Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain, THE 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 With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards, Ever propitiate her reluctant will When taxes are withheld ? Ugh! ugh! ugh SWINE. SWELLFOOT. What! ye who grub With filthy snouts my red potatoes up THE SWINE. SEM ICHORUS I. The same, alas! the same; SEMICHORUS II. If 'twere your kingly will Us wretched swine to kill, What should we yield to thee? 8WELLFOOT. Why skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar CHORUS OF SWINE. I have heard your Laureate sing, 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 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, Drowned in the Gadarean sea! I wish that pity would drive out the devils 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, And sties well thatched besides, it is the law! 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 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, This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy. MOSES. Let your majesty Keep the boars quiet, else— SWELLFOOT. 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. SWELLFOOT. "Tis all the same. He'll serve instead of riot-money, when And January winds, after a day Of butchering, will make them relish carrion. The whole kit of them. |