The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning / Cambridge Edition

by Robert Browning

ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY

INCLUDING A TRANSCRIPT FROM EURIPIDES, BEING

THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION

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οὐκ ἔσθω κενέβρει'· ὁπόταν δὲ θύῃς τι, κάλει με.

"I eat no carrion; when you sacrifice

Some cleanly creature—call me for a slice!"

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Wind, wave, and bark, bear Euthukles and me,

Balaustion, from—not sorrow but despair,

Not memory but the present and its pang!

Athenai, live thou hearted in my heart:

Never, while I live, may I see thee more,

Never again may these repugnant orbs

Ache themselves blind before the hideous pomp,

The ghastly mirth which mocked thine overthrow

—Death's entry, Haides' outrage!

Doomed to die,—

Fire should have flung a passion of embrace

About thee till, resplendently inarmed,

(Temple by temple folded to his breast,

All thy white wonder fainting out in ash,)

Lightly some vaporous sigh of soul escaped

And so the Immortals bade Athenai back!

Or earth might sunder and absorb thee, save,

Buried below Olumpos and its gods,

Akropolis to dominate her realm

For Koré, and console the ghosts; or, sea,

What if thy watery plural vastitude,

Rolling unanimous advance, had rushed,

Might upon might, a moment,—stood, one stare,

Sea-face to city-face, thy glaucous wave

Glassing that marbled last magnificence,—

Till fate's pale tremulous foam-flower tipped the gray,

And when wave broke and overswarmed, and, sucked

To bounds back, multitudinously ceased,

Let land again breathe unconfused with sea,

Attiké was, Athenai was not now!

Such end I could have borne, for I had shared.

But this which, glanced at, aches within my orbs

To blinding,—bear me thence, bark, wind and wave!

Me, Euthukles, and, hearted in each heart,

Athenai, undisgraced as Pallas' self,

Bear to my birthplace, Helios' island-bride,

Zeus' darling: thither speed us, homeward-bound,

Wafted already twelve hours' sail away

From horror, nearer by one sunset Rhodes!

Why should despair be? Since, distinct above

Man's wickedness and folly, flies the wind

And floats the cloud, free transport for our soul

Out of its fleshly durance dim and low,—

Since disembodied soul anticipates

(Thought-borne as now in rapturous unrestraint)

Above all crowding; crystal silentness,

Above all noise, a silver solitude:—

Surely, where thought so bears soul, soul in time

May permanently bide, "assert the wise,"

There live in peace, there work in hope once more—

Oh, nothing doubt, Philemon! Greed and strife,

Hatred and cark and care, what place have they

In yon blue liberality of heaven?

How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will rise

Breast-high thence, some bright morning, and be Rhodes!

Heaven, earth and sea, my warrant—in their name,

Believe—o'er falsehood, truth is surely sphered,

O'er ugliness beams beauty, o'er this world

Extends that realm where "as the wise assert,"

Philemon, thou shalt see Euripides

Clearer than mortal sense perceived the man!

A sunset nearer Rhodes, by twelve hours' sweep

Of surge secured from horror? Rather say,

Quieted out of weakness into strength.

I dare invite, survey the scene my sense

Staggered to apprehend: for, disenvolved

From the mere outside anguish and contempt,

Slowly a justice centred in a doom

Reveals itself. Ay, pride succumbed to pride,

Oppression met the oppressor and was matched.

Athenai's vaunt braved Sparté's violence

Till, in the shock, prone fell Peiraios, low

Rampart and bulwark lay, as—timing stroke

Of hammer, axe, and beam hoist, poised and swung—

The very flute-girls blew their laughing best,

In dance about the conqueror while he bade

Music and merriment help enginery

Batter down, break to pieces all the trust

Of citizens once, slaves now. See what walls

Play substitute for the long double range

Themistoklean, heralding a guest

From harbor on to citadel! Each side

Their senseless walls demolished stone by stone,

See,—outer wall as stonelike, heads and hearts,—

Athenai's terror-stricken populace!

Prattlers, tongue-tied in crouching abjectness,—

Braggarts, who wring hands wont to flourish swords—

Sophist and rhetorician, demagogue,

(Argument dumb, authority a jest,)

Dikast and heliast, pleader, litigant,

Quack-priest, sham-prophecy-retailer, scout

O' the customs, sycophant, whate'er the style,

Altar-scrap-snatcher, pimp and parasite,—

Rivalities at truce now each with each,

Stupefied mud-banks,—such an use they serve!

While the one order which performs exact

To promise, functions faithful last as first,

What is it but the city's lyric troop,

Chantress and psaltress, flute-girl, dancing-girl?

Athenai's harlotry takes laughing care

Their patron miss no pipings, late she loved,

But deathward tread at least the kordax-step.

Die then, who pulled such glory on your heads!

There let it grind to powder! Perikles!

The living are the dead now: death be life!

Why should the sunset yonder waste its wealth?

Prove thee Olumpian! If my heart supply

Inviolate the structure,—true to type,

Build me some spirit-place no flesh shall find,

As Pheidias may inspire thee; slab on slab,

Renew Athenai, quarry out the cloud,

Convert to gold yon west extravagance!

'Neath Propulaia, from Akropolis

By vapory grade and grade, gold all the way,

Step to thy snow-Pnux, mount thy Bema-cloud,

Thunder and lighten thence a Hellas through

That shall be better and more beautiful

And too august for Sparté's foot to spurn!

Chasmed in the crag, again our Theatre

Predominates, one purple: Staghunt-month,

Brings it not Dionusia? Hail, the Three!

Aischulos, Sophokles, Euripides

Compete, gain prize or lose prize, godlike still.

Nay, lest they lack the old god-exercise—

Their noble want the unworthy,—as of old,

(How otherwise should patience crown their might?)

What if each find his ape promoted man,

His censor raised for antic service still?

Some new Hermippos to pelt Perikles,

Kratinos to swear Pheidias robbed a shrine,

Eruxis—I suspect, Euripides,

No brow will ache because with mop and mow

He gibes my poet! There 's a dog-faced dwarf

That gets to godship somehow, yet retains

His apehood in the Egyptian hierarchy,

More decent, indecorous just enough:

Why should not dog-ape, graced in due degree,

Grow Momos as thou Zeus? Or didst thou sigh

Rightly with thy Makaria? "After life,

Better no sentiency than turbulence;

Death cures the low contention." Be it so!

Yet progress means contention, to my mind.

Euthukles, who, except for love that speaks,

Art silent by my side while words of mine

Provoke that foe from which escape is vain

Henceforward, wake Athenai's fate and fall,—

Memories asleep as, at the altar-foot,

Those Furies in the Oresteian song,—

Do I amiss, who wanting strength use craft,

Advance upon the foe I cannot fly,

Nor feign a snake is dormant though it gnaw?

That fate and fall, once bedded in our brain,

Roots itself past upwrenching; but coaxed forth,

Encouraged out to practise fork and fang,—

Perhaps, when satiate with prompt sustenance,

It may pine, likelier die than if left swell

In peace by our pretension to ignore,

Or pricked to threefold fury, should our stamp

Bruise and not brain the pest.

A middle course!

What hinders that we treat this tragic theme

As the Three taught when either woke some woe,

—How Klutaimnestra hated, what the pride

Of Iokasté, why Medeia clove

Nature asunder. Small rebuked by large,

We felt our puny hates refine to air,

Our poor prides sink, prevent the humbling hand,

Our petty passions purify their tide.

So, Euthukles, permit the tragedy

To re-enact itself, this voyage through,

Till sunsets end and sunrise brighten Rhodes!

Majestic on the stage of memory,

Peplosed and kothorned, let Athenai fall

Once more, nay, oft again till life conclude,

Lent for the lesson: Choros, I and thou!

What else in life seems piteous any more

After such pity, or proves terrible

Beside such terror?

Still—since Phrunichos

Offended, by too premature a touch

Of that Milesian smart-place freshly frayed—

(Ah, my poor people, whose prompt remedy

Was—fine the poet, not reform thyself!)

Beware precipitate approach! Rehearse

Rather the prologue, well a year away,

Than the main misery, a sunset old.

What else but fitting prologue to the piece

Style an adventure, stranger than my first

By so much as the issue it enwombed

Lurked big beyond Balaustion's littleness?

Second supreme adventure! O that Spring,

That eve I told the earlier to my friends!

Where are the four now, with each red-ripe mouth

Crumpled so close, no quickest breath it fetched

Could disengage the lip-flower furled to bud

For fear Admetos—shivering head and foot,

As with sick soul and blind averted face

He trusted hand forth to obey his friend—

Should find no wife in her cold hand's response,

Nor see the disenshrouded statue start.

Alkestis, live the life and love the love!

I wonder, does the streamlet ripple still,

Out-smoothing galingale and watermint

Its mat-floor? while at brim, 'twixt sedge and sedge,

What bubblings past Baccheion, broadened much,

Pricked by the reed and fretted by the fly,

Oared by the boatman-spider's pair of arms!

Lenaia was a gladsome month ago—

Euripides had taught "Andromedé"

Next month, would teach "Kresphontes"—which same month

Some one from Phokis, who companioned me

Since all that happened on those temple-steps,

Would marry me and turn Athenian too.

Now! if next year the masters let the slaves

Do Bacchic service and restore mankind

That trilogy whereof, 'tis noised, one play

Presents the Bacchai,—no Euripides

Will teach the choros, nor shall we be tinged

By any such grand sunset of his soul,

Exiles from dead Athenai,—not the live

That's in the cloud there with the new-born star!

