Page images
PDF
EPUB

Torments, or contamely, or the sneers
Of erring judging men

Can break the heart where it abides.

Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid
Can change, with its false times and tides,
Like hope and terror-
Alas for Love!

And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,
If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror
Before the dazzled eyes of Error.

Alas for thee! Image of the Above.
SEMICHORUS II.

Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,
Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn
Through many an hostile Anarchy !

At length they wept aloud and cried, "The sea! the sea!"
Through exile, persecution, and despair,

Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become

The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb

Of all whose step wakes power lulled in her savage lair
But Greece was as a hermit child,

Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built

To woman's growth, by dreams so mild

She knew not pain or guilt;

And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble,
When ye desert the free!

If Greece must be

A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,
And build themselves again impregnably
In a diviner clime,

To Amphionic music, on some Cape sublime,
Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.

SEMICHORUS I.

Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;
Let the free possess the paradise they claim;
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed
With our ruin, our resistance, and our name !
SEMICHORUS II.

Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,
Our survivors be the shadows of their pride,

Our adversity a dream to pass away

Their dishonour a remembrance to abide !

Voice without. Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends

The keys of ocean to the Islamite.

Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,

And British skill directing Othman might,
Thunder-strike rebel victory. O keep holy

This jubilee of unrevenged blood!

Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!

SEMICHORUS I.

Darkness has dawned in the East

On the noon of time:

The death-birds descend to their feast,
From the hungry clime.

Let Freedom and Peace flee far
To a sunnier strand,

And follow Love's folding star!

To the Evening land!

SEMICHORUS II.

The young moon has fed

Her exhausted horn

With the sunset's fire:

The weak day is dead,

But the night is not born;

And, like loveliness panting with wild desire,
While it trembles with fear and delight,
Hesperus flies from awakening night,

And pants in its beauty and speed with light
Fast-flashing, soft and bright.

Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!
Guide us far, far away,

To climes where now, veiled by the ardour of day,
Thou art hidden

From waves on which weary noon
Faints in her summer swoon,

Between kingless continents, sinless as Eden,
Around mountains and islands inviolably

Prankt on the sapphire sea.

SEMICHORUS I.

Through the sunset of hope,
Like the shapes of a dream,
What Paradise islands of glory gleam
Beneath Heaven's cope.

Their shadows more clear float by

The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,
The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe,

Burst like morning on dreams, or like Heaven on death,
Through the walls of our prison;

And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!

CHORUS.

The world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls its fountains

Against the morning-star.

Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,

And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

O write no more the tale of Troy,

If earth Death's scroll must be !
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free :
Although a subtler sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;

And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears, and symbol flowers.

O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.

The world is weary of the past,
O might it die or rest at last!*

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

EDIPUS TYRANNUS;

OR,

SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT.

A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS, TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC.

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.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THIS Tragedy is one of a triad, or system of three Plays, (an arrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect their Dramatic representations,) elucidating the wonderful and appalling fortunes of the SWELLFOOT dynasty. It was evidently written by some learned Theban, and from its characteristic dulness, apparently before the duties on the importation of Attic salt had been repealed by the Bootarchs. The tenderness with which he beats the PIGS proves him to have been a sus Baotia; possibly Epicuri de grege Porcus; for, as the poet observes,

"A fellow feeling makes us wond'rous kind."

The

No liberty has been taken with the translation of this remarkable piece of antiquity, except the suppressing a seditious and blasphemous chorus of the Pigs and Bulls at the last act. word Hoydipouse, (or more properly Edipus,) has been rendered literally SWELLFOOT, without its having been conceived necessary to determine whether a swelling of the hind or the fore feet of the Swinish Monarch is particularly indicated.

Should the remaining portions of this Tragedy be found, entitled, "Swellfoot in Angaria," and " Charité," the Translator might be tempted to give them to the reading Public.

[blocks in formation]

CHORUS of the Swinish Multitude.-Guards, Attendants, Priests, &c. &c.

SCENE-Thebes

ACT I.

SCENE L-A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death'sheads, and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of boars, sows, and sucking-pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple.

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
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!
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,

Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres
Of their Eleusis, hail !

The Swine. Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!
Swell foot.

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

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
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?

* 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.

« PreviousContinue »