No More Learning

69.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, _595
And lived thenceforward as if some control,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. _600

70.
For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery _605
Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

71.
And there the body lay, age after age.
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, _610
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind _615
And fleeting generations of mankind.

72.
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake _620
Which the sand covers--all his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap;--the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

73.
The priests would write an explanation full, _625
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the God Apis really was a bull,
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
The old cant down; they licensed all to speak _630
Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.

74.
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne _635
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey. --Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
And kissed--alas, how many kiss the same! _640

75.
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares;--in a band _645
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

76.
And timid lovers who had been so coy,
They hardly knew whether they loved or not, _650
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done _655
Only in fancy--till the tenth moon shone;

77.
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,--and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. _660
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart--a wide wound, mind from mind! --
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

80.
These were the pranks she played among the cities _665
Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is
A tale more fit for the weird winter nights _670
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

NOTES:
_2 dead]deaf cj. A. C. Bradley, who cps. "Adonais" 317.
_65 first was transcript, B. ; was first edition 1824.
_84 Temple's transcript, B. ; tempest's edition 1824.
_165 was its transcript, B. ; is its edition 1824.
_184 envied so all manuscripts and editions;
envious cj. James Thomson ('B. V. ').
_262 upon so all manuscripts and editions: thereon cj. Rossetti.
_333 swelled lightly edition 1824, B. ;
lightly swelled editions 1839;
swelling lightly with its full growth transcript.
_339 lightenings B. , editions 1839; lightnings edition 1824, transcript.
_422 Its transcript; His edition 1824, B.
_424 Thamondocana transcript, B. ; Thamondocona edition 1824.
_442 wind's transcript, B. ; winds' edition 1834.
_493 where transcript, B. ; when edition 1824.
_596 thenceforward B. ;
thence forth edition 1824; henceforward transcript.
_599 Was as a B. ; Was a edition 1824.
_601 night when transcript; night that edition 1824, B.
_612 smiles transcript, B. ; sleep edition 1824.


NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles
from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his
nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood.
The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered
picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The
peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome
sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we
visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of
August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte
San Pellegrino--a mountain of some height, on the top of which there
is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many
pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he
exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude
and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the
idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his
return, the "Witch of Atlas". This poem is peculiarly characteristic
of his tastes--wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and
discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas
that his imagination suggested.

The surpassing excellence of "The Cenci" had made me greatly desire
that Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that
would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the
abstract and dreamy spirit of the "Witch of Atlas". It was not only
that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but
I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers,
and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his
endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me
on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was
in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the
public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that
ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own
resources, and on the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because
his mind overflowed, without the hope of being appreciated. I had not
the most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his
lofty aspirations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of
the many; but I felt sure that, if his poems were more addressed to
the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the
day would be acknowledged, and that popularity as a poet would enable
his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues, which in
those days it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious
calumnies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot
be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting
from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart
sometimes in solitude, and he would writes few unfinished verses that
showed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following:--

'Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.
I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others. . . And, when
I went among my kind, with triple brass
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate--a woful mass! '

I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of
sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my
persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural
inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human
passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and
disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved
to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting
love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as
borrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine
or paly twilight, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of
the woods,--which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines,
the flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds
which Nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which
form the "Witch of Atlas": it is a brilliant congregation of ideas
such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his
rambles in the sunny land he so much loved.

***


OEDIPUS TYRANNUS

OR

SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT.

A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC.

'Choose Reform or Civil War,
When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a king with hogs,
Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR. '

[Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819;
published anonymously by J. Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C. F.
Seyfang), 1820. On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered
the whole impression, seven copies--the total number sold--excepted.
"Oedipus" does not appear in the first edition of the "Poetical
Works", 1839, but it was included by Mrs. Shelley in the second
edition of that year. Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1820,
save in three places, where the reading of edition 1820 will be found
in the notes. ]

ADVERTISEMENT.

This Tragedy is one of a triad, or system of three Plays (an
arrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect
their dramatic representations), elucidating the wonderful and
appalling fortunes of the SWELLFOOT dynasty. It was evidently written
by some LEARNED THEBAN, and, from its characteristic dulness,
apparently before the duties on the importation of ATTIC SALT had been
repealed by the Boeotarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the
PIGS proves him to have been a sus Boeotiae; possibly Epicuri de grege
porcus; for, as the poet observes,

'A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind. '

No liberty has been taken with the translation of this remarkable
piece of antiquity, except the suppressing a seditious and blasphemous
Chorus of the Pigs and Bulls at the last Act. The work Hoydipouse (or
more properly Oedipus) has been rendered literally SWELLFOOT, without
its having been conceived necessary to determine whether a swelling of
the hind or the fore feet of the Swinish Monarch is particularly
indicated.