Speak to the infinite intelligence,

Sing to the everlasting sympathy!

Winds belly sail, and drench of dancing brine

Buffet our boat-side, so the prore bound free!

Condense our voyage into one great day

Made up of sunset-closes: eve by eve,

Resume that memorable night-discourse

When—like some meteor-brilliance, fire and filth,

Or say, his own Amphitheos, deity

And dung, who, bound on the gods' embassage,

Got men's acknowledgement in kick and cuff—

We made acquaintance with a visitor

Ominous, apparitional, who went

Strange as he came, but shall not pass away.

Let us attempt that memorable talk,

Clothe the adventure's every incident

With due expression: may not looks be told,

Gesture made speak, and speech so amplified

That words find blood-warmth which, cold-writ, they lose?

Recall the night we heard the news from Thrace,

One year ago, Athenai still herself.

We two were sitting silent in the house,

Yet cheerless hardly. Euthukles, forgive!

I somehow speak to unseen auditors.

Not you, but—Euthukles had entered, grave,

Grand, may I say, as who brings laurel-branch

And message from the tripod: such it proved.

He first removed the garland from his brow,

Then took my hand and looked into my face.

"Speak good words!" much misgiving faltered I.

"Good words, the best, Balaustion! He is crowned,

Gone with his Attic ivy home to feast,

Since Aischulos required companionship.

Pour a libation for Euripides!"

When we had sat the heavier silence out—

"Dead and triumphant still!" began reply

To my eye's question. "As he willed, he worked:

And, as he worked, he wanted not, be sure,

Triumph his whole life through, submitting work

To work's right judges, never to the wrong,

To competency, not ineptitude.

When he had run life's proper race and worked

Quite to the stade's end, there remained to try

The stade's turn, should strength dare the double course.

Half the diaulos reached, the hundred plays

Accomplished, force in its rebound sufficed

To lift along the athlete and ensure

A second wreath, proposed by fools for first,

The statist's olive as the poet's bay.

Wiselier, he suffered not a twofold aim

Retard his pace, confuse his sight; at once

Poet and statist; though the multitude

Girded him ever 'All thine aim thine art?

The idle poet only? No regard

For civic duty, public service, here?

We drop our ballot-bean for Sophokles!

Not only could he write "Antigoné"

But—since (we argued) whoso penned that piece

Might just as well conduct a squadron,—straight

Good-naturedly he took on him command.

Got laughed at, and went back to making plays,

Having allowed us our experiment

Respecting the fit use of faculty.'

No whit the more did athlete slacken pace.

Soon the jeers grew: 'Cold hater of his kind,

A sea-cave suits him, not the vulgar hearth!

What need of tongue-talk, with a bookish store

Would stock ten cities?' Shadow of an ass!

No whit the worse did athlete touch the mark

And, at the turning-point, consign his scorn

O' the scorners to that final trilogy

'Hupsipule,' 'Phoinissai,' and the Match

Of Life Contemplative with Active Life,

Zethos against Amphion. Ended so?

Nowise!—began again; for heroes rest

Dropping shield's oval o'er the entire man.

Ami he who thus took Contemplation's prize

Turned stade-point but to face Activity.

Out of all shadowy hands extending help

For life's decline pledged to youth's labor still,

Whatever renovation flatter age,—

Society with pastime, solitude

With peace,—he chose the hand that gave the heart,

Bade Macedonian Archelaos take

The leavings of Athenai, ash once flame.

For fifty politicians' frosty work,

One poet's ash proved ample and to spare:

He propped the state and filled the treasury,

Counselled the king as might a meaner soul,

Furnished the friend with what shall stand in stead

Of crown and sceptre, star his name about

When these are dust; for him, Euripides

Last the old hand on the old phorminx flung,

Clashed thence 'Alkaion,' maddened 'Pentheus' up;

Then music sighed itself away, one moan

Iphigeneia made by Aulis' strand;

With her and music died Euripides.

"The poet-friend who followed him to Thrace,

Agathon, writes thus much: the merchant-ship

Moreover brings a message from the king

To young Euripides, who went on board

This morning at Mounuchia: all is true."

I said "Thank Zeus for the great news and good!"

"Nay, the report is running in brief fire

Through the town's stubbly furrow," he resumed:

—"Entertains brightly what their favorite styles

'The City of Gapers' for a week perhaps,

Supplants three luminous tales, but yesterday

Pronounced sufficient lamps to last the month:

How Glauketes, outbidding Morsimos,

Paid market-price for one Kopaic eel

A thousand drachmai, and then cooked his prize

Not proper conger-fashion but in oil

And nettles, as man fries the foam-fish-kind;

How all the captains of the triremes, late

Victors at Arginousai, on return

Will, for return, be straightway put to death;

How Mikon wagered a Thessalian mime

Trained him by Lais, looked on as complete,

Against Leogoras' blood-mare koppa-marked,

Valued six talents,—swore, accomplished so,

The girl could swallow at a draught, nor breathe,

A choinix of unmixed Mendesian wine;

And having lost the match will—dine on herbs!

Three stories late aflame, at once extinct,

Outblazed by just 'Euripides is dead'!

"I met the concourse from the Theatre,

The audience flocking homeward: victory

Again awarded Aristophanes

Precisely for his old play chopped and changed,

'The Female Celebrators of the Feast'—

That Thesmophoria, tried a second time.

'Never such full success!'—assured the folk,

Who yet stopped praising to have word of mouth

With 'Euthukles, the bard's own intimate,

Balaustion's husband, the right man to ask.'

"'Dead, yes, but how dead, may acquaintance know?

You were the couple constant at his cave:

Tell us now, is it true that women, moved

By reason of his liking Krateros' ...

"I answered 'He was loved by Sokrates.'

"'Nay,' said another, 'envy did the work!

For, emulating poets of the place,

One Arridaios, one Krateues, both

Established in the royal favor, these' ...

"'Protagoras instructed him,' said I.

"'Phu,' whistled Comic Platon, 'hear the fact!

'Twas well said of your friend by Sophokles,

"He hate our women? In his verse, belike.

But when it comes to prose-work,—ha, ha, ha!"

New climes don't change old manners: so, it chanced,

Pursuing an intrigue one moonless night

With Arethousian Nikodikos' wife,

(Come now, his years were simply seventy-five,)

Crossing the palace-court, what haps he on

But Archelaos' pack of hungry hounds?

Who tore him piecemeal ere his cry brought help.'

"I asked: Did not you write 'The Festivals'?

You best know what dog tore him when alive.

You others, who now make a ring to hear,

Have not you just enjoyed a second treat,

Proclaimed that ne'er was play more worthy prize

Than this, myself assisted at, last year,

And gave its worth to,—spitting on the same?

Appraise no poetry,—price cuttlefish,

Or that seaweed-alphestes, scorpion-sort,

Much famed for mixing mud with fantasy

On midnights! I interpret no foul dreams."

If so said Euthukles, so could not I,

Balaustion, say. After "Lusistraté"

No more for me of "people's privilege,"

No witnessing "the Grand old Comedy

Coeval with our freedom, which, curtailed,

Were freedom's deathblow: relic of the past,

When Virtue laughingly told truth to Vice,

Uncensured, since the stern mouth, stuffed with flowers,

Through poetry breathed satire, perfumed blast

Which sense snuffed up while searched unto the bone!"

I was a stranger: "For first joy," urged friends,

"Go hear our Comedy, some patriot piece

That plies the selfish advocates of war

With argument so unevadable

That crash fall Kleons whom the finer play

Of reason, tickling, deeper wounds no whit

Than would a spear-thrust from a savory-stalk!

No: you hear knave and fool told crime and fault,

And see each scourged his quantity of stripes.

'Rough dealing, awkward language,' whine our fops:

The world's too squeamish now to bear plain words

Concerning deeds it acts with gust enough:

But, thanks to wine-lees and democracy,

We've still our stage where truth calls spade a spade!

Ashamed? Phuromachos' decree provides

The sex may sit discreetly, witness all,

Sorted, the good with good, the gay with gay,

Themselves unseen, no need to force a blush.

A Rhodian wife and ignorant so long?

Go hear next play!"

I heard "Lusistraté."

Waves, said to wash pollution from the world,

Take that plague-memory, cure that pustule caught

As, past escape, I sat and saw the piece

By one appalled at Phaidra's fate,—the chaste,

Whom, because chaste, the wicked goddess chained

To that same serpent of unchastity

She loathed most, and who, coiled so, died distraught

Rather than make submission, loose one limb

Love-wards, at lambency of honeyed tongue,

Or torture of the scales which scraped her snow

—I say, the piece by him who charged this piece

(Because Euripides shrank not to teach,

If gods be strong and wicked, man, though weak,

May prove their match by willing to be good)

With infamies the Scythian's whip should cure—

"Such outrage done the public—Phaidra named!

Such purpose to corrupt ingenuous youth,

Such insult cast on female character!"—

Why, when I saw that bestiality—

So beyond all brute-beast imagining,

That when, to point the moral at the close,

Poor Salabaccho, just to show how fair

Was "Reconciliation," stripped her charms,

That exhibition simply bade us breathe,

Seemed something healthy and commendable

After obscenity grotesqued so much

It slunk away revolted at itself.

Henceforth I had my answer when our sage

Pattern-proposing seniors pleaded grave,

"You fail to fathom here the deep design!

All's acted in the interest of truth,

Religion, and those manners old and dear

Which made our city great when citizens

Like Aristeides and like Miltiades

Wore each a golden tettix in his hair."

