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 God who made thee such, By the starving and thy cramming, Of fasts and feasts-by thy dread self, O Famine! Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill 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 ¡PURGANAX, after unsealing the GREEN BAG, is gravely about 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, 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. . MUTABILITY. WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; Night closes round, and they are lost for ever; Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings We rest-A dream has power to poison sleep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow, Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; 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 Which the meteor beam of a starless night Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, Is the flame of life so fickle and wan That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. O man hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way. This world is the nurse of all we know, This world is the mother of all we feel, And the coming of death is a fearful blow, To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel; |