Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest THE SWINE.-SEMICHORUS I. SEMICHORUS II. If 'twere your kingly will What should we yield to thee? 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, Or grasshoppers that live on noon-day 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; FIRST SOW. My pigs, 'tis in vain to tug! SECOND SOw. I could almost eat my litter! 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, SEMICHORUS. Happier swine were they than we, I wish that pity would drive out the devils To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons Swellfoot. This is sedition, and rank blasphemy! Ho! there, my guards! Guard. Enter a GUARD. Your sacred Majesty? Swellfoot. Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman, Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah 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. Nor prostitution, nor our own example, This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine Moses. Keep the boars quiet, else— Swellfoot. Let your majesty Zephaniah, cut 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 Upon his carious ribs― Swellfoot. "Tis all the same, He'll serve instead of riot-money, when Our murmuring troops bivouaque in Thebes' streets; And January winds, after a day Of butchering, will make them relish carrion. Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump The whole kit of them. Solomon. I could not give Swellfoot. Why, your majesty, Kill them out of the way, [Exeunt, driving in the Swine. That shall be price enough, and let me hear Their everlasting grunts and whines no more! Enter MAMMON, 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- 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 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, 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, Riding on the Ionian Minotaur." Mammon. Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold Or not, and so it must now that it has; Which must, as all words must, be false or true; Purganax. You arch-priests Believe in nothing; if you were to dream Mammon. Yet our tickets Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken? 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, And still how popular the tale is here; And these dull swine of Thebes boast their descent 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,- If Queen Iona Purganax. I have taken good care That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth I chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a RAT. To agitate Io, and which Ezechiel + mentions Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast Has a loud trumpet like the Scarabee; Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each He sees fair things in many hideous shapes, This Gadfly should drive Iona hither? Purganax. Gods! what an if! but there is my grey 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, 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, 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 The Prometheus Bound of Eschylus. And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Ethiopia, and for the bee out of Egypt, &c.-EZECHIEL, The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill, Mammon. For Queen Iona might suffice, and less; Purganax. Mammon. This Done what? Disinherited 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; 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.* Purganax. A good match! Mammon. A high connection, Purganax. The bridegroo Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop, And then my little grandchildren, the Gibbets, The young playing at hanging, the elder learning 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 GADFLY. Mammon. Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding GADFLY. Hum! hum! hum! From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold grey scalps Hum! hum! hum! From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces Of golden Byzantium; From the temples divine of old Palestine, From Athens and Rome, With a ha! and a hum! I come! I come! "If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone."-CYMBELINE. |