What do they wear now under—Kleophon?

Well, for such reasons,—I am out of breath,

But loathsomeness we needs must hurry past,—

I did not go to see, nor then nor now,

The "Thesmophoriazousai." But, since males

Choose to brave first, blame afterward, nor brand

Without fair taste of what they stigmatize,

Euthukles had not missed the first display,

Original portrait of Euripides

By "Virtue laughingly reproving Vice:"

"Virtue,"—the author, Aristophanes,

Who mixed an image out of his own depths,

Ticketed as I tell you. Oh, this time

No more pretension to recondite worth!

No joke in aid of Peace, no demagogue

Pun-pelleted from Pnux, no kordax-dance

Overt helped covertly the Ancient Faith!

All now was muck, home-produce, honestman

The author's soul secreted to a play

Which gained the prize that day we heard the death.

I thought "How thoroughly death alters things!

Where is the wrong now, done our dead and great?

How natural seems grandeur in relief,

Cliff-base with frothy spites against its calm!"

Euthukles interposed—he read my thought—

"O'er them, too, in a moment came the change.

The crowd's enthusiastic, to a man:

Since, rake as such may please the ordure-heap

Because of certain sparkles presumed ore,

At first flash of true lightning overhead,

They look up, nor resume their search too soon.

The insect-scattering sign is evident,

And nowhere winks a firefly rival now,

Nor bustles any beetle of the brood

With trundled dung-ball meant to menace heaven.

Contrariwise, the cry is 'Honor him!'

'A statue in the theatre!' wants one;

Another 'Bring the poet's body back,

Bury him in Peiraios: o'er his tomb

Let Alkamenes carve the music-witch,

The songstress-siren, meed of melody:

Thoukudides invent his epitaph!'

To-night the whole town pays its tribute thus."

Our tribute should not be the same, my friend!

Statue? Within our heart he stood, he stands!

As for the vest outgrown now by the form,

Low flesh that clothed high soul,—a vesture's fate—

Why, let it fade, mix with the elements

There where it, falling, freed Euripides!

But for the soul that's tutelary now

Till time end, o'er the world to teach and bless—

How better hail its freedom than by first

Singing, we two, its own song back again,

Up to that face from which flowed beauty—face

Now abler to see triumph and take love

Than when it glorified Athenai once?

The sweet and strange Alkestis, which saved me,

Secured me—you, ends nowise, to my mind,

In pardon of Admetos. Hearts are fain

To follow cheerful weary Herakles

Striding away from the huge gratitude,

Club shouldered, lion-fleece round loin and flank,

Bound on the next new labor "height o'er height

Ever surmounting,—destiny's decree!"

Thither He helps us: that's the story's end;

He smiling said so, when I told him mine—

My great adventure, how Alkestis helped.

Afterward, when the time for parting fell,

He gave me, with two other precious gifts,

This third and best, consummating the grace,

"Herakles," writ by his own hand, each line.

"If it have worth, reward is still to seek.

Somebody, I forget who, gained the prize

And proved arch-poet: time must show!" he smiled:

"Take this, and, when the noise tires out, judge me—

Some day, not slow to dawn, when somebody—

Who? I forget—proves nobody at all!"

Is not that day come? What if you and I

Re-sing the song, inaugurate the fame?

We have not waited to acquaint ourselves

With song and subject; we can prologize

How, at Eurustheus' bidding,—hate strained hard,—

Herakles had departed, one time more,

On his last labor, worst of all the twelve;

Descended into Haides, thence to drag

The triple-headed hound, which sun should see

Spite of the god whose darkness whelped the Fear.

Down went the hero, "back—how should he come?"

So laughed King Lukos, an old enemy,

Who judged that absence testified defeat

Of the land's loved one,—since he saved the land

And for that service wedded Megara

Daughter of Thebai, realm her child should rule.

Ambition, greed and malice seized their prey,

The Heracleian House, defenceless left,

Father and wife and child, to trample out

Trace of its hearth-fire: since extreme old age

Wakes pity, woman's wrong wins championship,

And child may grow up man and take revenge.

Hence see we that, from out their palace-home

Hunted, for last resource they cluster now

Couched on the cold ground, hapless supplicants

About their court-yard altar,—Household Zeus

It is, the Three in funeral garb beseech,

Delaying death so, till deliverance come—

When did it ever?—from the deep and dark.

And thus breaks silence old Amphitruon's voice....

Say I not true thus far, my Euthukles?

Suddenly, torch-light! knocking at the door,

Loud, quick, "Admittance for the revels' lord!"

Some unintelligible Komos-cry—

Raw-flesh red, no cap upon his head,

Dionusos, Bacchos, Phales, Iacchos,

In let him reel with the kid-skin at his heel,

Where it buries in the spread of the bushy myrtle-bed!

(Our Rhodian Jackdaw-song was sense to that!)

Then laughter, outbursts ruder and more rude,

Through which, with silver point, a fluting pierced,

And ever "Open, open, Bacchos bids!"

But at last—one authoritative word,

One name of an immense significance:

For Euthukles rose up, threw wide the door.

There trooped the Choros of the Comedy

Crowned and triumphant; first, those flushed Fifteen,

Men that wore women's garb, grotesque disguise.

Then marched the Three,—who played Mnesilochos,

Who, Toxotes, and who, robed right, masked rare,

Monkeyed our Great and Dead to heart's content

That morning in Athenai. Masks were down

And robes doffed now; the sole disguise was drink.

Mixing with these—I know not what gay crowd,

Girl-dancers, flute-boys, and pre-eminent

Among them,—doubtless draped with such reserve

As stopped fear of the fifty-drachma fine

(Beside one's name on public fig-tree nailed)

Which women pay who in the streets walk bare,—

Behold Elaphion of the Persic dance!

Who lately had frisked fawn-foot, and the rest,

—All for the Patriot Cause, the Antique Faith,

The Conservation of True Poesy—

Could I but penetrate the deep design!

Elaphion, more Peiraios-known as "Phaps,"

Tripped at the head of the whole banquet-band

Who came in front now, as the first fell back;

And foremost—the authoritative voice,

The revels-leader, he who gained the prize,

And got the glory of the Archon's feast—

There stood in person Aristophanes.

And no ignoble presence! On the bulge

Of the clear baldness,—all his head one brow,—

True, the veins swelled, blue network, and there surged

A red from cheek to temple,—then retired

As if the dark-leaved chaplet damped a flame,—

Was never nursed by temperance or health.

But huge the eyeballs rolled back native fire,

Imperiously triumphant: nostrils wide

Waited their incense; while the pursed mouth's pout

Aggressive, while the beak supreme above,

While the head, face, nay, pillared throat thrown back,

Beard whitening tinder like a vinous foam,

These made a glory, of such insolence—

I thought,—such domineering deity

Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine

For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path

Which, purpling, recognized the conqueror.

Impudent and majestic: drunk, perhaps,

But that's religion; sense too plainly snuffed:

Still, sensuality was grown a rite.

What I had disbelieved most proved most true.

There was a mind here, mind a-wantoning

At ease of undisputed mastery

Over the body's brood, those appetites.

Oh, but he grasped them grandly, as the god

His either struggling handful,—hurtless snakes

Held deep down, strained hard off from side and side!

Mastery his, theirs simply servitude,

So well could firm fist help intrepid eye.

Fawning and fulsome, had they licked and hissed?

At mandate of one muscle, order reigned.

They had been wreathing much familiar now

About him on his entry; but a squeeze

Choked down the pests to place: their lord stood free.

Forward he stepped: I rose and fronted him.

"Hail, house, the friendly to Euripides!"

(So he began) "Hail, each inhabitant!

You, lady? What, the Rhodian? Form and face,

Victory's self upsoaring to receive

The poet? Right they named you ... some rich name,

Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants,

Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched

By the Isle's unguent: some diminished end

In ion, Kallistion? delicater still,

Kubelion or Melittion,—or, suppose

(Less vulgar love than bee or violet)

Phibalion, for the mouth split red-fig-wise,

Korakinidion for the coal-black hair,

Nettarion, Phabion for the darlingness?

But no, it was some fruit-flower, Rhoidion ... ha,

We near the balsam-bloom—Balaustion! Thanks,

Rhodes! Folk have called me Rhodian, do you know?

Not fools so far! Because, if Helios wived,

As Pindaros sings somewhere prettily,

Here blooms his offspring, earth-flesh with sun-fire,

Rhodes' blood and Helios' gold. My phorminx, boy!

Why does the boy hang back and balk an ode

Tiptoe at spread of wing? But like enough,

Sunshine frays torchlight. Witness whom you scare,

Superb Balaustion! Look outside the house!

Pho, you have quenched my Komos by first frown,

Struck dead all joyance: not a fluting puffs

From idle cheekband! Ah, my Choros too?

You've eaten cuckoo-apple? Dumb, you dogs?

So much good Thasian wasted on your throats

And out of them not one Threttanelo?

Neblaretai! Because this earth-and-sun

Product looks wormwood and all bitter herbs?

Well, do I blench, though me she hates the most

Of mortals? By the cabbage, off they slink!

You, too, my Chrusomelolonthion-Phaps,

Girl-goldling-beetle-beauty? You, abashed,

Who late, supremely unabashable,

Propped up my play at that important point

When Artamouxia tricks the Toxotes?

Ha, ha,—thank Hermes for the lucky throw,—

We came last comedy of the whole seven,

So went all fresh to judgment well-disposed

For who should fatly feast them, eye and ear,

We two between us! What, you fail your friend?

