ALL

The Rae

I have rehearsed the entire scene With an ox-bladder and some dich-water, On Lady P.-it cannot fail

Your Majesty 2 SWELLFOOT

In such a filthy business had better
Stand on one side, jest it should sprinkle you.

Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad genius

Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell, Upon my brow-which would stain all its seus But which those seas could never wash away!

FONA TAURINA.

My Lord, I am ready-nay I am impatient,
To undergo the test.

[A graceful foure in a semi-transparent vesi pasNe
unnotic d through the Tempie, the word Lissary
is seen through the well, as (fit were meritzen, în ̧ÈTE
upon its forehead. Its words are almost dronomed en
the furious grunting of the Pies, and the business
of the trial. She kneels on the steps of the Addur.
and speaks in tones at_first_faint and low, but whack
ever become souder and louder.

Mighty Empress! Death's white wife!
Ghastly mother-in-law of life!
By the God who made thee such,

By the magic of thy touch,

By the starving and the cramming, Of fasts and feasts-by thy dread self, O Famine! I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude, Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood. The earth did never mean her foizon For those who crown life's cup with poison Of fanatic rage and meaningless revengeBut for those radiant spirits, who are still The standard-bearers in the van of Change. Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill The lap of Pain, and toil, and Age !— Remit, O Queen! thy accustom'd rage! 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 chaunting this strophe, MAMMON, DAKRY, LAOCTONOS, and SWELL

FOOT, have surrounded IONA TAURINA, who, with her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business, in perfect confidence of her innocence.

PURGANAX, after unsealing the GREEN BAG, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over SWELLFOOT and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple. The image of FAMINE then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the sculls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar. The image of FAMINE sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a MINOTAUR rises.

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,
And can leap any gate in all Boeotia,
Even the palings of the royal park,

Or double ditch about the new inclosures;
And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,
At least till you have hunted down your game,
I will not throw you.

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 any thing but men.
Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal pigs,
Now let your noses be as keen as beagles',
Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries
More dulcet and symphonious than the bells
Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;
Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.
Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?)
But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho!
Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,
Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!

FULL CHORUS OF IONA AND THE SWINE.

Tallyho tallyho!

Through rain, hail, and snow,
Through brake, gorse, and briar,
Through fen, flood, and mire,
We go! we go
o!

Tallyho tallyho!

Through pond, ditch, and slough,
Wind them, and find them,

Like the Devil behind them,
Tallyho tallyho!

[Exeunt, in full cry; IONA driving on the SWIN, with the empty GREEN BAG.

In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August 1820, Shelley "begins Swellfoot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano." This was the period of Queen Caroline's landing in England, and the struggles made by Geo. IV. to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the “Green Bag" | on the table of the House of Commons, demanding, in the King's name, that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano; a friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the "chorus of frogs" in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus-and Swellfoot was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the "Society for the Suppression of Vice," who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.

Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first; but I cannot bring myself to keep back anything he ever wrote, for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race; and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the out-worn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of Genius, who aspire to pluck bright truth

from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned-

"

truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word, than from the waters of Lethe, which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woes. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination, which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.

MUTABILITY.

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest-A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise-One wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

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, And the billows of cloud that around thee roll Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny.

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; When all that we know, or feel, or see, Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous
No longer will live to hear or to see [ear
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?

Who lifteth the veil of what is to come! Who painteth the shadows that are beneath The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb? Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be

With the fears and the love for that which we see?

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD, LECHDALE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sun-set's ray; And pallid evening twines its beaming hair

In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day: Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea; Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

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 Around whose lessening and invisible height [spire, 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
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep [sight
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.