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;
Does money fail?—come to my mint—coin paper,
Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed _105
To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
In emulation of her vestal whiteness.

PURGANAX:
Oh, would that this were all! The oracle!!

MAMMON:
Why it was I who spoke that oracle,
And whether I was dead drunk or inspired, _110
I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,
The oracle itself!

PURGANAX:
The words went thus:—
‘Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!
When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs, _115
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.’

MAMMON:
Now if the oracle had ne’er foretold
This sad alternative, it must arrive,
Or not, and so it must now that it has;
And whether I was urged by grace divine _120
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
Which must, as all words must, be false or true,
It matters not: for the same Power made all,
Oracle, wine, and me and you—or none—
’Tis the same thing. If you knew as much _125
Of oracles as I do—

PURGANAX:
You arch-priests
Believe in nothing; if you were to dream
Of a particular number in the Lottery,
You would not buy the ticket?

MAMMON:
Yet our tickets
Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken? _130
For prophecies, when once they get abroad,
Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,
Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,
Do the same actions that the virtuous do,
Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona— _135
Well—you know what the chaste Pasiphae did,
Wife to that most religious King of Crete,
And still how popular the tale is here;
And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent
From the free Minotaur. You know they still _140
Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,
And everything relating to a Bull
Is popular and respectable in Thebes.
Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;
They think their strength consists in eating beef,— _145
Now there were danger in the precedent
If Queen Iona—

NOTES:
_114 the edition 1820; thy cj. Forman;
cf. Motto below Title, and II. i, 153-6. ticket? edition 1820;
ticket! edition 1839.
_135 their own Mrs. Shelley, later editions;
their editions 1820 and 1839.

PURGANAX:
I have taken good care
That shall not be. I struck the crust o’ the earth
With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!
And from a cavern full of ugly shapes _150
I chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a RAT.
The Gadfly was the same which Juno sent
To agitate Io, and which Ezekiel mentions
That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains
Of utmost Aethiopia, to torment _155
Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast
Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee,
His crooked tail is barbed with many stings,
Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each
Immedicable; from his convex eyes _160
He sees fair things in many hideous shapes,
And trumpets all his falsehood to the world.
Like other beetles he is fed on dung—
He has eleven feet with which he crawls,
Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul beast _165
Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits,
From isle to isle, from city unto city,
Urging her flight from the far Chersonese
To fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle,
Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso’s Rock, _170
And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez,
Aeolia and Elysium, and thy shores,
Parthenope, which now, alas! are free!
And through the fortunate Saturnian land,
Into the darkness of the West.

NOTES: (_153 (Io) The Promethetes Bound of Aeschylus.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]) (_153 (Ezekiel) And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Aethiopia, and for the bee of Egypt, etc.—EZEKIEL.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])

MAMMON:
But if _175
This Gadfly should drive Iona hither?

PURGANAX:
Gods! what an IF! but there is my gray RAT:
So thin with want, he can crawl in and out
Of any narrow chink and filthy hole,
And he shall creep into her dressing-room, _180
And—

MAMMON:
My dear friend, where are your wits? as if
She does not always toast a piece of cheese
And bait the trap? and rats, when lean enough
To crawl through SUCH chinks—

PURGANAX:
But my LEECH—a leech
Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings, _185
Capaciously expatiative, which make
His little body like a red balloon,
As full of blood as that of hydrogen,
Sucked from men’s hearts; insatiably he sucks
And clings and pulls—a horse-leech, whose deep maw _190
The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill,
And who, till full, will cling for ever.

MAMMON:
This
For Queen Jona would suffice, and less;
But ’tis the Swinish multitude I fear,
And in that fear I have—

PURGANAX:
Done what?

MAMMON:
Disinherited _195
My eldest son Chrysaor, because he
Attended public meetings, and would always
Stand prating there of commerce, public faith,
Economy, and unadulterate coin,
And other topics, ultra-radical; _200
And have entailed my estate, called the Fool’s Paradise,
And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills,
Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina,
And married her to the gallows.

NOTE: (_204 ‘If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone.—CYMBELINE.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]

PURGANAX:
A good match!

MAMMON:
A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom _205
Is of a very ancient family,
Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop,
And has great influence in both Houses;—oh!
He makes the fondest husband; nay, TOO fond,—
New-married people should not kiss in public; _210
But the poor souls love one another so!
And then my little grandchildren, the gibbets,
Promising children as you ever saw,—
The young playing at hanging, the elder learning
How to hold radicals. They are well taught too, _215
For every gibbet says its catechism
And reads a select chapter in the Bible
Before it goes to play.