Away then, free me of your cowardice!

Go, get you the goat's breakfast! Fare afield,

Ye circumcised of Egypt, pigs to sow,

Back to the Priest's or forward to the crows,

So you but rid me of such company!

Once left alone, I can protect myself

From statuesque Balaustion pedestalled

On much disapprobation and mistake!

She dares not beat the sacred brow, beside!

Bacchos' equipment, ivy safeguards well

As Phoibos' bay.

"They take me at my word!

One comfort is, I shall not want them long,

The Archon's cry creaks, creaks, 'Curtail expense!'

The war wants money, year the twenty-sixth!

Cut down our Choros number, clip costume,

Save birds' wings, beetles' armor, spend the cash

In three-crest skull-caps, three days' salt-fish-slice,

Three-banked-ships for these sham-ambassadors,

And what not: any cost but Comedy's!

'No Choros'—soon will follow; what care I?

Archinos and Agurrhios, scrape your flint,

Flay your dead dog, and curry favor so!

Choros in rags, with loss of leather next,

We lose the boys' vote, lose the song and dance,

Lose my Elaphion! Still, the actor stays.

Save but my acting, and the baldhead bard

Kudathenaian and Pandionid,

Son of Philippos, Aristophanes

Surmounts his rivals now as heretofore,

Though stinted to mere sober prosy verse—

'Manners and men,' so squeamish gets the world!

No more 'Step forward, strip for anapæsts!'

No calling naughty people by their names,

No tickling audience into gratitude

With chickpease, barleygroats and nuts and plums,

No setting Salabaccho" ...

As I turned—

"True, lady, I am tolerably drunk:

The proper inspiration! Otherwise,—

Phrunichos, Choirilos!—had Aischulos

So foiled you at the goat-song? Drink 's a god.

How else did that old doating driveller

Kratinos foil me, match my masterpiece

The 'Clouds'? I swallowed cloud-distilment—dew

Undimmed by any grape-blush, knit my brow

And gnawed my style and laughed my learnedest;

While he worked at his 'Willow-wicker-flask,'

Swigging at that same flask by which he swore,

Till, sing and empty, sing and fill again,

Somehow result was—what it should not be

Next time, I promised him and kept my word!

Hence, brimful now of Thasian ... I 'll be bound,

Mendesian, merely: triumph-night, you know,

The High Priest entertains the conqueror,

And, since war worsens all things, stingily

The rascal starves whom he is bound to stuff,

Choros and actors and their lord and king

The poet: supper, still he needs must spread—

And this time all was conscientious fare:

He knew his man, his match, his master—made

Amends, spared neither fish, flesh, fowl nor wine:

So merriment increased, I promise you,

Till—something happened."

Here he strangely paused,

"After that,—Well, it either was the cup

To the Good Genius, our concluding pledge,

That wrought me mischief, decently unmixed,—

Or, what if, when that happened, need arose

Of new libation? Did you only know

What happened! Little wonder I am drunk."

Euthukles, o'er the boat-side, quick, what change,

Watch, in the water! But a second since,

It laughed a ripply spread of sun and sea,

Say fused with wave, to never disunite.

Now, sudden all the surface, hard and black,

Lies a quenched light, dead motion: What the cause?

Look up and lo, the menace of a cloud

Has solemnized the sparkling, spoil the sport!

Just so, some overshadow, some new care

Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face

And left there only such a dark surmise

—No wonder if the revel disappeared,

So did his face shed silence every side!

I recognized a new man fronting me.

"So!" he smiled, piercing to my thought at once,

"You see myself? Balaustion's fixed regard

Can strip the proper Aristophanes

Of what our sophists, in their jargon, style

His accidents? My soul sped forth but now

To meet your hostile survey,—soul unseen,

Yet veritably cinct for soul-defence

With satyr sportive quips, cranks, boss and spike,

Just as my visible body paced the street,

Environed by a boon companionship

Your apparition also puts to flight.

Well, what care I, if, unaccoutred twice,

I front my foe—no comicality

Round soul, and body-guard in banishment?

Thank your eyes' searching, undisguised I stand:

The merest female child may question me.

Spare not, speak bold, Balaustion!"

I did speak:

"Bold speech be—welcome to this honored hearth,

Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow

O' the humorist who castigates his kind,

Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays

On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,

Then vanishes with unvindictive smile

After a moment's laying black earth bare.

Splendor of wit that springs a thunderball—

Satire—to burn and purify the world,

True aim, fair purpose: just wit justly strikes

Injustice,—right, as rightly quells the wrong,

Finds out in knaves', fools', cowards' armory

The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through,

No damage else, sagacious of true ore;

Wit, learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath

O'er lyric shell or tragic barbiton,—

Though alien gauds be singed,—undesecrate,

The genuine solace of the sacred brow.

Ay, and how pulses flame a patriot-star

Steadfast athwart our country's night of things,

To beacon, would she trust no meteor-blaze,

Athenai from the rock she steers for straight!

O light, light, light, I hail light everywhere,

No matter for the murk that was,—perchance,

That will be,—certes, never should have been

Such orb's associate!

"Aristophanes!

'The merest female child may question you?'

Once, in my Rhodes, a portent of the wave

Appalled our coast: for many a darkened day,

Intolerable mystery and fear.

Who snatched a furtive glance through crannied peak,

Could but report of snake-scale, lizard-limb,—

So swam what, making whirlpools as it went,

Madded the brine with wrath or monstrous sport.

''T is Tuphon, loose, unmanacled from mount.'

Declared the priests, 'no way appeasable

Unless perchance by virgin-sacrifice!'

Thus grew the terror and o'erhung the doom—

Until one eve a certain female-child

Strayed in safe ignorance to seacoast edge,

And there sat down and sang to please herself.

When all at once, large-looming from his wave,

Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge,

A sea-worn face, sad as mortality,

Divine with yearning after fellowship.

He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw;

So much she sees now, and does reverence!"

Ah, but there followed tail-splash, frisk of fin!

Let cloud pass, the sea's ready laugh outbreaks.

No very godlike trace retained the mouth

Which mocked with—

"So, He taught you tragedy!

I always asked 'Why may not women act?'

Nay, wear the comic visor just as well;

Or, better, quite cast off the face-disguise

And voice-distortion, simply look and speak,

Real women playing women as men—men!

I shall not wonder if things come to that,

Some day when I am distant far enough.

Do you conceive the quite new Comedy

When laws allow? laws only let girls dance,

Pipe, posture,—above all, Elaphionize,

Provided they keep decent—that is, dumb.

Ay, and, conceiving, I would execute,

Had I but two lives: one were overworked!

How penetrate encrusted prejudice,

Pierce ignorance three generations thick

Since first Sousarion crossed our boundary?

He battered with a big Megaric stone;

Chionides felled oak and rough-hewed thence

This club I wield now, having spent my life

In planing knobs and sticking studs to shine;

Somebody else must try mere polished steel!"

Emboldened by the sober mood's return,

"Meanwhile," said I, "since planed and studded club

Once more has pashed competitors to dust,

And poet proves triumphant with that play

Euthukles found last year unfortunate,—

Does triumph spring from smoothness still more smoothed,

Fresh studs sown thick and threefold? In plain words,

Have you exchanged brute-blows,—which teach the brute

Man may surpass him in brutality,—

For human fighting, or true god-like force

Which breathes persuasion nor needs fight at all?

Have you essayed attacking ignorance,

Convicting folly, by their opposites,

Knowledge and wisdom? not by yours for ours,

Fresh ignorance and folly, new for old,

Greater for less, your crime for our mistake!

If so success at last have crowned desert,

Bringing surprise (dashed haply by concern

At your discovery such wild waste of strength

—And what strength!—went so long to keep in vogue

Such warfare—and what warfare!—shamed so fast,

So soon made obsolete, as fell their foe

By the first arrow native to the orb,

First onslaught worthy Aristophanes)—

Was this conviction's entry that same strange

'Something that happened' to confound your feast?"

"Ah, did he witness then my play that failed,

First 'Thesmophoriazousai'? Well and good!

But did he also see—your Euthukles—

My 'Grasshoppers,' which followed and failed too,

Three months since, at the 'Little-in-the-Fields'?"

"To say that he did see that First—should say

He never cared to see its following."

"There happens to be reason why I wrote

First play and second also. Ask the cause!

I warrant you receive, ere talk be done,

Fit answer, authorizing either act.

But here 's the point: as Euthukles made vow

Never again to taste my quality,

So I was minded next experiment

Should tickle palate—yea, of Euthukles!

Not by such utter change, such absolute

A topsyturvy of stage-habitude

As you and he want,—Comedy built fresh,

By novel brick and mortar, base to roof,—

No, for I stand too near and look too close!

Pleasure and pastime yours, spectators brave,

Should I turn art's fixed fabric upside down!

Little you guess how such tough work tasks soul!

Not overtasks, though: give fit strength fair play,

And strength 's a demiourgos! Art renewed?

Ay, in some closet where strength shuts out—first

The friendly faces, sympathetic cheer:

'More of the old provision, none supplies

So bounteously as thou,—our love, our pride,

Our author of the many a perfect piece!

Stick to that standard, change were decadence!

Next, the unfriendly: 'This time, strain will tire,

He 's fresh, Ameipsias thy antagonist!'

—Or better, in some Salaminian cave

Where sky and sea and solitude make earth

And man and noise one insignificance,

Let strength propose itself,—behind the world,—

Sole prize worth winning, work that satisfies

Strength it has dared and done strength's uttermost!

