The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,285 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete.

The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,285 pages of information about The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete.

LAOCTONOS: 
That pleasure I well knew,
And made a charge with those battalions bold,
Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes,
Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square
Enclosed her, and received the first attack 315
Like so many rhinoceroses, and then
Retreating in good order, with bare tusks
And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,
Bore her in triumph to the public sty. 
What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground
320
Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin,
And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,
‘Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!’

PURGANAX: 
Hark!

THE SWINE (WITHOUT): 
Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!

DAKRY: 
I
Went to the garret of the swineherd’s tower, 325
Which overlooks the sty, and made a long
Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,
Of delicacy mercy, judgement, law,
Morals, and precedents, and purity,
Adultery, destitution, and divorce,
330
Piety, faith, and state necessity,
And how I loved the Queen!—­and then I wept
With the pathos of my own eloquence,
And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which
Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made 335
A slough of blood and brains upon the place,
Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round
The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,
And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,
With dust and stones.—­

[ENTER MAMMON.]

MAMMON: 
I wonder that gray wizards 340
Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;
It had been but a point of policy
To keep Iona and the Swine apart. 
Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction
Between two parties who will govern you
345
But for my art.—­Behold this BAG! it is
The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,
On which our spies skulked in ovation through
The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead: 
A bane so much the deadlier fills it now 350
As calumny is worse than death,—­for here
The Gadfly’s venom, fifty times distilled,
Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,
In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which
That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant,
355
Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;—­
All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,
Who is the Devil’s Lord High Chancellor,
And over it the Primate of all Hell
Murmured this pious baptism:—­’Be thou called 360
The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine: 
That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,
Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks
To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. 

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.