Should the remaining portions of this Tragedy be found, entitled,
"Swellfoot in Angaria", and "Charite", the Translator might be tempted
to give them to the reading Public.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

TYRANT SWELLFOOT, KING OF THEBES.
IONA TAURINA, HIS QUEEN.
MAMMON, ARCH-PRIEST OF FAMINE.
PURGANAX, DAKRY, LAOCTONOS--WIZARDS, MINISTERS OF SWELLFOOT.
THE GADFLY.
THE LEECH.
THE RAT.
MOSES, THE SOW-GELDER.
SOLOMON, THE PORKMAN.
ZEPHANIAH, PIG-BUTCHER.
THE MINOTAUR.
CHORUS OF THE SWINISH MULTITUDE.
GUARDS, ATTENDANTS, PRIESTS, ETC. , ETC.

SCENE. --THEBES.

ACT 1.

SCENE 1. 1. --A MAGNIFICENT TEMPLE, BUILT OF THIGH-BONES AND
DEATH'S-HEADS, AND TILED WITH SCALPS. OVER THE ALTAR THE STATUE OF
FAMINE, VEILED; A NUMBER OF BOARS, SOWS, AND SUCKING-PIGS, CROWNED
WITH THISTLE, SHAMROCK, AND OAK, SITTING ON THE STEPS, AND CLINGING
ROUND THE ALTAR OF THE TEMPLE.

ENTER SWELLFOOT, IN HIS ROYAL ROBES, WITHOUT PERCEIVING THE PIGS.

SWELLFOOT:
Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine
These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array
[HE CONTEMPLATES HIMSELF WITH SATISFACTION. ]
Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch
Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,
And these most sacred nether promontories _5
Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these
Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid,
(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid),
Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,
That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing! _10
Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,
Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,
Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army
Of those fat martyrs to the persecution
Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils, _15
Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres
Of their Eleusis, hail!

NOTE:
(_8 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who
died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians,
who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their
tyrants. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

SWINE:
Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!

SWELLFOOT:
Ha! what are ye,
Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,
Cling round this sacred shrine?

SWINE:
Aigh! aigh! aigh!

SWELLFOOT:
What! ye that are
The very beasts that, offered at her altar _20
With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,
Ever propitiate her reluctant will
When taxes are withheld?

SWINE:
Ugh! ugh! ugh!

SWELLFOOT:
What! ye who grub
With filthy snouts my red potatoes up
In Allan's rushy bog? Who eat the oats _25
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?
Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest
From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,
Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?

SWINE--SEMICHORUS 1:
The same, alas! the same; _30
Though only now the name
Of Pig remains to me.

SEMICHORUS 2:
If 'twere your kingly will
Us wretched Swine to kill,
What should we yield to thee? _35

SWELLFOOT:
Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar.

CHORUS OF SWINE:
I have heard your Laureate sing,
That pity was a royal thing;
Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs
Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, _40
Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;
But now our sties are fallen in, we catch
The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, _45
And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none
Has yet been ours since your reign begun.

FIRST SOW:
My Pigs, 'tis in vain to tug.

SECOND SOW:
I could almost eat my litter. _50

FIRST PIG:
I suck, but no milk will come from the dug.

SECOND PIG:
Our skin and our bones would be bitter.

THE BOARS:
We fight for this rag of greasy rug,
Though a trough of wash would be fitter.

SEMICHORUS:
Happier Swine were they than we, _55
Drowned in the Gadarean sea--
I wish that pity would drive out the devils,
Which in your royal bosom hold their revels,
And sink us in the waves of thy compassion!
Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation! _60
Now if your Majesty would have our bristles
To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons
With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles,
In policy--ask else your royal Solons--
You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw, _65
And sties well thatched; besides it is the law!

NOTE:
_59 thy edition 1820; your edition 1839.

SWELLFOOT:
This is sedition, and rank blasphemy!
Ho! there, my guards!

[ENTER A GUARD. ]

GUARD:
Your sacred Majesty.

