Has a loud trumpet like the Scarabee; His crooked tail is barbed with many stings, Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each Immedicable; from his convex eyes
He sees fair things in many hideous shapes, And trumpets all his falsehood to the world. Like other beetles he is fed on dung- He has eleven feet with which he crawls, Trailing a blistering slime; and this foul beast Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits, From isle to isle, from city unto city, Urging her flight from the far Chersonese To fabulous Solyma, and the Etnean Isle, Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock, And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez, Eolia and Elysium, and thy shores, Parthenope, which now, alas! are free! And through the fortunate Saturnian land, Into the darkness of the West.
A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom Is of a very ancient family
Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop, And has great influence in both Houses;-Oh! He makes the fondest husband; nay too fond :- New-married people should not kiss in public;- But the poor souls love one another so! And then my little grandchildren, the Gibbets, Promising children as you ever saw,- The young playing at hanging, the elder learning How to hold radicals. They are well taught too, For every Gibbet says its catechism, And reads a select chapter in the Bible Before it goes to play.
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,*
"If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets,
I never saw one so prone."-CYMBELINE,
[A most tremendous humming is heard.
Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding.
From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold grey scalps Of the mountains, I come! 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!
All inn-doors and windows Were open to me!
I saw all that sin does,
Which lamps hardly see
That burn in the night by the curtained bed,
The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red. Dinging and singing,
From slumber I rung her,
Loud as the clank of an ironmonger! Hum! hum! hum!
From city to city, abandoned of pity,
A ship without needle or star;
Homeless she past, like a cloud on the blast, Seeking peace, finding war ;-
She is here in her car, From afar, and afar ;- Hum! hum!
I have stung her and wrung her! The venom is working -
And if you had hung her
With canting and quirking,
She could not be deader than she will be soon ;I have driven her close to you, under the moon. Night and day, hum! hum! ha!
I have hummed her and drummed her
From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her. Hum! hum! hum!
To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings, And the ox-headed Io.-
Ugh, ugh, ugh!
Hail! Iona the divine,
We will be no longer swine,
But bulls with horns and dewlaps.
You know, my lord, the Minotaur
Be silent! get to hell! or I will call
That pleasure I well knew, And made a charge with those battalions bold, Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes, Upon the swine, who in a hollow square
Enclosed her, and received the first attack
Like so many rhinoceroses, and then Retreating in good order, with bare tusks And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,
Bore her in triumph to the public sty.
What is still worse, some sows upon the ground Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin, And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,
The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord Mammon, "Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!" This is a pretty business!
Enter SWELLFOOT.
SWELLFOOT.
She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell! Oh, Hymen clothed in yellow jealousy, And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings The torch of Discord with its fiery hair; This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens! Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea, The very name of wife had conjugal rights; Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with me, And in the arms of Adiposa oft Her memory has received a husband's-
[A loud tumult, and cries of "Iona for ever!-No Swellfoot!"
THE SWINE, (without). Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!
Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower, Which overlooks the sty, and made a long Harangue (all words) to the assembled swine, Of delicacy, mercy, judgment, law, Morals, and precedents, and purity, Adultery, destitution, and divorce, l'iety, faith, and state necessity,
And how I loved the queen !—and then I wept, With the pathos of my own eloquence, And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which Brained many a gaping pig, and there was made A slough of blood and brains upon the place, Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round The millstones rolled, ploughing the pavement up, And hurling sucking pigs into the air, With dust and stones.
A bane so much the deadlier fills it now, As calumny is worse than death,-for here The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled, Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch; All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud, Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor, And over it the primate of all Hell Murmured this pious baptism :-"Be thou called The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine: That thy contents, on whomsoever poured, Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. Let all, baptised by thy infernal dew,
Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch! No name left out which orthodoxy loves, Court Journal or legitimate Review !—
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, fover Of other wives and husbands than their own- The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps! Wither they to a ghastly caricature Of what was human!-let not man nor beast Behold their face with unaverted eyes! Or hear their names with ears that tingle not With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!" This is a perilous liquor;-good my Lords.
[SWELLFOOT approaches to touch the GREEN BAG. Beware! for God's sake, beware!-if you should The seal, and touch the fatal liquor— [break
Give it to me. I have been use to handle All sorts of poisons. His dread majesty Only desires to see the colour of it.
