Our lives that none a finger dare to Walked from Killarney to the Giant's lay on it. Those who wrong you, wrong us; or civil war, When through your streets, instead A CONSORT QUEEN shall hunt a Causeway, Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry, White-boys and orange-boys, and con stables, Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured! Thus I! Lord PURGANAX, I do commit myself Riding upon the IONIAN MINO- Must please the pigs. of being You cannot fail SCENE II.—The [Exeunt omnes. interior of the FOOT, DAKRY, PURGANAX, LAOC- the Court Porkman on marrow- Through thee, for emperors, kings, and Give me a glass of Maraschino punch. priests and lords, Who rule by viziers, sceptres, banknotes, Purganax (filling his glass, and standing up). The glorious constitution of the Pigs! words, The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits, All. Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and rootsThose who consume these fruits thro' A toast! a toast! stand up and three times three! Those who produce these fruits thro' Puts me in mind of blood, and blood thee grow fat, And let things be as they have ever But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine, been; At least while we remain thy priests, And shed more blood than any man in 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, etc., 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 For Thebes. [To PURGANAX. God's sake stop the grunting of Thou devil which livest on damning; and GREEN BAGS, Till in pity and terror thou risest, When thou liftest thy skeleton form, 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, Hail to thee, Empress of Earth! When thou risest, dividing posses- [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! By the starving and the cramming, Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine! A spot or two on me would do no harm, To brief alliance, hollow truce.-Rise 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! Iona Taurina. My Lord, I am ready -nay, I am impatient To undergo the test. now! [Whilst the Veiled Figure has been chaunting 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. 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 [PURGANAX, 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 Give them no law (are they not beasts turned into BULLS, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar. The image of FAMINE sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a MINOTAUR rises. Minotaur. I am the Ionian Minotaur, Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho! the mightiest Of all Europa's taurine progeny- Ionian, I am called Ion, which, by interpretation, Is JOHN; in plain Theban, that is to say, My name's JOHN BULL; am a famous And can leap any gate in all Boeotia, 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, Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday; Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music. of blood?) But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho! Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert, Full Chorus of IONA and the SWINE. Through rain, hail, and snow, Tallyho! tallyho! [Exeunt, in full cry; IONA driving reagh placed the "Green Bag" on the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square beneath Our windows: Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the "chorus of frogs" in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a politicalsatirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus-and Swellfoot was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course, did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside. was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word than from the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woes. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name. EPIPSYCHIDION VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CON- L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. HER OWN WORDS. My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, Thee to base company (as chance may do), Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back anything he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it And bid them own that thou art beautiful. does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck bright truth "from the pale-faced moon; Or dive into the bottom of the deep ADVERTISEMENT THE Writer of the following Lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, Voyage to one of the wildest of the SporAnd pluck up drowned" truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he ades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that |