She longed to look her last upon, beside The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us To come trip over its white waste of waves, And try escape from earth, and fleet as Behind the body, I suppose there bends Close, each to other, agonising all, - Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like The envenomed substance that exudes some dew Will fester up and run to ruin straight, come The poisonous impalpability That simulates a form beneath the flow Worthy to set up in our Poikilé! And all came,-glory of the golden verse, And passion of the picture, and that fine cuse, Ay, and the tear or two which slipt per- - It all came of this play that gained no Whereby the merely honest flesh and Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in blood soul before? seltimate Browning deals with the immortality of influence, In the chrine which he has placed before admitos Acceptis he presumes, their knowledge of thing a buck such as Sophocles would never have done, the same element recins 1.557, 1, 39-49, good, a ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY; INCLUDING A TRANSCRIPT FROM EURIPIDES: BEING THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION. 1875. [Is a defence of Comedy as understood and practised by Aristophanes; that is, as a broad expression of the natural life and a satire upon those who condemn it. See Mrs. Orr's Handbook.] PERSONS IN THE TRAN SCRIBED PLAY OF "HERAKLES." AMPHITRUON. MEGARA. LUKOS. HERAKLES. IRIS. LUTTA (Madness). Messenger. THESEUS. Choros of Aged Thebans. ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY. οὐκ ἔσθω κενέβρει· ὁπόταν δὲ θύης τι, κάλει με. I eat no carrion; when you sacrifice Some cleanly creature call me for a slice! WIND, wave, and bark, bear Euthukles and me, Balaustion, from --not sorrow but despair, Not memory but the present and its pang! Athenai, live thou hearted in my heart: Never, while I live, may I see thee more, Never again may these repugnant orbs Ache themselves blind before the hideous pomp, The ghastly mirth which mocked thine overthrow - Death's entry, Haides' outrage! Doomed to die, o Fire should have flung a passion of embrace About thee till, resplendently inarmed, save, Buried below Olumpos and its gods, Akropolis to dominate her realm 'Balaustion's husband. For Koré,2 and console the ghosts; or, sea, | What if thy watery plural vastitude, Rolling unanimous advance, had rushed, Might upon might, a moment, stood, one stare, Sea-face to city-face, thy glaucous wave Glassing that marbled last magnificence, Till fate's pale tremulous foam-flower tipped the grey, And when wave broke and overswarmed and, sucked To bounds back, multitudinously ceased, Let land again breathe unconfused with sea, Attiké was, Athenai was not now! 24 Such end I could have borne, for I had 30 shared. But this which, glanced at, aches within bear me thence, bark, wind and wave! Wafted already twelve hours' sail away Why should despair be? Since, distinct Man's wickedness and folly, flies the wind 40 And floats the cloud, free transport for our soul Out of its fleshly durance dim and low, Above all crowding, crystal silentness, May permanently bide, "assert the wise," once more • Proserpine. Quieted out of weakness into strength. Slowly a justice centred in a doom 20 Oppression met the oppressor and was matched. Athenai's vaunt braved Sparté's violence Of hammer, axe, and beam hoist, poised The very flute-girls blew their laughing In dance about the conqueror while he bade 30 Play substitute for the long double range See, -outer wall as stonelike, heads Athenai's terror-stricken populace! Quack - priest, sham - prophecy - retailer, scout O' the customs, sycophant, whate'er the style, Altar-scrap-snatcher, pimp and parasite, Rivalities at truce now each with each, Stupefied mud-banks, such an use they serve! While the one order which performs exact To promise, functions faithful last as first, What is it but the city's lyric troop, Chantress and psaltress, flute-girl, dancing-girl? Athenai's harlotry takes laughing care Their patron miss no pipings, late she loved, But deathward tread at least the kordaxstep.2 Die then, who pulled such glory on your heads! There let it grind to powder! Perikles! The living are the dead now: death be life! Why should the sunset yonder waste its wealth? Prove thee Olympian! If my heart supply Inviolate the structure, - true to type, Build me some spirit-place no flesh shall find, 5€ As Pheidias may inspire thee: slab on slab, 60 Renew Athenai, quarry out the cloud, Convert to gold yon west extravagance! 'Neath Propulaia,3 from Akropolis By vapoury grade and grade, gold all the way, Step to thy snow-Pnux,' mount thy Bema," cloud, Thunder and lighten thence a Hellas That shall be better and more beautiful one purple: Staghunt- 70 month, Nay, lest they lack the old god-exercise as of (How otherwise should patience crown What if each find his ape promoted man, No brow will ache because with mop and mow He gibes my poet! There's a dog-faced That gets to godship somehow, yet retains Grow Momos as thou Zeus? Or didst Rightly with thy Makaria? "After life, Better no sentiency than turbulence; 10 Death cures the low contention." Be it so! Yet progress means contention, to my mind. Euthukles, who, except for love that Art silent by my side while words of mine Memories asleep as, at the altar-foot What else in life seems piteous any more Still since Phrunichos 1 (Ah, my poor people, whose prompt rem- Was fine the poet, not reform thyself!) 50 That eve I told the earlier to my friends! Crumpled so close, no quickest breath it fetched use Could disengage the lip-flower furled to bud Advance upon the foe I cannot fly, 20 Nor feign a snake is dormant though it gnaw? That fate and fall, once bedded in our brain, Roots itself past upwrenching; but coaxed forth, Encouraged out to practise fork and fang,- It may pine, likelier die than if left swell Bruise and not brain the pest. A middle course! What hinders that we treat this tragic theme 30 As the Three taught when either woke some woe, How Klutaimnestra hated, what the Of Iokasté, why Medeia clove Nature asunder. Small rebuked by large, Our petty passions purify their tide. 40 Majestic on the stage of memory, Peplosed and kothorned, let Athenai fall For fear Admetos, --- shivering head and foot, As with sick soul and blind averted face Nor see the disenshrouded statue start What bubblings past Baccheion, broad- Pricked by the reed and fretted by the fly, Oared by the boatman-spider's pair of arms! 70 Would marry me and turn Athenian too. 8 By any such grand sunset of his soul, An Athenian poet who was fined for referring to the defeat at Miletus. A Bacchic festival. Grand, may I say, as who brings laurelbranch And message from the tripod: such it proved. 30 He first removed the garland from his brow, Then took my hand and looked into face. my to try The stade's turn, should strength dare the Half the diaulos reached, the hundred plays - Might just as well conduct a squadron, A sea-cave suits him, not the vulgar hearth! store No whit the worse did athlete touch the mark And, at the turning-point, consign his scorn O' the scorners to that final trilogy Of Life Contemplative with Active Life, 'Hupsipule,' 'Phoinissai,' and the Match Zethos against Amphion. Ended so? Nowise! "Speak good words!" much misgiving Dropping shield's oval o'er the entire man, began again; for heroes rest faltered I. And he who thus took Contemplation's "Good words, the best, Balaustion! He Gone with his Attic ivy home to feast, When we had sat the heavier silence out Turned stade-point but to face Activity. 84 he chose the hand that gave the heart, 'Queen of Lemnos and entertainer of Jason, |