The price and pains which its ingredients cost, Swellfoot. And these fastidious pigs are gone, perhaps I feel the gout flying about my stomach- Purganax (filling his glass and standing up). The glorious constitution of the pigs. All. A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three! Dakry. No heel-taps-darken day-lights! Laoctonos. Claret, somehow, Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret ! [TO PURGANAX For God's sake stop the grunting of those pigs. CHORUS OF SWINE Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine ! Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags; Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS; When the loaves and the skulls roll about, We will greet thee-the voice of a storm Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!" Mammon. I hear a crackling of the giant bones Of the dread image, and in the black pits Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames: Mighty events are hastening to their doom! Swellfoot. I only hear the lean and mutinous swine Grunting about the temple. Dakry. In a crisis Of such exceeding delicacy, I think We ought to put her majesty, the QUEEN, Mammon. Is here. 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 Upon my brow-which would stain all its seas, Iona Taurina. My lord, I am ready-nay I am impatient, To undergo the test. [A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed By the starving and thy cramming, Of fasts and feasts!-by thy dread self, O Famine! Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low FREEDOM Calls Famine,-her eternal foe, To brief alliance, hollow truce.-Rise now! [Whilst the veiled figure has been chanting this strophe, MAMMON, DAKRY, LAOCTONOS, and SWELLFOOT, have surrounded IONA TAURINA, who, with her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business, in perfect confidence of her innocence. [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 Of all Europa's taurine progeny I am the old traditional man bull; And from my ancestors having been Ionian, I am called Ion, which, by interpretation, Is JOHN; in plain Theban, that is to say, My name's JOHN BULL; I am a famous hunter, Or double ditch about the new inclosures; And if your majesty will deign to mount me, Iona Taurina. [During this speech she has been putting on boots and spurs, and a hunting-cap, buckishly cocked on one side, and tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on his back. Hoa hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho! Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down, These stinking foxes, these devouring otters, These hares, these wolves, these anything but men. Now let your noses be as keen as beagles', Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries Of village towers, on sunshine holiday; 358 EDIPUS TYRANNUS; OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert, FULL CHORUS OF IONA AND THE SWINE. Through rain, hail, and snow, Tallyho! tallyho! Through pond, ditch, and slough, Wind them, and find them, Like the devil behind them, Tallyho! tallyho! [Exeunt, in full cry; IONA driving on the SWINE, with the empty GREEN BAG. EARLY POEMS. A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD. LECHDALE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day: Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, 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 spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height 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 Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. Thus solemnised and softened, death is mild Here could I hope, like some inquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. |