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.