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 deatn,

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!*

See Notes at the end of the volume.

N

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 won derful 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 Baotic; possibly Epicuri de grege Porcus; for, as the poet observes,

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

No liberty has been taken with the translation of this remark able piece of antiquity, except the suppressing a seditious and blasphemous chorus of the Pigs and Bulls at the last act. The 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.

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

SCENE-Thebes.

ACT I.

SCENE I-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.
Sellfoot. THOU supreme Goddess! by whose power divine
These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array

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,

[He contemplates himself with satisfaction.

(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 stiding turtle-soup, and brandy-devils,
Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres
Of their Eleusis, hail!

The Swine. Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!
Sellfoot.

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!

What! ye who grub

Swellfoot.
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

made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants.

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?

THE SWINE.-SEMICHORUS I.
The same, alas! the same;
Though only now the name
Of pig remains to me.
SEMICHORUS II.

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 bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,

Or grasshoppers that live on noon-day 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 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!

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,
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 your 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 Solons-
You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw,
And sties well thatched; besides, it is the law!