SWELLFOOT:
Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman,
Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah _70
The hog-butcher.

GUARD:
They are in waiting, Sire.

[ENTER SOLOMON, MOSES, AND ZEPHANIAH. ]

SWELLFOOT:
Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows
[THE PIGS RUN ABOUT IN CONSTERNATION. ]
That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep.
Moral restraint I see has no effect,
Nor prostitution, nor our own example, _75
Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison--
This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine
Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy--
Cut close and deep, good Moses.

MOSES:
Let your Majesty
Keep the Boars quiet, else--

SWELLFOOT:
Zephaniah, cut _80
That fat Hog's throat, the brute seems overfed;
Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains.

ZEPHANIAH:
Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy;--
We shall find pints of hydatids in 's liver,
He has not half an inch of wholesome fat _85
Upon his carious ribs--

SWELLFOOT:
'Tis all the same,
He'll serve instead of riot money, when
Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' streets
And January winds, after a day
Of butchering, will make them relish carrion. _90
Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump
The whole kit of them.

SOLOMON:
Why, your Majesty,
I could not give--

SWELLFOOT:
Kill them out of the way,
That shall be price enough, and let me hear
Their everlasting grunts and whines no more! _95

[EXEUNT, DRIVING IN THE SWINE.
ENTER MAMM0N, THE ARCH-PRIEST,
AND PURGANAX, CHIEF OF THE COUNCIL OF WIZARDS. ]

PURGANAX:
The future looks as black as death, a cloud,
Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it--
The troops grow mutinous--the revenue fails--
There's something rotten in us--for the level _100
Of the State slopes, its very bases topple,
The boldest turn their backs upon themselves!

MAMMON:
Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now?
Do the troops mutiny? --decimate some regiments;
Does money fail? --come to my mint--coin paper,
Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed _105
To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
In emulation of her vestal whiteness.

PURGANAX:
Oh, would that this were all! The oracle! !

MAMMON:
Why it was I who spoke that oracle,
And whether I was dead drunk or inspired, _110
I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,
The oracle itself!

PURGANAX:
The words went thus:--
'Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!
When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs, _115
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur. '

MAMMON:
Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold
This sad alternative, it must arrive,
Or not, and so it must now that it has;
And whether I was urged by grace divine _120
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
Which must, as all words must, he false or true,
It matters not: for the same Power made all,
Oracle, wine, and me and you--or none--
'Tis the same thing.
If you knew as much _125
Of oracles as I do--

PURGANAX:
You arch-priests
Believe in nothing; if you were to dream
Of a particular number in the Lottery,
You would not buy the ticket?

MAMMON:
Yet our tickets
Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken? _130
For prophecies, when once they get abroad,
Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,
Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,
Do the same actions that the virtuous do,
Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona-- _135
Well--you know what the chaste Pasiphae did,
Wife to that most religious King of Crete,
And still how popular the tale is here;
And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent
From the free Minotaur. You know they still _140
Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,
And everything relating to a Bull
Is popular and respectable in Thebes.
Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;
They think their strength consists in eating beef,-- _145
Now there were danger in the precedent
If Queen Iona--

NOTES:
_114 the edition 1820; thy cj. Forman;
cf. Motto below Title, and II. i, 153-6. ticket? edition 1820;
ticket! edition 1839.
_135 their own Mrs. Shelley, later editions;
their editions 1820 and 1839.

PURGANAX:
I have taken good care
That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth
With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!
And from a cavern full of ugly shapes _150
I chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a RAT.
The Gadfly was the same which Juno sent
To agitate Io, and which Ezekiel mentions
That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains
Of utmost Aethiopia, to torment _155
Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast
Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee,
His crooked tail is barbed with many stings,
Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each
Immedicable; from his convex eyes _160
He sees fair things in many hideous shapes,
And trumpets all his falsehood to the world.
Like other beetles he is fed on dung--
He has eleven feet with which he crawls,
Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul beast _165
Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits,
From isle to isle, from city unto city,
Urging her flight from the far Chersonese
To fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle,
Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock, _170
And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez,
Aeolia and Elysium, and thy shores,
Parthenope, which now, alas! are free!
And through the fortunate Saturnian land,
Into the darkness of the West.

NOTES:
(_153 (Io) The Promethetes Bound of Aeschylus. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])
(_153 (Ezekiel) And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Aethiopia,
and for the bee of Egypt, etc. --EZEKIEL. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

MAMMON:
But if _175
This Gadfly should drive Iona hither?