After which,—clap-to closet and quit cave,—

Strength may conclude in Archelaos' court,

And yet esteem the silken company

So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown,

For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve.

Strength amid crowds as late in solitude

May lead the still life, ply the wordless task:

Then only, when seems need to move or speak,

Moving—for due respect, when statesmen pass,

(Strength, in the closet, watched how spiders spin!)

Speaking—when fashion shows intelligence,

(Strength, in the cave, oft whistled to the gulls!)

In short, has learnt first, practised afterwards!

Despise the world and reverence yourself,—

Why, you may unmake things and remake things,

And throw behind you, unconcerned enough,

What 's made or marred: 'you teach men, are not taught!'

So marches off the stage Euripides!

"No such thin fare feeds flesh and blood like mine,

No such faint fume of fancy sates my soul,

No such seclusion, closet, cave or court,

Suits either: give me Iostephanos

Worth making happy what coarse way she will—

O happy-maker, when her cries increase

About the favorite! 'Aristophanes!

More grist to mill, here 's Kleophon to grind!

He's for refusing peace, though Sparté cede

Even Dekeleia! Here 's Kleonumos

Declaring—though he threw away his shield,

He 'll thrash you till you lay your lyre aside!

Orestes bids mind where you walk of nights—

He wants your cloak as you his cudgelling.

Here 's, finally, Melanthios fat with fish,

The gormandizer-spendthrift-dramatist!

So, bustle! Pounce on opportunity!

Let fun a-screaming in Parabasis,

Find food for folk agape at either end,

Mad for amusement! Times grow better too,

And should they worsen, why, who laughs, forgets.

In no ease, venture boy-experiments!

Old wine 's the wine: new poetry drinks raw:

Two plays a season is your pledge, beside;

So, give us "Wasps" again, grown hornets mow!'"

Then he changed.

"Do you so detect in me—

Brow-bald, chin-bearded, me, curved cheek, carved lip,

Or where soul sits and reigns in either eye—

What suits the—stigma, I say,—style say you,

Of 'Wine-lees-poet'? Bravest of buffoons,

Less blunt, than Telekleides, less obscene

Than Murtilos, Hermippos: quite a match

In elegance for Eupolis himself,

Yet pungent as Kratinos at his best?

Graced with traditional immunity

Ever since, much about my grandsire's time,

Some funny village-man in Megara,

Lout-lord and clown-king, used a privilege,

As due religious drinking-bouts came round,

To daub his phiz,—no, that was afterward,—

He merely mounted cart with mates of choice

And traversed country, taking house by house,

At night,—because of danger in the freak,—

Then hollaed 'Skin-flint starves his laborers!

Clench-fist stows figs away, cheats government!

Such an one likes to kiss his neighbor's wife,

And beat his own; while such another ... Boh!'

Soon came the broad day, circumstantial tale,

Dancing and verse, and there 's our Comedy,

There's Mullos, there 's Euetes, there 's the stock

I shall be proud to graft my powers upon!

Protected? Punished quite as certainly

When Archons pleased to lay down each his law,—

Your Morucheides-Surakosios sort,—

Each season, 'No more naming citizens,

Only abuse the vice, the vicious spare!

Observe, henceforth no Areopagite

Demean his rank by writing Comedy!'

(They one and all could write the 'Clouds' of course.)

'Needs must we nick expenditure, allow

Comedy half a choros, supper—none,

Times being hard, while applicants increase

For, what costs cash, the Tragic Trilogy.'

Lofty Tragedians! How they lounge aloof

Each with his Triad, three plays to my one,

Not counting the contemptuous fourth, the frank

Concession to mere mortal levity,

Satyric pittance tossed our beggar-world!

Your proud Euripides from first to last

Doled out some five such, never deigned us more!

And these—what curds and whey for marrowy wine!

That same Alkestis you so rave about

Passed muster with him for a Satyr-play,

The prig!—why trifle time with toys and skits

When he could stuff four ragbags sausage-wise

With sophistry, with bookish odds and ends,

Sokrates, meteors, moonshine, 'Life 's not Life,'

'The tongue swore, but unsworn the mind remains,'

And fifty such concoctions, crabtree-fruit

Digested while, head low and heels in heaven,

He lay, let Comics laugh—for privilege!

Looked puzzled on, or pityingly off,

But never dreamed of paying gibe by jeer,

Buffet by blow: plenty of proverb-pokes

At vice and folly, wicked kings, mad mobs!

No sign of wincing at my Comic lash,

No protest against infamous abuse,

Malignant censure,—naught to prove I scourged

With tougher thong-than leek-and-onion-plait!

If ever he glanced gloom, aggrieved at all,

The aggriever must be—Aischulos perhaps:

Or Sophokles he 'd take exception to.

—Do you detect in me—in me, I ask,

The man like to accept this measurement

Of faculty, contentedly sit classed

Mere Comic Poet—since I wrote 'The Birds'?"

I thought there might lurk truth in jest's disguise.

"Thanks!" he resumed, so quick to construe smile!

"I answered—in my mind—these gapers thus:

Since old wine 's ripe and new verse raw, you judge—

What if I vary vintage-mode and mix

Blossom with must, give nosegay to the brew,

Fining, refining, gently, surely, till

The educated taste turns unawares

From customary dregs to draught divine?

Then answered—with my lips: More 'Wasps' you want?

Come next year and I give you 'Grasshoppers'!

And 'Grasshoppers' I gave them,—last month's play.

They formed the Choros. Alkibiades,

No longer Triphales but Trilophos,

(Whom I called Darling-of-the-Summertime,

Born to be nothing else but beautiful

And brave, to eat, drink, love his life away)

Persuades the Tettix (our Autochthon-brood,

That sip the dew and sing on olive-branch

Above the ant-and-emmet populace)

To summon all who meadow, hill and dale

Inhabit—bee, wasp, woodlouse, dragonfly—

To band themselves against red nipper-nose

Stagbeetle, huge Taügetan (you guess—

Sparté) Athenai needs must battle with,

Because her sons are grown effeminate

To that degree—so morbifies their flesh

The poison-drama of Euripides,

Morals and music—there 's no antidote

Occurs save warfare which inspirits blood,

And brings us back perchance the blessed time

When (Choros takes up tale) our commonalty

Firm in primeval virtue, antique faith,

Ere earwig-sophist plagued or pismire-sage,

Cockered no noddle up with A, b, g,

Book-learning, logic-chopping, and the moon,

But just employed their brains on "Ruppapai,

Row, boys, munch barley-bread, and take your ease—

Mindful, however, of the tier beneath!'

Ah, golden epoch! while the nobler sort

(Such needs must study, no contesting that!)

Wore no long curls but used to crop their hair,

Gathered the tunic well about the ham,

Remembering 't was soft sand they used for seat

At school-time, while—mark this—the lesson long,

No learner ever dared to cross his legs!

Then, if you bade him take the myrtle-bough

And sing for supper—'t was some grave romaunt

How man of Mitulené, wondrous wise,

Jumped into hedge, by mortals quickset called,

And there, anticipating Oidipous,

Scratched out his eyes and scratched them in again.

None of your Phaidras, Augés, Kanakés,

To mincing music, turn, trill, tweedle-trash,

Whence comes that Marathon is obsolete!

Next, my Antistrophé was—praise of Peace:

Ah, could our people know what Peace implies!

Home to the farm and furrow! Grub one's vine,

Romp with one's Thratta, pretty serving-girl.

When wifie 's busy bathing! Eat and drink.

And drink and eat, what else is good in life?

Slice hare, toss pancake, gayly gurgle down

The Thasian grape in celebration due

Of Bacchos! Welcome, dear domestic rite,

When wife and sons and daughters, Thratta too,

Pour pea-soup as we chant delectably

In Bacchos reels, his tunic at his heels!

Enough, you comprehend,—I do at least!

Then,—be but patient,—the Parabasis!

Pray! For in that I also pushed reform.

None of the self-laudation, vulgar brag,

Vainglorious rivals cultivate so much!

No! If some merest word in Art's defence

Justice demanded of me,—never fear!

Claim was preferred, but dignifiedly.

A cricket asked a locust (winged, you know)

What he had seen most rare in foreign parts?

'I have flown far,' chirped he, 'North, East, South, West,

And nowhere heard of poet worth a fig

If matched with Bald-head here, Aigina's boast,

Who in this play bids rivalry despair

Past, present, and to come, so marvellous

His Tragic, Comic, Lyric excellence!

Whereof the fit reward were (not to speak

Of dinner every day at public cost

I' the Prutaneion) supper with yourselves,

My Public, best dish offered bravest bard!'

No more! no sort of sin against good taste!

Then, satire,—Oh, a plain necessity!

But I won't tell you: for—could I dispense

With one more gird at old Ariphrades?

How scorpion-like he feeds on human flesh—

Ever finds out some novel infamy

Unutterable, inconceivable,

Which all the greater need was to describe

Minutely, each tail-twist at ink-shed time ...

Now, what 's your gesture caused by? What you loathe,

Don't I loathe doubly, else why take such pains

To tell it you? But keep your prejudice!

My audience justified you! Housebreakers!

This pattern-purity was played and failed

Last Rural Dionusia—failed! for why?

Ameipsias followed with the genuine stuff.

He had been mindful to engage the Four—

Karkinos and his dwarf-crab-family—

Father and sons, they whirled like spinning-tops,

Choros gigantically poked his fun,

The boys' frank laugh relaxed the seniors' brow,

The skies re-echoed victory's acclaim,

Ameipsias gained his due, I got my dose

Of wisdom for the future. Purity?

