SEMICHORUS I OF SWINE

The same, alas! the same;
Though only now the name
Of Pig remains to me.

SEMICHORUS II OF SWINE

If 'twere your kingly will

Us wretched Swine to kill,

What should we yield to thee?

SWELLFOOT

Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for

mortar.

CHORUS OF SWINE

I have heard your Laureate sing
That pity was a royal thing;

Under your mighty ancestors we Pigs

Were blessed as nightingales on myrtle sprigs
Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;
But now our sties are fallen in, we catch

The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,
And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
Hog-wash or grains, or rutabaga, none
Has yet been ours since your reign begun.

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.

BOARS

We fight for this rag of greasy rug,
Though a trough of wash would be fitter.

SEMICHORUS

Happier Swine were they than we,
Drowned in the Gadarean sea!

I wish that pity would drive out the devils
Which in your royal bosom hold their revels,
And sink us in the waves of thy compassion!
Alas, the Pigs are an unhappy nation!
Now if your Majesty would have our bristles

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 SolonsYou 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,
Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison.

This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine
Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy.
Cut close and deep, good Moses.

MOSES

Keep the Boars quiet, else

SWELLFOOT

Let your Majesty

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.
We shall find pints of hydatids in 's liver;
He has not half an inch of wholesome fat
Upon his carious ribs-

SWELLFOOT

'Tis all the same.

He'll serve instead of riot-money, when

Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' streets;
And January winds, after a day

Of butchering, will make them relish carrion.
Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump

The whole kit of them.

SOLOMON

Why, your Majesty,

I could not give —

SWELLFOOT

Kill them out of the way

That shall be price enough; and let me hear
Their everlasting grunts and whines no more!

[Exeunt, driving in the Swine

Enter MAMMON, the Arch-Priest; and PURGANAX, Chief of the Council of Wizards

PURGANAX

The future looks as black as death; a cloud,
Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it.
The troops grow mutinous, the revenue fails,
There's something rotten in us; for the level
Of the state slopes, its very bases topple ;
The boldest turn their backs upon themselves!

MAMMON

Why, what's the matter, my dear fellow, now? Do the troops mutiny? - decimate some regiments. coin paper,

Does

money

fail?

come to

my

mint

Till gold be at a discount, and, ashamed
To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
In emulation of her vestal whiteness.

PURGANAX

Oh, would that this were all! The oracle!!

MAMMON

Why it was I who spoke that oracle,
And whether I was dead-drunk or inspired
I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,
The oracle itself!

PURGANAX

The words went thus:

"Boeotia, choose reform or civil war,

When through thy streets, instead of hare with

dogs,

A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs,
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur."

MAMMON

;

Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold
This sad alternative, it must arrive,
Or not, and so it must now that it has
And whether I was urged by grace divine
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
Which must, as all words must, be false or

true,

It matters not; for the same power made all,
Oracle, wine, and me and you or none
'Tis the same thing. If you knew as much
Of oracles as I do

125 you knew || you but knew, Rossetti.