PURGANAX:
Gods! what an IF! but there is my gray RAT:
So thin with want, he can crawl in and out
Of any narrow chink and filthy hole,
And he shall creep into her dressing-room, _180
And--

MAMMON:
My dear friend, where are your wits? as if
She does not always toast a piece of cheese
And bait the trap? and rats, when lean enough
To crawl through SUCH chinks--

PURGANAX:
But my LEECH--a leech
Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings, _185
Capaciously expatiative, which make
His little body like a red balloon,
As full of blood as that of hydrogen,
Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he sucks
And clings and pulls--a horse-leech, whose deep maw _190
The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill,
And who, till full, will cling for ever.

MAMMON:
This
For Queen Jona would suffice, and less;
But 'tis the Swinish multitude I fear,
And in that fear I have--

PURGANAX:
Done what?

MAMMON:
Disinherited _195
My eldest son Chrysaor, because he
Attended public meetings, and would always
Stand prating there of commerce, public faith,
Economy, and unadulterate coin,
And other topics, ultra-radical; _200
And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's Paradise,
And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills,
Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina,
And married her to the gallows. [1]

NOTE:
(_204 'If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never
saw one so prone. --CYMBELINE. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]

PURGANAX:
A good match!

MAMMON:
A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom _205
Is of a very ancient family,
Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop,
And has great influence in both Houses;--oh!
He makes the fondest husband; nay, TOO fond,--
New-married people should not kiss in public; _210
But the poor souls love one another so!
And then my little grandchildren, the gibbets,
Promising children as you ever saw,--
The young playing at hanging, the elder learning
How to hold radicals. They are well taught too, _215
For every gibbet says its catechism
And reads a select chapter in the Bible
Before it goes to play.

[A MOST TREMENDOUS HUMMING IS HEARD. ]

PURGANAX:
Ha! what do I hear?

[ENTER THE GADFLY. ]

MAMMON:
Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding.

GADFLY:
Hum! hum! hum! _220
From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps
Of the mountains, I come!
Hum! hum! hum!
From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces
Of golden Byzantium; _225
From the temples divine of old Palestine,
From Athens and Rome,
With a ha! and a hum!
I come! I come!

All inn-doors and windows _230
Were open to me:
I saw all that sin does,
Which lamps hardly see
That burn in the night by the curtained bed,--
The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red, _235
Dinging and singing,
From slumber I rung her,
Loud as the clank of an ironmonger;
Hum! hum! hum!

Far, far, far! _240
With the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips,
I drove her--afar!
Far, far, far!
From city to city, abandoned of pity,
A ship without needle or star;-- _245
Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast,
Seeking peace, finding war;--
She is here in her car,
From afar, and afar;--
Hum! hum! _250

I have stung her and wrung her,
The venom is working;--
And if you had hung her
With canting and quirking,
She could not be deader than she will be soon;-- _255
I have driven her close to you, under the moon,
Night and day, hum! hum! ha!
I have hummed her and drummed her
From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her,
Hum! hum! hum! _260

NOTE:
_260 Edd. 1820, 1839 have no stage direction after this line.

[ENTER THE LEECH AND THE RAT. ]

LEECH:
I will suck
Blood or muck!
The disease of the state is a plethory,
Who so fit to reduce it as I?

RAT:
I'll slily seize and _265
Let blood from her weasand,--
Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny,
With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny.

PURGANAX:
Aroint ye! thou unprofitable worm!
[TO THE LEECH. ]
And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell! _270
[TO THE GADFLY. ]
To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings,
And the ox-headed Io--

SWINE (WITHIN):
Ugh, ugh, ugh!
Hail! Iona the divine,
We will be no longer Swine,
But Bulls with horns and dewlaps.

RAT:
For, _275
You know, my lord, the Minotaur--

PURGANAX (FIERCELY):
Be silent! get to hell! or I will call
The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord Mammon,
This is a pretty business.

[EXIT THE RAT. ]

MAMMON:
I will go
And spell some scheme to make it ugly then. -- _280

[EXIT. ]

[ENTER SWELLFOOT. ]

SWELLFOOT:
She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes,
When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell!
Oh, Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy,
And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings
The torch of Discord with its fiery hair; _285
This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens!
Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea,
The very name of wife had conjugal rights;
Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with me,
And in the arms of Adiposa oft 290
Her memory has received a husband's--
[A LOUD TUMULT, AND CRIES OF 'IONA FOR EVER --NO SWELLFOOT! ']
Hark!
How the Swine cry Iona Taurina;
I suffer the real presence; Purganax,
Off with her head!

