Penny Dreadfuls, 1923 · page 103 of 116
The Taking of Helen by John Masefield — page 103: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis: Running Prose from "The Taking of Helen" This is page 91 of running narrative prose from a work titled *The Taking of Helen*. The text presents a first-person monologue by an aging, blind male character reflecting bitterly on his life. He recalls a time when he and a woman (apparently a queen) were lovers at court, hunted stag together, and were envied. Now diminished and powerless, he has become merely a tool for the twenty courtiers who once looked away from their scandal. He claims to have "done all and dared all and spent all" and now possesses only old-style verses nobody wants, concluding with existential doubt about whether he is human or some supernatural force. The passage emphasizes betrayal, lost youth, and powerlessness.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE TAKING OF HELEN 91 they were stronger than I, infinitely stronger. Inertia goes on and routine presses till one is out of the world. ‘““And it did; for that was our last glimpse of life in the world. In the routine, we had been queen and prince, riding out with the Court to hunt the stag. It was a dewy morning and the air smelt of trodden sage, and she was riding a white and I was riding a stallion, and the world ministered to our pleasure. Out of the routine, we were wanderers, with a story on our heads, a story against us. They were wise, those courtiers who looked away. What need to lift a finger? ‘The arrow was in us and would rankle. ‘For a time we were young, and then we were not young, and then I became this thing, and now I am old. While I had my sight, they were glad of me, those men in the routine, wherever I went. They used me, my courage, my wit, my skill. ‘They praised me, they rewarded me; not too well. I was a man, which they were not; till this happened in my head. “Now my light is out, and I have nothing but a few verses, after the old style, which nobody wants. I’ve done all and dared all and spent all, and have been nothing and am nothing, while those twenty men who looked away are still powers in their state, using the men like me, as they choose. Sometimes I think I am perhaps not a man but a Force or Daimon bring- ing in a sort of fire from beyond life, while the world pours sand upon me. Sometimes I think .. .” CONnnIECDOOKS (C(O)