poor.
The test is always how we treat the poor.
It’s time the poor were treated by the state
In some way not so penal as the poorhouse.
That’s one thing more to put on Your agenda.
Job hadn’t done a thing, poor innocent.
I told him not to scratch: it made it worse.
If I said once I said a thousand times,
Don’t scratch! And when, as rotten as his skin,
Has tents blew all to pieces, I picked up
Enough to build him every night a pup tent
Around him so it wouldn’t touch and hurt him.
I did my wifely duty. I should tremble!
All You can seem to do is lose Your temper
When reason-hungry mortals ask for reasons.
Of course, in the abstract high singular
There isn’t any universal reason;
And no one but a man would think there was.
You don’t catch women trying to be Plato.
Still there must be lots of unsystematic
Stray scraps of palliative reason
It wouldn’t hurt You to vouchsafe the faithful.
You thought it was agreed You needn’t give them.
You thought to suit Yourself. I’ve not agreed
To anything with anyone.
Job
There, there,
You go to sleep. God must await events
As well as words.
Job’s Wife
I’m serious. God’s had
Aeons of time and still it’s mostly women
Get burned for prophecy, men almost never.
Job
God needs time just as much as you or I
To get things done. Reformers fail to see that.
She’ll go to sleep. Nothing keeps her awake
But physical activity, I find.
Try to read to her and she drops right off.
God
She’s beautiful.
Job
Yes, she was just remarking
She now felt younger by a thousand years
Than the day she was born.
God
That’s about right,
I should have said. You got your age reversed
When time was found to be a space dimension
That could, like any space, be turned around in?
Job
Yes, both of us: we saw to that at once.
But, God, I have a question too to raise.
(My wife gets in ahead of me with hers.)
I need some help about this reason problem
Before I am too late to be got right
As to what reasons I agree to waive.
I’m apt to string along with Thyatira.
God knows—or rather, You know (God forgive me)
I waived the reason for my ordeal—but—
I have a question even there to ask—
In confidence. There’s no one here but her,
And she’s a woman: she’s not interested
In general ideas and principles.
God
What are her interests, Job?
Job
Witch-women’s rights.
Humor her there or she will be confirmed
In her suspicion You’re no feminist.
You have it in for women, she believes.
Kipling invokes You as Lord God of Hosts.
She’d like to know how You would take a prayer
That started off Lord God of Hostesses.
God
I’m charmed with her.
Job
Yes, I could see You were.
But to my question. I am much impressed
With what You say we have established.
Between us, You and I.
God
I make you see?
It would be too bad if Columbus-like
You failed to see the worth of your achievement.
Job
You call it mine.
God
We groped it out together.
Any originality it showed
I give you credit for. My forte is truth,
Or metaphysics, long the world’s reproach
For standing still in one place true forever;
While science goes self-superseding on.
Look at how far we’ve left the current science
Of Genesis behind. The wisdom there though,
Is just as good as when I uttered it.
Still, novelty has doubtless an attraction.
Job
So it’s important who first thinks of things?
God
I’m a great stickler for the author’s name.
By proper names I find I do my thinking.
Job’s Wife
God, who invented earth?
Job
What, still awake?
God
Any originality it showed
Was of the Devil. He invented Hell,
False premises that are the original
Of all originality, the sin
That felled the angels, Wolsey should have said.
As for the earth, we groped that out together,
Much as your husband Job and I together
Found out the discipline man needed most
Was to learn his submission to unreason;
And that for man’s own sake as well as mine,
So he won’t find it hard to take his orders
From his inferiors in intelligence
In peace and war—especially in war.
Job
So he won’t find it hard to take his war.
God
You have the idea. There’s not much I can tell you.
Job
All very splendid. I am flattered proud
To have been in on anything with You.
’Twas a great demonstration if You say so.
Though incidentally I sometimes wonder
Why it had had to be at my expense.
God
It had to be at somebody’s expense.
Society can never think things out:
It has to see them acted out by actors,
Devoted actors at a sacrifice—
The ablest actors I can lay my hands on.
Is that your answer?
Job
No, for I have yet
To ask my question. We disparage reason.
But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.
There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.
Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.
The will as brakes can’t stop the will as motor
For very long. We’re plainly made to go.
We’re going anyway and may as well
Have some say as to where we’re headed for;
Just as we will be talking anyway
And may as well throw in a little sense.
Let’s do so now. Because I let You off
From telling me Your reason, don’t assume
I thought You had none. Somewhere back
I knew You had one. But this isn’t it
You’re giving me. You say we groped this out.
But if You will forgive me the irreverence,
It sounds to me as if You thought it out,
And took Your time to it. It seems to me
An afterthought, a long long afterthought.
I’d give more for one least beforehand reason
Than all the justifying ex-post-facto
Excuses trumped up by You for theologists.
The front of b
eing answerable to no one
I’m with You in maintaining to the public.
But Lord, we showed them what. The audience
Has all gone home to bed. The play’s played out.
Come, after all these years—to satisfy me.
I’m curious. And I’m a grown-up man:
I’m not a child for You to put me off
And tantalize me with another “Oh, because.”
You’d be the last to want me to believe
All Your effects were merely lucky blunders.
That would be unbelief and atheism.
The artist in me cries out for design.
Such devilish ingenuity of torture
Did seem unlike You, and I tried to think
The reason might have been some other person’s.
But there is nothing You are not behind.
I did not ask then, but it seems as if
Now after all these years You might indulge me.
Why did You hurt me so? I am reduced
To asking flatly for a reason—outright.
God
I’d tell you, Job—
Job
All right, don’t tell me then
If you don’t want to. I don’t want to know.
But what is all this secrecy about?
I fail to see what fun, what satisfaction
A God can find in laughing at how badly
Men fumble at the possibilities
When left to guess forever for themselves.
The chances are when there’s so much pretense
Of metaphysical profundity
The obscurity’s a fraud to cover nothing.
I’ve come to think no so-called hidden value’s
Worth going after. Get down into things
It will be found there’s no more given there
Than on the surface. If there ever was,
The crypt was long since rifled by the Greeks.
We don’t know where we are, or who we are.
We don’t know one another; don’t know You;
Don’t know what time it is. We don’t know, don’t we?
Who says we don’t? Who got up these misgivings?
Oh, we know well enough to go ahead with.
I mean we seem to know enough to act on.
It comes down to a doubt about the wisdom
Of having children—after having had them,
So there is nothing we can do about it
But warn the children they perhaps should have none.
You could end this by simply coming out
And saying plainly and unequivocally
Whether there’s any part of man immortal.
Yet You don’t speak. Let fools bemuse themselves
By being baffled for the sake of being.
I’m sick of the whole artificial puzzle.
Job’s Wife
You won’t get any answers out of God.
God
My kingdom, what an outbreak!
Job’s Wife
Job is right.
Your kingdom, yes, Your kingdom come on earth.