And to receive upon her chaste white body [A great confusion is heard of the Pigs out of SEMICHORUS I. No! Yes! SEMICHORUS II. Yes! No! SEMICHORUS I. A law! SEMICHORUS II. A flaw! SEMICHORUS I. Porkers, we shall lose our wash, FIRST BOAR. Order! order! be not rash! I never saw so fine a dash SECOND BOAR (solemnly.) The Queen will be an angel time enough. PURGANAX. [His heart is seen to beat through his waistcoat. Gods! What would ye be at? SEMICHORUS I. Purganax has plainly shown a Cloven foot and jack-daw feather. SEMICHORUS II. I vote Swellfoot and Iona AN OLD BOAR (aside.) A miserable state is that of pigs, For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs, AN OLD SOW (aside.) A wretched lot Jove has assigned to swine, Squabbling makes pig-herds hungry, and they dine On bacon, and whip sucking-pigs the more. CHORUS. Hog-wash has been ta'en away: If the Bull-Queen is divested, Hunted, stript, exposed, molested; That she shall not be arrested. IONA TAURINA (coming forward.) Of finding shelter there. Yet know, great boars, (For such who ever lives among you finds you, And so do I) the innocent are proud! I have accepted your protection only Are safest there where trials and dangers wait; [fat, Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words, Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that! MAMMON. I fear your sacred Majesty has lost The appetite which you were used to have. A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook, SWELLFOOT. After the trial, DAKRY. No heel-taps-darken day-lights! LAOCTONOS. Claret, somehow, Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret! SWELLFOOT. Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment, For God's sake stop the grunting of those pigs! PURGANAX. We dare not, sire! 'tis Famine's privilege. CHORUS OF SWINE. Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine! Thy throne is on blood, and thy rope is of rags; Thou devil which livest on damning; Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN When the loaves and the skulls roll about, We will greet thee-the voice of a storm Would be lost in our terrible shout! Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine! In the pride of thy ghastly mirth. MAMMON. I hear a crackling of the giant bones The presence of the unseen Deity. SWELLFOOT. I only hear the lean and mutinous swine Grunting about the temple. DAKRY. In a crisis Of such exceeding delicacy, I think And these fastidious pigs are gone, perhaps I may recover my lost appetite, I feel the gout flying about my stomach- MAMMON. The BAG PURGANAX. I have rehearsed the entire scene With an ox-bladder and some ditch-water, On Lady P.-it cannot fail. [Taking up the bag. Your Majesty (to SWELLFOOT) In such a filthy business had better Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you. A spot or two on me would do no harm; Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad genius Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell, Upon my brow-which would stain all its seas, But which those seas could never wash away! IONA TAURINA. My Lord, I am ready-nay I am impatient, [A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes Mighty Empress! Death's white wife! By the God who made thee such, By the magic of thy touch, By the starving and the cramming, Of fasts and feasts!-by thy dread self, O Famine! Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low PURGANAX, after unsealing the GREEN BAG, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over SWELLFOOT and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple. The image of FAMINE then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar. The image of FAMINE sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a MINOTAUR rises. MINOTAUR. I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest I am the old traditional man bull; Or double ditch about the new enclosures; IONA TAURINA. [During this speech she has been putting on boots Hoa hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho! FULL CHORUS OF 10NA AND THE SWINE. Tallyho! tallyho! Through rain, hail, and snow, Through brake, gorse, and brier, Through fen, flood, and mire, We go! we go! Tallyho! tallyho! Through pond, ditch, and slough, Wind them, and find them, Like the Devil behind them, Tallyho! tallyho! [Exeunt, in full cry; Iosa driving on the SWINE, with the empty GREEN BAG. NOTE ON EDIPUS TYRANNUS. BY THE EDITOR. 66 In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August, 1820, Shelley begins Swellfoot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano." This was the period of Queen Caroline's landing in England, and the struggles made by Geo. IV. to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the "Green Bag" on the table of the House of Commons, demanding, in the King's name, that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano; a friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley read to us his ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the "chorus of frogs" in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus-and Swellfoot was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the "Society for the Suppression of Vice," who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside. Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first; but I cannot bring myself to keep back anything he ever wrote, for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race; and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the out-worn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of Genius, who aspire to pluck bright truth from the palefaced moon; truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word, than from the waters of Lethe, which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woes. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination, which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like every thing he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name. EARLY POEMS. MUTABILITY. WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last. We rest-A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise-One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow, ON DEATH. There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.-ECCLESIASTES. THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, O man! hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, And the billows of cloud that around thee roll. Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, This world is the nurse of all we know, To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel; The secret things of the grave are there, Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb? A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHYARD, LECHDALE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray; And pallid evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day: Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea; Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. Thou too, aërial Pile! whose pinnacles Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant Around whose lessening and invisible height [spire, Gather among the stars the clouds of night. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around, And mingling with the still night and mute sky Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep ΤΟ ΔΑΚΡΥΕΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΠΟΤΜΟΝ ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ. On! there are spirits in the air, And genii of the evening breeze, |