No more of that next month, Athenai mine!

Contrive new cut of robe who will,—I patch

The old exomis, add no purple sleeve!

The Thesmophoriazousai, smartened up

With certain plaits, shall please, I promise you!

"Yes, I took up the play that failed last year,

And re-arranged things; threw adroitly in—

No Parachoregema—men to match

My women there already; and when these

(I had a hit at Aristullos here,

His plan how womankind should rule the roast)

Drove men to plough—'A-field, ye cribbed of cape!'

Men showed themselves exempt from service straight

Stupendously, till all the boys cried 'Brave!'

Then for the elders, I bethought me too,

Improved upon Mnesilochos' release

From the old bowman, board and binding-strap:

I made his son-in-law Euripides

Engage to put both shrewish wives away—

'Gravity,' one, the other 'Sophist-lore'—

And mate with the Bald Bard's hetairai twain—

'Goodhumor' and 'Indulgence:' on they tripped,

Murrhiné, Akalanthis,—'beautiful

Their whole belongings'—crowd joined choros there!

And while the Toxotes wound up his part

By shower of nuts and sweetmeats on the mob,

The woman-choros celebrated New

Kalligeneia, the frank last-day rite.

Brief, I was chairéd and caressed and crowned

And the whole theatre broke out a-roar,

Echoed my admonition—choros-cap—

Rivals of mine, your hands to your faces!

Summon no more the Muses, the Graces,

Since here by my side they have chosen their places!

And so we all flocked merrily to feast,—

I, my choragos, choros, actors, mutes

And flutes aforesaid, friends in crowd, no fear,

At the Priest's supper; and hilarity

Grew none the less that, early in the piece,

Ran a report, from row to row close-packed,

Of messenger's arrival at the Port

With weighty tidings, 'Of Lusandros' flight,'

Opined one; 'That Euboia penitent

Sends the Confederation fifty ships,'

Preferred another; while 'The Great King's Eye

Has brought a present for Elaphion here,

That rarest peacock Kompolakuthes!'

Such was the supposition of a third.

'No matter what the news,' friend Strattis laughed,

'It won't be worse for waiting: while each click

Of the klepsudra sets a shaking grave

Resentment in our shark's-head, boiled and spoiled

By this time: dished in Sphettian vinegar,

Silphion and honey, served with cocks'-brain-sauce!

So, swift to supper, Poet! No mistake,

This play; nor, like the unflavored "Grasshoppers,"

Salt without thyme!' Right merrily we supped,

Till—something happened.

"Out it shall, at last!

"Mirth drew to ending, for the cup was crowned

To the Triumphant!' Kleonclapper erst,

Now, Plier of a scourge Euripides

Fairly turns tail from, flying Attiké

For Makedonia's rocks and frosts and bears,

Where, furry grown, he growls to match the squeak

Of girl-voiced, crocus-vested Agathon!

Ha ha, he he!' When suddenly a knock—

Sharp, solitary, cold, authoritative.

"'Babaiax! Sokrates a-passing by,

A-peering in, for Aristullos' sake,

To put a question touching Comic Law?'

"No! Enters an old pale-swathed majesty,

Makes slow mute passage through two ranks as mute,

(Strattis stood up with all the rest, the sneak!)

Gray brow still bent on ground, upraised at length

When, our Priest reached, full front the vision paused.

"'Priest!'—the deep tone succeeded the fixed gaze—

'Thou carest that thy god have spectacle

Decent and seemly; wherefore, I announce

That, since Euripides is dead to-day,

My Choros, at the Greater Feast, next month,

Shall, clothed in black, appear ungarlanded!'

"Then the gray brow sank low, and Sophokles

Re-swathed him, sweeping doorward: mutely passed

'Twixt rows as mute, to mingle possibly

With certain gods who convoy age to port;

And night resumed him.

"When our stupor broke,

Chirpings took courage, and grew audible.

"'Dead—so one speaks now of Euripides!'

'Ungarlanded dance Choros, did he say?

I guess the reason: in extreme old age

No doubt such have the gods for visitants.

Why did he dedicate to Herakles

An altar else, but that the god, turned Judge,

Told him in dream who took the crown of gold?

He who restored Akropolis the theft,

Himself may feel perhaps a timely twinge

At thought of certain other crowns he filched

From—who now visits Herakles the Judge.

Instance "Medeia"! that play yielded palm

To Sophokles; and he again—to whom?

Euphorion! Why? Ask Herakles the Judge!'

'Ungarlanded, just means—economy!

Suppress robes, chaplets, everything suppress

Except the poet's present! An old tale

Put capitally by Trugaios—eh?

News from the world of transformation strange!

How Sophokles is grown Simonides,

And—aged, rotten—all the same, for greed

Would venture on a hurdle out to sea!

So jokes Philonides. Kallistratos

Retorts, Mistake! Instead of stinginess—

The fact is, in extreme decrepitude,

He has discarded poet and turned priest,

Priest of Half-Hero Alkon: visited

In his own house too by Asklepios' self,

So he avers. Meanwhile, his own estate

Lies fallow; Iophon 's the manager,—

Nay, touches up a play, brings out the same,

Asserts true sonship. See to what you sink

After your dozen-dozen prodigies!

Looking so old—Euripides seems young,

Born ten years later.'

"'Just his tricky style!

Since, stealing first away, he wins first word

Out of good-natured rival Sophokles,

Procures himself no bad panegyric.

Had fate willed otherwise, himself were taxed

To pay survivor's-tribute,—harder squeezed

From anybody beaten first to last,

Than one who, steadily a conqueror,

Finds that his magnanimity is tasked

To merely make pretence and—beat itself!'

"So chirped the feasters though suppressedly.

"But I—what else do you suppose?—had pierced

Quite through friends' outside-straining, foes' mock-praise,

And reached conviction hearted under all.

Death's rapid line had closed a life's account,

And cut off, left unalterably clear

The summed-up value of Euripides.

"Well, it might be the Thasian! Certainly

There sang suggestive music in my ears;

And, through—what sophists style—the wall of sense

My eyes pierced: death seemed life and life seemed death,

Envisaged that way, now, which I, before,

Conceived was just a moon-struck mood. Quite plain

There re-insisted,—ay, each prim stiff phrase

Of each old play, my still-new laughing-stock,

Had meaning, well worth poet's pains to state,

Should life prove half true life's term,—death, the rest.

As for the other question, late so large,

Now all at once so little,—he or I,—

Which better comprehended playwright craft,—

There, too, old admonition took fresh point.

As clear recurred our last word-interchange

Two years since, when I tried with 'Ploutos.' 'Vain!'

Saluted me the cold grave-bearded bard—

'Vain, this late trial, Aristophanes!

None balks the genius with impunity!

You know what kind's the nobler, what makes grave

Or what makes grin: there 's yet a nobler still,

Possibly,—what makes wise, not grave,—and glad,

Not grinning: whereby laughter joins with tears,

Tragic and Comic Poet prove one power,

And Aristophanes becomes our Fourth—

Nay, greatest! Never needs the Art stand still,

But those Art leans on lag, and none like you,

Her strongest of supports, whose step aside

Undoes the march: defection checks advance

Too late adventured! See the "Ploutos" here!

This step decides your foot from old to new—

Proves you relinquish song and dance and jest,

Discard the beast, and, rising from all-fours,

Fain would paint, manlike, actual human life,

Make veritable men think, say and do.

Here 's the conception: which to execute,

Where 's force? Spent! Ere the race began, was breath

O' the runner squandered' on each friendly fool—

Wit-fireworks fizzed off while day craved no flame;

How should the night receive her due of fire

Flared out in Wasps and Horses, Clouds and Birds,

Prodigiously a-crackle? Rest content!

The new adventure for the novel man

Born to that next success myself foresee

In right of where I reach before I rest.

At end of a long course, straight all the way,

Well may there tremble somewhat into ken

The untrod path, clouds veiled from earlier gaze!

None may live two lives: I have lived mine through,

Die where I first stand still. You retrograde.

I leave my life's work. I compete with you,

My last with your last, my "Antiope"—

"Phoinissai"—with this "Ploutos"? No, I think!

Ever shall great and awful Victory

Accompany my life—in Maketis

If not Athenai. Take my farewell, friend!

Friend,—for from no consummate excellence

Like yours, whatever fault may countervail,

Do I profess estrangement: murk the marsh,

Yet where a solitary marble block

Blanches the gloom, there let the eagle perch!

You show—what splinters of Pentelikos,

Islanded by what ordure! Eagles fly,

Rest on the right place, thence depart as free;

But 'ware man's footstep, would it traverse mire

Untainted! Mire is safe for worms that crawl.'

"Balaustion! Here are very many words,

All to portray one moment's rush of thought,—

And much they do it! Still, you understand.

The Archon, the Feast-master, read their sum

And substance, judged the banquet-glow extinct,

So rose, discreetly if abruptly, crowned

The parting cup,—'To the Good Genius, then!'

"Up starts young Strattis for a final flash:

'Ay, the Good Genius! To the Comic Muse,

She who evolves superiority.

Triumph and joy from sorrow, unsuccess

And all that 's incomplete in human life;

Who proves such actual failure transient wrong,

Since out of body uncouth, halt and maimed—

Since out of soul grotesque, corrupt or blank—

Fancy, uplifted by the Muse, can flit

To soul and body, reinstate them Man:

Beside which perfect man, how clear we see

Divergency from type was earth's effect!

