The selfsame aims as he to whom we pay
Tribute for every pound of coal we burn.
Their scope is narrower, but their act the same
As his--against whose millions all the tongues
Of little tricksters in each corner store
Babble and rail and shriek!

FAUST

Almost you do
Persuade me to turn humorist on the spot!
Was ever, since Gargantua, such a vine
Heavy with bursting clusters of the grape
Of humor?

OLDHAM

Of corruption! You may laugh;
But there's in all your laughter hardly more
Mirth than in my upbraidings. Ah, I grow
So weary of this low-horizoned scene,
Our generation; I am always drawn
In thought toward that great noon of human life
When in the streets of Florence walked the powers
And princes of the earth--Politian, Pico,
Angelo, Leonardo, Botticelli--
And a half-hundred more of starry-eyed
Sons of the morning, in whose hearts the god
Struggled unceasing. Ah, those lucent brains,
Those bright imaginations, those keen souls,
Arrowy toward each target where truth's gold
Glimmered, or beauty's! Those were days indeed;
We shall not look upon their like again.

FAUST

I am not sure.

OLDHAM

Then take my word for it!

FAUST

I am not sure; the lamentable fact
To me seems otherwise. For I believe
That this vile age of commerce and corruption
Which you describe in very eloquent terms,
Is still, upon the whole, the best that yet
Has graced our earth. I think not more than you
Am I in love with it; but, looking back,
I fail to see a better, though I peer
Into remote arboreal history.

OLDHAM

When I was six, my teachers taught me that.
Why, one would think that you had never heard
Of Greece or Italy!

FAUST

And what were they?
Your Renaissance, despite its few bright gleams,
Lies like a swamp of darkness, soaked in blood
And agony: such tortures as we scarce
Dream of to-day writhe through it; and the stench
Of slaughtered cities and corrupted thrones--
Yes, even the Papal throne--draw me not back
With longing toward it. Rich that time might be
If one were Michael Angelo; but how
If one were peasant, or meek householder,
When the Free Captains ravaged to and fro,
And peoples were the merest pawns of kings
Enslaved by mistresses? The more I look,
The more evaporates that golden haze
Which cloaks the past; the more I doubt if men
Had ever in their breasts more lofty souls
Than those we know. And I am glad to be