Now, with a little common sense, my Lords Only undoing all that has been done, (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm t, Our victory is assured. We must entice Her Majesty from the sty, and make the pigs Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG Are the true test of guilt or innocence. And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her To manifest deformity like guilt.
If innocent, she will become transfigured Into an angel, such as they say she is; And they will see her flying through the air, So bright that she will dim the noon-day sun; Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits. This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties; With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps Of one another's ears between their teeth, To catch the coming hail of comfits in. You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab, Make them a solemn speech to this effect: I go to put in readiness the feast Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine, Where, for more glory, let the ceremony Take place of the uglification of the Queen.
DAKRY (to SWELLFOOT). I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, Humbly remind your Majesty that the care Of your high office, as man-milliner To red Bellona, should not be deferred.
The Public Sty.
The Boars in full Assembly.
Enter PURGANAX.
Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars, Ye, by whose patience under public burthens The glorious constitution of these sties Subsists, and shall subsist. The lean pig-rates Grow with the growing populace of swine, The taxes, that true source of piggishness, (How can I find a more appropriate term To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty, And all that fit Boeotia as a nation To teach the other nations how to live?) Increase with piggishness itself; and still Does the revenue, that great spring of all The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments, Which free-born pigs regard with jealous eyes, Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, All the land's produce will be merged in taxes, And the revenue will amount to nothing! The failure of a foreign market for Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,
And such home manufactures, is but partial; And, that the population of the pigs, Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw And water, is a fact which is-you know— That is it is a state necessity-
Temporary, of course. Those impious pigs, Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn The settled Swellfoot system, or to make Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipt Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. Things being in this happy state, the Queen Iona-
A loud cry from the Pigs.
She is innocent! most innocent!
Makes any positive accusation;-but There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards
Conceived that it became them to advise His Majesty to investigate their truth;- Not for his own sake; he could be content To let his wife play any pranks she pleased,
If, by that sufferance, he could please the pigs; But then he fears the morals of the swine, The sows especially, and what effect It might produce upon the purity and Religion of the rising generation
Of sucking-pigs, if it could be suspected That Queen Iona-
Well, go on; we long
To hear what she can possibly have done.
Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution, That her most sacred Majesty should be Invited to attend the feast of Famine, And to receive upon her chaste white body Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG.
[A great confusion is heard of the Pigs out of Doors, which communicates itself to those within. During the first Strophe, the doors of the Sty are staved in, and a number of exceedingly lean Pigs and Sows and Boars rush in.
PURGANAX.
Honourable swine,
In piggish souls can prepossessions reign ? Allow me to remind you, grass is greenAll flesh is grass;-no bacon but is fleshYe are but bacon. This divining BAG (Which is not green, but only bacon colour) Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er A woman guilty of-we all know whatMakes her so hideous, till she finds one blind, She never can commit the like again. If innocent, she will turn into an angel, And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal Is to convert her sacred Majesty
Porkers, we shall lose our wash, Or must share it with the lean pigs!
Hog-wash has been ta'en away:
If the Bull-Queen is divested,
We shall be in every way
Hunted, stript, exposed, molested; Let us do whate'er we may,
That she shall not be arrested.
QUEEN, we entrench you with walls of brawn, And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet : Place your most sacred person here. We pawn Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.
Those who wrong you, wrong us; Those who hate you, hate us; Those who sting you, sting us;
Those who bait you, bait us;
The oracle is now about to be
Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny;
Which says: "Thebes, choose reform or civil war, When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A CONSORT QUEEN shall hunt a KING with hogs, Riding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR.”
IONA TAURINA (coming forward). Gentlemen swine, and gentle lady-pigs, The tender heart of every boar acquits Their QUEEN, of any act incongruous With native piggishness, and she reposing With confidence upon the grunting nation, Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all, Her innocence, into their hoggish arms; Nor has the expectation been deceived
of finding shelter there. Yet know, great boars, (For such who ever lives among you finds you, And so do I) the innocent are proud!
I have accepted your protection only In compliment of your kind love and care, Not for necessity. The innocent
Are safest there where trials and dangers wait; Innocent Queens o'er white-hot plough-shares tread
Unsinged; and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it,*
"Rich and rare were the gems she wore."
Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,. The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits, Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots- Those who consume these fruits through thee grow Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,
Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that! And let things be as they have ever been; At least while we remain thy priests, And proclaim thy fasts and feasts!
Sce Moore's Irish Melodies. Through thee the sacred SWELLFOOT dynasty
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