And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
‘Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.’
THE MOON
The shadow of white death has passed
From my path in heaven at last,
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep. 430
THE EARTH
As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
And crystalline, till it becomes a wingèd mist,
And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
Outlives the noon, and on the sun’s last ray
Hangs o’er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.
THE MOON
Thou art folded, thou art lying
In the light which is undying
Of thine own joy, and heaven’s smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower 440
On thee a light, a life, a power,
Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!
THE EARTH
I spin beneath my pyramid of night
Which points into the heavens, dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.
THE MOON
As in the soft and sweet eclipse, 450
When soul meets soul on lovers’ lips,
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
Full, oh, too full!
Thou art speeding round the sun,
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest 460
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour,
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like, of lovers’ eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden,
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move,
Gazing, an insatiate bride, 470
On thy form from every side,
Like a Mænad round the cup
Which Agave lifted up
In the weird Cadmean forest.
Brother, wheresoe’er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow
Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space, 480
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty and might,
As a lover or a chameleon
Grows like what it looks upon,
As a violet’s gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds,
As a gray and watery mist
Glows like solid amethyst
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, 490
When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow.
THE EARTH
And the weak day weeps
That it should be so.
O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman borne the summer night
Through isles forever calm;
O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride’s deep universe, 500
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.
PANTHEA
I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound.
IONE
Ah me! sweet sister,
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
Because your words fall like the clear soft dew
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph’s limbs and hair.
PANTHEA
Peace, peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness, 510
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight; the bright visions,
Wherein the singing Spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
IONE
There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
PANTHEA
An universal sound like words: Oh, list!
DEMOGORGON
Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies, 520
Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
The love which paves thy path along the skies:
THE EARTH
I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.
DEMOGORGON
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;
Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:
THE MOON
I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee.
DEMOGORGON
Ye kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods,
Ethereal Dominations, who possess 530
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
Beyond Heaven’s constellated wilderness:
A VOICE (from above)
Our great Republic hears: we are blessed, and bless.
DEMOGORGON
Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colors to portray,
Whether your nature is that universe
Which once ye saw and suffered —
A VOICE FROM BENEATH
Or, as they
Whom we have left, we change and pass away.
DEMOGORGON
Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
From man’s high mind even to the central stone 540
Of sullen lead; from Heaven’s star-fretted domes
To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:
A CONFUSED VOICE
We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.
DEMOGORGON
Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
Lightning and wind; and ye untamable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air’s solitudes:
A VOICE
Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.
DEMOGORGON
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave,
A dupe and a deceiver! a decay, 550
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:
ALL
Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.
DEMOGORGON
This is the day which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism,
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 560
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue,
Wisdom, and Endurance —
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; 570
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!
OEDIPUS 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.’
Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819; published anonymously by J. Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C.F. Seyfang), 1820. On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered the whole impression, seven copies — the total number sold — excepted. “Oedipus” does not appear in the first edition of the “Poetical Works”, 1839, but it was included by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of that year. Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1820.
CONTENTS
ADVERTISEMENT.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
ACT 1.
ACT 2.
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 Boeotarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the PIGS proves him to have been a sus Boeotiae; possibly Epicuri de grege porcus; for, as the poet observes,
‘A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.’
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. The work Hoydipouse (or more properly Oedipus) 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 “Charite”, the Translator might be tempted to give them to the reading Public.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
TYRANT SWELLFOOT, KING OF THEBES. IONA TAURINA, HIS QUEEN. MAMMON, ARCH-PRIEST OF FAMINE. PURGANAX, DAKRY, LAOCTONOS — WIZARDS, MINISTERS OF SWELLFOOT. THE GADFLY. THE LEECH. THE RAT. MOSES, THE SOW-GELDER. SOLOMON, THE PORKMAN. ZEPHANIAH, PIG-BUTCHER. THE MINOTAUR. CHORUS OF THE SWINISH MULTITUDE. GUARDS, ATTENDANTS, PRIESTS, ETC., ETC.
SCENE. — THEBES.
ACT 1.
SCENE 1.1. — A MAGNIFICENT TEMPLE, BUILT OF THIGH-BONES AND DEATH’S-HEADS, 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 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!
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!
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. ENTER MAMM0N, 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 100
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;
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