Penny Dreadfuls, 1923 · page 104 of 116
The Taking of Helen by John Masefield — page 104: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis: Running Prose from *The Taking of Helen* This is a page of running prose (page 92) from a work titled *The Taking of Helen*. The text presents a philosophical dialogue among several characters—Nireus, Paris, Helen, and an unnamed old woman—debating the nature of life choice and human nature. Nireus compares people to stars, some fixed and some wandering like comets; Paris argues life offers only the choice to be oneself or conform; Helen appeals to the old woman's wisdom about how men and women differ in perceiving life; the old woman begins to express her view that life is like a shepherd constraining sheep, and that women's role is limited. The passage concerns itself with destiny, individual will, and gender philosophy rather than sensational plot developments.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
92 THE TAKING OF HELEN He paused; he did not say what he sometimes thought, but gulped at his wine and thrust the cup down upon the table in his hand like a claw. “What do you think?” heasked. “You are young. You are of the routine. You should be able to tell me.”’ “Sir,” Nireus said, “is it not with men as with the stars, that most are steady, some wandering, now near, now far, and some blazing and hurrying and shedding change as they go? You burn and wander as a comet, perhaps, and can have no settled place nor peace.”’ ‘Sir,’ Paris said, “life cannot offer all things to all men. It offers one choice only, to be yourself, or to be as another chooses. You chose to be yourself, like the wild goat on the hills; others choose to be tame goats in the fold. What do you think, my dear one?”’ he turned to Helen. “Madam,” Helen said to the old lady, “1 should like to hear what you think, for a poet told me once that the man sees his life as a picture of all his desires, and forgives no thwartings of them; while the woman sees his life as her child, perhaps crippled, perhaps wicked, but hers still, to love or to forgive. Surely wisdom is where forgiveness is; so it is for the woman to speak.” “T.” the old woman said, “I think that life is the shepherd of sheep and very hard to all who break from the pen. All that we women can do is to try to make CORNICLOOKS».eO