Escaping whence by laughter,—Fancy's feat,—

We right man's wrong, establish true for false,—

Above misshapen body, uncouth soul,

Reach the fine form, the clear intelligence—

Above unseemliness, reach decent law,—

By laughter: attestation of the Muse

That low-and-ugsome is not signed and sealed

Incontrovertibly man's portion here,

Or, if here,—why, still high-and-fair exists

In that ethereal realm where laughs our soul

Lift by the Muse. Hail thou her ministrant!

Hail who accepted no deformity

In man as normal and remediless,

But rather pushed it to such gross extreme

That, outraged, we protest by eye's recoil

The opposite proves somewhere rule and law!

Hail who implied, by limning Lamachos,

Plenty and pastime wait on peace, not war!

Philokleon—better bear a wrong than plead,

Play the litigious fool to stuff the mouth

Of dikast with the due three-obol fee!

The Paphlagonian—stick to the old sway

Of few and wise, not rabble-government!

Trugaios, Pisthetairos, Strepsiades,—

Why multiply examples? Hail, in fine,

The hero of each painted monster—so

Suggesting the unpictured perfect shape!

Pour out! A laugh to Aristophanes!'

"'Stay, my fine Strattis'—and I stopped applause—

'To the Good Genius—but the Tragic Muse!

She who instructs her poet, bids man's soul

Play man's part merely nor attempt the gods'

Ill-guessed of! Task humanity to height,

Put passion to prime use, urge will, unshamed

When will's last effort breaks in impotence!

No power forego, elude: no weakness,—plied

Fairly by power and will,—renounce, deny!

Acknowledge, in such miscalled weakness, strength

Latent: and substitute thus things for words!

Make man run life's race fairly,—legs and feet,

Craving no false wings to o'erfly its length!

Trust on, trust ever, trust to end—in truth!

By truth of extreme passion, utmost will,

Shame back all false display of either force—

Barrier about such strenuous heat and glow,

That cowardice shall shirk contending,—cant,

Pretension, shrivel at truth's first approach!

Pour to the Tragic Muse's ministrant

Who, as he pictured pure Hippolutos,

Abolished our earth's blot Ariphrades;

Who, as he drew Bellerophon the bold,

Proclaimed Kleonumos incredible;

Who, as his Theseus towered up man once more,

Made Alkibiades shrink boy again!

A tear—no woman's tribute, weak exchange

For action, water spent and heart's-blood saved—

No man's regret for greatness gone, ungraced

Perchance by even that poor meed, man's praise—

But some god's superabundance of desire,

Yearning of will to 'scape necessity,—

Love's overbrimming for self-sacrifice,

Whence good might be, which never else may be,

By power displayed, forbidden this strait sphere,—

Effort expressible one only way—

Such tear from me fall to Euripides!'

"The Thasian!—All, the Thasian, I account!

"Whereupon outburst the whole company

Into applause and—laughter, would you think?

"'The unrivalled one! How, never at a loss,

He turns the Tragic on its Comic side

Else imperceptible! Here 's death itself—

Death of a rival, of an enemy,—

Scarce seen as Comic till the master-touch

Made it acknowledge Aristophanes!

Lo, that Euripidean laurel-tree

Struck to the heart by lightning! Sokrates

Would question us, with buzz of "how" and "why,"

Wherefore the berry's virtue, the bloom's vice,

Till we all wished him quiet with his friend;

Agathon would compose an elegy,

Lyric bewailment fit to move a stone,

And, stones responsive, we might wince, 't is like;

Nay, with most cause of all to weep the least,

Sophokles ordains mourning for his sake

While we confess to a remorseful twinge:—

Suddenly, who but Aristophanes,

Prompt to the rescue, puts forth solemn hand,

Singles us out the tragic tree's best branch,

Persuades it groundward and, at tip, appends,

For votive-visor, Faun's goat-grinning face!

Back it flies, evermore with jest a-top,

And we recover the true mood, and laugh!"

"I felt as when some Nikias,—ninny-like

Troubled by sunspot-portent, moon-eclipse,—

At fault a little, sees no choice but sound

Retreat from foeman; and his troops mistake

The signal, and hail onset in the blast,

And at their joyous answer, alalé,

Back the old courage brings the scattered wits;

He wonders what his doubt meant, quick confirms

The happy error, blows the charge amain.

So I repaired things.

"'Both be praised,' thanked I.

'You who have laughed with Aristophanes,

You who wept rather with the Lord of Tears!

Priest, do thou, president alike o'er each,

Tragic and Comic function of the god,

Help with libation to the blended twain!

Either of which who serving, only serves—

Proclaims himself disqualified to pour

To that Good Genius—complex Poetry,

Uniting each god-grace, including both:

Which, operant for body as for soul,

Masters alike the laughter and the tears,

Supreme in lowliest earth, sublimest sky.

Who dares disjoin these,—whether he ignores

Body or soul, whichever half destroys,—

Maims the else perfect manhood, perpetrates

Again the inexpiable crime we curse—

Hacks at the Hermai, halves each guardian shape

Combining, nowise vainly, prominence

Of august head and enthroned intellect,

With homelier symbol of asserted sense,—

Nature's prime impulse, earthly appetite.

For, when our folly ventures on the freak,

Would fain abolish joy and fruitfulness,

Mutilate nature—what avails the Head

Left solitarily predominant,—

Unbodied soul,—not Hermes, both in one?

I, no more than our City, acquiesce

In such a desecration, but defend

Man's double nature—ay, wert thou its foe!

Could I once more, thou cold Euripides,

Encounter thee, in naught would I abate

My warfare, nor subdue my worst attack

On thee whose life-work preached "Raise soul, sink sense!

Evirate Hermes!"—would avenge the god,

And justify myself. Once face to face,

Thou, the argute and tricksy, shouldst not wrap,

As thine old fashion was, in silent scorn

The breast that quickened at the sting of truth,

Nor turn from me, as, if the tale be true,

From Lais when she met thee in thy walks,

And questioned why she had no rights as thou.

Not so shouldst thou betake thee, be assured,

To book and pencil, deign me no reply!

I would extract an answer from those lips

So closed and cold, were mine the garden-chance!

Gone from the world! Does none remain to take

Thy part and ply me with thy sophist-skill?

No sun makes proof of his whole potency

For gold and purple in that orb we view:

The apparent orb does little but leave blind

The audacious, and confused the worshipping;

But, close on orb's departure, must succeed

The serviceable cloud,—must intervene,

Induce expenditure of rose and blue,

Reveal what lay in him was lost to us.

So, friends, what hinders, as we homeward go,

If, privileged by triumph gained to-day,

We clasp that cloud our sun left saturate,

The Rhodian rosy with Euripides?

Not of my audience on my triumph-day,

She nor her husband! After the night's news

Neither will sleep but watch; I know the mood.

Accompany! my crown declares my right!'

"And here you stand with those warm golden eyes!

"In honest language, I am scarce too sure

Whether I really felt, indeed expressed

Then, in that presence, things I now repeat:

Nor half, nor any one word,—will that do?

Maybe, such eyes must strike conviction, turn

One's nature bottom upwards, show the base—

The live rock latent under wave and foam:

Superimposure these! Yet solid stuff

Will ever and anon, obeying star,

(And what star reaches rock-nerve like an eye?)

Swim up to surface, spout or mud or flame,

And find no more to do than sink as fast.

"Anyhow, I have followed happily

The impulse, pledged my Genius with effect,

Since, come to see you, I am shown—myself!"

I answered:

"One of us declared for both

'Welcome the glory of Aristophanes.'

The other adds: and,—if that glory last,

Nor marsh-born vapor creep to veil the same,—

Once entered, share in our solemnity!

Commemorate, as we, Euripides!"

"What?" he looked round, "I darken the bright house?

Profane the temple of your deity?

That 's true! Else wherefore does he stand portrayed?

What Rhodian paint and pencil saved so much,

Beard, freckled face, brow—all but breath, I hope!

Come, that 's unfair: myself am somebody,

Yet my pictorial fame 's just potter's work,—

I merely figure on men's drinking-mugs!

I and the Flat-nose, Sophroniskos' son,

Oft make a pair. But what 's this lies below?

His table-book and graver, playwright's tool!

And lo, the sweet psalterion, strung and screwed,

Whereon he tried those le-é-é-é-és

And ke-é-é-é-és and turns and trills,

Lovely lark's tirra-lirra, lad's delight!

Aischulos' bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood

Has somehow spoiled my taste for twitterings!

With ... what, and did he leave you 'Herakles'?

The 'Frenzied Hero,' one unfractured sheet,

No pine-wood tablets smeared with treacherous wax—

Papuros perfect as e'er tempted pen!

This sacred twist of bay-leaves dead and sere

Must be that crown the fine work failed to catch,—

No wonder! This might crown 'Antiope.'

'Herakles' triumph? In your heart perhaps!

But elsewhere? Come now, I'll explain the case,

Show you the main mistake. Give me the sheet!"

I interrupted:

"Aristophanes!

The stranger-woman sues in her abode—

'Be honored as our guest!' But, call it—shrine,

Then 'No dishonor to the Daimon!' bids

The priestess 'or expect dishonor's due!'

You enter fresh from your worst infamy,

Last instance of long outrage; yet I pause,

Withhold the word a-tremble on my lip,

Incline me, rather, yearn to reverence,—

So you but suffer that I see the blaze

And not the bolt,—the splendid fancy-fling,

Not the cold iron malice, the launched lie

Whence heavenly fire has withered; impotent,

Yet execrable, leave it 'neath the look

Of yon impassive presence! What he scorned,

His life long, need I touch, offend my foot,

To prove that malice missed its mark, that lie

Cumbers the ground, returns to whence it came?