PURGANAX:
But I must first impanel
A jury of the Pigs.

SWELLFOOT:
Pack them then. _295

PURGANAX:
Or fattening some few in two separate sties.
And giving them clean straw, tying some bits
Of ribbon round their legs--giving their Sows
Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass,
And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails _300
Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers
Between the ears of the old ones; and when
They are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue
Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs,
Good Lord! they'd rip each other's bellies up, _305
Not to say, help us in destroying her.

SWELLFOOT:
This plan might be tried too;--where's General Laoctonos?
[ENTER LAOCTONOS AND DAKRY. ]
It is my royal pleasure
That you, Lord General, bring the head and body,
If separate it would please me better, hither _310
Of Queen Iona.

LAOCTONOS:
That pleasure I well knew,
And made a charge with those battalions bold,
Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes,
Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square
Enclosed her, and received the first attack _315
Like so many rhinoceroses, and then
Retreating in good order, with bare tusks
And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,
Bore her in triumph to the public sty.
What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground _320
Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin,
And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,
'Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot! '

PURGANAX:
Hark!

THE SWINE (WITHOUT):
Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!

DAKRY:
I
Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower, _325
Which overlooks the sty, and made a long
Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,
Of delicacy mercy, judgement, law,
Morals, and precedents, and purity,
Adultery, destitution, and divorce, _330
Piety, faith, and state necessity,
And how I loved the Queen! --and then I wept
With the pathos of my own eloquence,
And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which
Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made _335
A slough of blood and brains upon the place,
Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round
The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,
And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,
With dust and stones. --

[ENTER MAMMON. ]

MAMMON:
I wonder that gray wizards _340
Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;
It had been but a point of policy
To keep Iona and the Swine apart.
Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction
Between two parties who will govern you _345
But for my art. --Behold this BAG! it is
The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,
On which our spies skulked in ovation through
The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:
A bane so much the deadlier fills it now _350
As calumny is worse than death,--for here
The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled,
Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,
In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which
That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, _355
Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;--
All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,
Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor,
And over it the Primate of all Hell
Murmured this pious baptism:--'Be thou called _360
The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine:
That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,
Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks
To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.
Let all baptized by thy infernal dew _365
Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!
No name left out which orthodoxy loves,
Court Journal or legitimate Review! --
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover
Of other wives and husbands than their own-- _370
The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!
Wither they to a ghastly caricature
Of what was human! --let not man or beast
Behold their face with unaverted eyes!
Or hear their names with ears that tingle not _375
With blood of indignation, rage, and shame! '--
This is a perilous liquor;--good my Lords. --
[SWELLFOOT APPROACHES TO TOUCH THE GREEN BAG. ]
Beware! for God's sake, beware! -if you should break
The seal, and touch the fatal liquor--

NOTE:
_373 or edition 1820; nor edition 1839.

PURGANAX:
There,
Give it to me. I have been used to handle _380
All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty
Only desires to see the colour of it.

MAMMON:
Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,
Only undoing all that has been done
(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), _385
Our victory is assured. We must entice
Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs
Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG
Are the true test of guilt or innocence.
And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her _390
To manifest deformity like guilt.
If innocent, she will become transfigured
Into an angel, such as they say she is;
And they will see her flying through the air,
So bright that she will dim the noonday sun; _395
Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.
This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing
Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them
Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,
With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail _400
Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps
Of one another's ears between their teeth,
To catch the coming hail of comfits in.
You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,
Make them a solemn speech to this effect: _405
I go to put in readiness the feast
Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,
Where, for more glory, let the ceremony
Take place of the uglification of the Queen.

DAKRY (TO SWELLFOOT):
I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, _410
Humbly remind your Majesty that the care
Of your high office, as Man-milliner
To red Bellona, should not be deferred.

PURGANAX:
All part, in happier plight to meet again.

[EXEUNT. ]

END OF THE ACT 1.


ACT 2.

SCENE 1. 2:
THE PUBLIC STY.
THE B0ARS IN FULL ASSEMBLY.
ENTER PUEGANAX.

