ENTER SWELLFOOT, IN HIS ROYAL ROBES, WITHOUT PERCEIVING THE PIGS.
SWELLFOOT:
Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine
These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array
[HE CONTEMPLATES HIMSELF WITH SATISFACTION.]
Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch
Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,
And these most sacred nether promontories _5
Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these
Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt’s pyramid,
(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid),
Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,
That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing! _10
Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,
Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,
Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army
Of those fat martyrs to the persecution
Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils, _15
Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres
Of their Eleusis, hail!
NOTE:
(_8 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who
died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians,
who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their
tyrants.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])
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 _20
With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,
Ever propitiate her reluctant will
When taxes are withheld?
SWINE:
Ugh! ugh! ugh!
SWELLFOOT:
What! ye who grub
With filthy snouts my red potatoes up
In Allan’s rushy bog? Who eat the oats _25
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?
Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest
From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,
Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?
SWINE—SEMICHORUS 1:
The same, alas! the same; _30
Though only now the name
Of Pig remains to me.
SEMICHORUS 2:
If ’twere your kingly will
Us wretched Swine to kill,
What should we yield to thee? _35
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 bless’d as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, _40
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, _45
And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, 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. _50
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,
Though a trough of wash would be fitter.
SEMICHORUS:
Happier Swine were they than we, _55
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! _60
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 Solons—
You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw, _65
And sties well thatched; besides it is the law!
NOTE:
_59 thy edition 1820; your edition 1839.
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 _70
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, _75
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:
Let your Majesty
Keep the Boars quiet, else—
SWELLFOOT:
Zephaniah, cut _80
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 _85
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. _90
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! _95
[EXEUNT, DRIVING IN THE SWINE.