A citizen of this material age.

OLDHAM

Congratulations!--tempered with surprise
At finding you, beneath your lion's skin,
So sweet an optimist--whose faith can find
All's for the best; and the best, this great year
Nineteen Thirteen.

FAUST

Hardly so strong as that.

OLDHAM

Yes, tell me that the golden age has come!

FAUST

I quarrel not with ages--but with man;
Whose life such play and folly seems--for all
Its sweat and agony--that laughter lies
The sole escape from madness. I peruse
The present and the past, only to find
Mountains of human effort piled aloft
Like the Egyptian Pyramids, and toward
No end save folly....

All is foolishness!
In Argolis, a woman, somewhat vain,
Preferred a fop to her own rightful lord
And ran away; and then for ten long years
The might of Hellas on the Trojan plain
Grappled in conflict such as had been mete
To guard Olympus, and Scamander ran
Red with heroic blood-drops. And they got
The woman. And it all was foolishness!...
That was your Golden Age. I hope you like it.

Foolishness!... Once a mariner set forth,
With all the fires of heaven lit in his breast
And godlike courage on his brow, to find
New worlds beyond the unknown wastes of sea.
He sailed; he found; he died in rusty chains:
So that, to-day, the vermin of all climes
May thither flock, and there renew the old
Familiar toil toward utter foolishness....

Why all this labor unto vanity?
Why all this straining toward an empty end?

OLDHAM

Ah, you forget what Beauty was to them!
We are quite lost to that high touch to-day.
Beauty hung over them, a star to draw
Men's aspiration. That divides them quite
From our debased modernity.

FAUST

Dear Oldham!
My dear delightful visionary Oldham!
What an adorer of the past you are!

OLDHAM

Yes, I adore it sacredly, and loathe
To-day's whole content--except you! I loathe it
So much that, if I had the dynamite,
I'd blow it all--and you and me ourselves--
Into a nebula of dust.... Ah, well,
We hardly can decide these things to-night,
Can we? I must be off, little as I like,
To end our midnight talking.

FAUST

Oh, not yet!

OLDHAM

I must; this is not good for me: I fear
To let myself dwell on these restless thoughts
Which with a perilous longing sometimes make
My actual days so bitter that despair
Grips me in horror. And besides, I'm due
T