PURGANAX:
Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars,
Ye, by whose patience under public burthens
The glorious constitution of these sties
Subsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates
Grow with the growing populace of Swine, _5
The taxes, that true source of Piggishness
(How can I find a more appropriate term
To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,
And all that fit Boeotia as a nation
To teach the other nations how to live? ), _10
Increase with Piggishness itself; and still
Does the revenue, that great spring of all
The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,
Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,
Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, _15
All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,
And the revenue will amount to--nothing!
The failure of a foreign market for
Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,
And such home manufactures, is but partial; _20
And, that the population of the Pigs,
Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw
And water, is a fact which is--you know--
That is--it is a state-necessity--
Temporary, of course. Those impious Pigs, _25
Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn
The settled Swellfoot system, or to make
Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions
Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped
Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. _30
Things being in this happy state, the Queen
Iona--

NOTE:
_16 land's]lands edition 1820.

A LOUD CRY FROM THE PIGS:
She is innocent! most innocent!

PURGANAX:
That is the very thing that I was saying,
Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being
Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes, _35
And the lean Sows and Bears collect about her,
Wishing to make her think that WE believe
(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill
Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)
That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction _40
Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been
Your immemorial right, and which I will
Maintain you in to the last drop of--

A BOAR (INTERRUPTING HIM):
What
Does any one accuse her of?

PURGANAX:
Why, no one
Makes ANY positive accusation;--but _45
There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards
Conceived that it became them to advise
His Majesty to investigate their truth;--
Not for his own sake; he could be content
To let his wife play any pranks she pleased, _50
If, by that sufferance, HE could please the Pigs;
But then he fears the morals of the Swine,
The Sows especially, and what effect
It might produce upon the purity and
Religion of the rising generation _55
Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected
That Queen Iona--

[A PAUSE. ]

FIRST BOAR:
Well, go on; we long
To hear what she can possibly have done.

PURGANAX:
Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull--
Thus much is KNOWN:--the milk-white Bulls that feed _60
Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes
Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews
Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel
Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath
Loading the morning winds until they faint _65
With living fragrance, are so beautiful! --
Well, _I_ say nothing;--but Europa rode
On such a one from Asia into Crete,
And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath
His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae, _70
Iona's grandmother,--but SHE is innocent!
And that both you and I, and all assert.

FIRST BOAR:
Most innocent!

PURGANAX:
Behold this BAG; a bag--

SECOND BOAR:
Oh! no GREEN BAGS! ! Jealousy's eyes are green,
Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts, _75
And verdigris, and--

PURGANAX:
Honourable Swine,
In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?
Allow me to remind you, grass is green--
All flesh is grass;--no bacon but is flesh--
Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG _80
(Which is not green, but only bacon colour)
Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er
A woman guilty of--we all know what--
Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind
She never can commit the like again. _85
If innocent, she will turn into an angel,
And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits
As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal
Is to convert her sacred Majesty
Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do), _90
By pouring on her head this mystic water.
[SHOWING THE BAG. ]
I know that she is innocent; I wish
Only to prove her so to all the world.

FIRST BOAR:
Excellent, just, and noble Purganax.

SECOND BOAR:
How glorious it will be to see her Majesty _95
Flying above our heads, her petticoats
Streaming like--like--like--

THIRD BOAR:
Anything.

PURGANAX:
Oh no!
But like a standard of an admiral's ship,
Or like the banner of a conquering host,
Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day, _100
Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain;
Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane,
Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice
Scattered upon the wind.

FIRST BOAR:
Or a cow's tail.

SECOND BOAR:
Or ANYTHING, as the learned Boar observed. _105

PURGANAX:
Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution,
That her most sacred Majesty should be
Invited to attend the feast of Famine,
And to receive upon her chaste white body
Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG. _110

[A GREAT CONFUSION IS HEARD OF THE PIGS OUT OF DOORS, WHICH
COMMUNICATES ITSELF TO THOSE WITHIN. DURING THE FIRST STROPHE, THE
DOORS OF THE STY ARE STAVED IN, AND A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY LEAN PIGS
AND SOWS AND BOARS RUSH IN. ]

SEMICHORUS 1:
No! Yes!

SEMICHORUS 2:
Yes! No!

SEMICHORUS 1:
A law!

SEMICHORUS 2:
A flaw!

SEMICHORUS 1:
Porkers, we shall lose our wash, _115
Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs!

FIRST BOAR:
Order! order!