The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,

Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots.

Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat;
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! Through thee the sacred Swellfoot dynasty Is based upon a rock amid that sea

Whose waves are Swine-So let it ever be !

[SWELLFOOT &c. seat themselves at a table magnificently covered at the upper end of the Temple. Attendants pass over the stage with hog-wash in pails. A number of Pigs, exceedingly lean, follow them licking up the wash.

Mammon. I fear your sacred Majesty has lost
The appetite which you were used to have.
Allow me now to recommend this dish-
A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,
Such as is served at the Greak King's second table.
The price and pains which its ingredients cost
Might have maintained some dozen families
A winter or two-not more. So plain a dish
Could scarcely disagree.

Swellfoot.

After the trial,

And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps

I may recover my lost appetite.

I feel the gout flying about my stomach.

Give me a glass of maraschino punch.

Pyrganax (filling his glass and standing up).

The glorious Constitution of the Pigs.

All. A toast! a toast! Stand up, and three times three!
Dakry. No heeltaps-darken daylights!
Laoctonos.

Claret, somehow,

Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret.
Swellfoot. Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment, —
But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine,
And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes.

[To PYRGANAX,

For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs.
Pyrganax. We dare not, sire! 'tis famine's privilege.

CHORUS OF SWINE.

Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!

Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags,
Thou devil which livest on damning !

Saint of new churches, and cant, and Green Bags!
Till in pity and terror thou risest,

Confounding the schemes of the wisest.

When thou liftest thy skeleton form,

When the loaves and the skulls roll about,

We will greet thee-the voice of a storm
Would be lost in our terrible shout!

Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
Hail to thee, Empress of Earth!

When thou risest, dividing possessions,
When thou risest, uprooting oppressions,
In the pride of thy ghastly mirth,-
Over palaces, temples, and graves,
We will rush as thy minister slaves,
Trampling behind in thy train,
Till all be made level again!

Mammon.

I hear a crackling of the giant bones
Of the dread image, and in the black pits

Which once were eyes I see two livid flames :
These prodigies are oracular, and show

The presence of the unseen Deity.

Mighty events are hastening to their doom!

Swellfoot. I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine Grunting about the temple.

Dakry.

In a crisis
Of such exceeding delicacy, I think
We ought to put her Majesty the Queen
Upon her trial without delay.

Mammon.

Is here.

The Bag

Pyrganax. I have rehearsed the entire scene, With an ox-bladder and some ditch-water,

On Lady P.-it cannot fail.

[Taking up the bag.

Your Majesty (to SWELLFOOT)

In such a filthy business had better

Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.

A spot or two on me would do no harm;

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 seas,
But which those seas could never wash away.

lona Taurina. My lord, I am ready-nay I am impatientTo undergo the test.

[A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed through the temple; the word LIBERTY is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire upon its forehead. Its words are almost drowned in the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business of the trial. She kneels on the steps of the Altar, and speaks in tones at first faint and low, but which ever become louder 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 foison

For those who crown life's cup with poison
Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge
But for those radiant spirits who are still
The standard-bearers in the van of Change.
Be they the appointed stewards to fill
The lap of pain, and toil, and age!—
Remit, O Queen, thy accustomed 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 chanting this strophe, MAMMON, DAKRY, LAOCTONOS, and SWELLFOOT, 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..

[PYRGANAX, 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 skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the The image of FAMINE sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a MINOTAUR rises.

altar.

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 Bœotia,—
Even the palings of the royal park,

Or double ditch about the new enclosures;
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 anything 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!

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 SWINE, with the

empty GREEN BAG.

(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST.)

1. How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten,

(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,That you condemn these verses I have written, Because they tell no story, false or true?

What though no mice are caught by a young kitten?
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

2. What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,

Where the swan sings amid the sun's dominions? Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions The lucent eyes and the eternal smile,

Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

3. To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,

Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame;
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way-
And that is dead.-Oh let me not believe
That any thing of mine is fit to live!

4. Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and re-touching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow dull care, so that their roots to hell