I marvel, I deplore,—the rest be mute!

But, throw off hate's celestiality,—

Show me, apart from song-flash and wit-flame,

A mere man's hand ignobly clenched against

Yon supreme calmness,—and I interpose,

Such as you see me! Silk breaks lightning's blow!"

He seemed to scarce so much as notice me,

Aught I had spoken, save the final phrase:

Arrested there.

"Euripides grown calm!

Calmness supreme means dead and therefore safe,"

He muttered; then more audibly began—

"Dead! Such must die! Could people comprehend!

There 's the unfairness of it! So obtuse

Are all: from Solon downward with his saw,

'Let none revile the dead,—no, though the son,

Nay, far descendant, should revile thyself!'—

To him who made Elektra, in the act

Of wreaking vengeance on her worst of foes,

Scruple to blame, since speech that blames insults

Too much the very villain life-released.

Now, I say, only after death, begins

That formidable claim,—immunity

Of faultiness from fault's due punishment!

The living, who defame me,—why, they live:

Fools,—I best prove them foolish by their life,

Will they but work on, lay their work by mine,

And wait a little, one Olympiad, say!

Then, where 's the vital force, mine froze beside?

The sturdy fibre, shamed my brittle stuff?

The school-correctness, sure of wise award

When my vagaries cease to tickle taste?

Where 's censure that must sink me, judgment big

Awaiting just the word posterity

Pants to pronounce? Time's wave breaks, buries—whom,

Fools, when myself confronts you four years hence?

But die, ere next Lenaia,—safely so

You 'scape me, slink with all your ignorance,

Stupidity and malice, to that hole

O'er which survivors croak 'Respect the dead!'

Ay, for I needs must! But allow me clutch

Only a carrion-handful, lend it sense,

(Mine, not its own, or could it answer me?)

And question, 'You, I pluck from hiding-place,

Whose cant was, certain years ago, my "Clouds"

Might last until the swallows came with Spring—

Whose chatter, "Birds" are unintelligible,

Mere psychologic puzzling: poetry?

List, the true lay to rock a cradle with!

O man of Mitulené, wondrous wise!'

—Would not I rub each face in its own filth

To tune of 'Now that years have come and gone,

How does the fact stand? What 's demonstrable

By time, that tries things?—your own test, not mine

Who think men are, were, ever will be fools,

Though somehow fools confute fools,—as these, you!

Don't mumble to the sheepish twos and threes

You cornered and called "audience!" face this me

Who know, and can, and—helped by fifty years—

Do pulverize you pygmies, then as now!'

"Ay, now as then, I pulverize the brood,

Balaustion! Mindful, from the first, where foe

Would hide head safe when hand had flung its stone,

I did not turn cheek and take pleasantry,

But flogged while skin could purple and flesh start,

To teach fools whom they tried conclusions with.

First face a-splutter at me got such splotch

Of prompt slab mud as, filling mouth to maw,

Made its concern thenceforward not so much

To criticise me as go cleanse itself.

The only drawback to which huge delight,—

(He saw it, how he saw it, that calm cold

Sagacity you call Euripides!)

—Why, 't is that, make a muckheap of a man,

There, pillared by your prowess, he remains,

Immortally immerded. Not so he!

Men pelted him but got no pellet back.

He reasoned, I 'll engage,—'Acquaint the world

Certain minuteness butted at my knee?

Dogface Eruxis, the small satirist,—

What better would the manikin desire

Than to strut forth on tiptoe, notable

As who so far up fouled me in the flank?'

So dealt he with the dwarfs: we giants, too,

Why must we emulate their pin-point play?

Render imperishable—impotence,

For mud throw mountains? Zeus, by mud unreached,—

Well, 't was no dwarf he heaved Olumpos at!"

My heart burned up within me to my tongue.

"And why must men remember, ages hence,

Who it was rolled down rocks, but refuse too—

Strattis might steal from! mixture-monument,

Recording what? 'I, Aristophanes,

Who boast me much inventive in my art,

Against Euripides thus volleyed muck

Because, in art, he too extended bounds.

I—patriot, loving peace and hating war,—

Choosing the rule of few, but wise and good,

Rather than mob-dictature, fools and knaves

However multiplied their mastery,—

Despising most of all the demagogue,

(Noisome air-bubble, buoyed up, borne along

By kindred breath of knave and fool below,

Whose hearts swell proudly as each puffing face

Grows big, reflected in that glassy ball,

Vacuity, just bellied out to break

And righteously bespatter friends the first,)

I loathing,—beyond less puissant speech

Than my own god-grand language to declare,—

The fawning, cozenage and calumny

Wherewith such favorite feeds the populace

That fan and set him flying for reward:—

I who, detecting what vice underlies

Thought's superstructure,—fancy's sludge and slime

'Twixt fact's sound floor and thought's mere surface-growth

Of hopes and fears which root no deeplier down

Than where all such mere fungi breed and bloat—

Namely, man's misconception of the God:—

I, loving, hating, wishful from my soul

That truth should triumph, falsehood have defeat,

—Why, all my soul's supremacy of power

Did I pour out in volley just on him

Who, his whole life long, championed every cause

I called my heart's cause, loving as I loved,

Hating my hates, spurned falsehood, championed truth,—

Championed truth not by flagellating foe

With simple rose and lily, gibe and jeer,

Sly wink of boon-companion o'er the bowze

Who, while he blames the liquor, smacks the lip,

Blames, doubtless, but leers condonation too,—

No, the balled fist broke brow like thunderbolt,

Battered till brain flew! Seeing which descent,

None questioned that was first acquaintanceship,

The avenger's with the vice he crashed through bone.

Still, he displeased me; and I turned from foe

To fellow-fighter, flung much stone, more mud,—

But missed him, since he lives aloof, I see.'

Pah! stop more shame, deep-cutting glory through,

Nor add, this poet, learned,—found no taunt

Tell like 'That other poet studies books!'

Wise,—cried 'At each attempt to move our hearts,

He uses the mere phrase of daily life!'

Witty,—'His mother was a herb-woman!'

Veracious, honest, loyal, fair and good,—

'It was Kephisophon who helped him write!'

"Whence,—oh the tragic end of Comedy!—

Balaustion pities Aristophanes.

For, who believed him? Those who laughed so loud?

They heard him call the sun Sicilian cheese!

Had he called true cheese—curd, would muscle move?

What made them laugh but the enormous lie?

'Kephisophon wrote "Herakles"? ha, ha,

What can have stirred the wine-dregs, soured the soul,

And set a-lying Aristophanes?

Some accident at which he took offence!

The Tragic Master in a moody muse

Passed him unhailing, and it hurts—it hurts!

Beside, there 's license for the Wine-lees-song!'"

Blood burnt the cheekbone, each black eye flashed fierce.

"But this exceeds our license! Stay awhile—

That 's the solution! both are foreigners,

The fresh-come Rhodian lady, and her spouse

The man of Phokis: newly resident,

Nowise instructed—that explains it all!

No born and bred Athenian but would smile,

Unless frown seemed more fit for ignorance.

These strangers have a privilege!

"You blame"

(Presently he resumed with milder mien)

"Both theory and practice—Comedy:

Blame her from altitudes the Tragic friend

Rose to, and upraised friends along with him,

No matter how. Once there, all 's cold and fine,

Passionless, rational; our world beneath

Shows (should you condescend to grace so much

As glance at poor Athenai) grimly gross—

A population which, mere flesh and blood,

Eats, drinks, and kisses, falls to fisticuffs,

Then hugs as hugely: speaks too as it acts,

Prodigiously talks nonsense,—townsmen needs

Must parley in their town's vernacular.

Such world has, of two courses, one to choose:

Unworld itself,—or else go blackening off

To its crow-kindred, leave philosophy

Her heights serene, fit perch for owls like you.

Now, since the world demurs to either course,

Permit me,—in default of boy or girl,

So they be reared Athenian, good and true,—

To praise what you most blame! Hear Art's defence!

I 'll prove our institution, Comedy,

Coeval with the birth of freedom, matched

So nice with our Republic, that its growth

Measures each greatness, just as its decline

Would signalize the downfall of the pair.

Our Art began when Bacchos ... never mind!

You and your master don't acknowledge gods:

'They are not, no, they are not!' well,—began

When the rude instinct of our race outspoke,

Found,—on recurrence of festivity

Occasioned by black mother-earth's good will

To children, as they took her vintage-gifts,—

Found—not the least of many benefits—

That wine unlocked the stiffest lip, and loosed

The tongue late dry and reticent of joke,

Through custom's gripe which gladness thrusts aside.

So, emulating liberalities,

Heaven joined with earth for that god's day at least,

Renewed man's privilege, grown obsolete,

Of telling truth nor dreading punishment.

Whereon the joyous band disguised their forms

With skins, beast-fashion, daubed each phiz with dregs,

Then hollaed 'Neighbor, you are fool, you—knave,

You—hard to serve, you—stingy to reward!'

The guiltless crowed, the guilty sunk their crest,

And good folk gained thereby, 't was evident.

Whence, by degrees, a birth of happier thought,

The notion came—not simply this to say,

But this to do—prove, put in evidence,

And act the fool, the knave, the harsh, the hunks,

Who did prate, cheat, shake fist, draw purse-string tight,

As crowd might see, which only heard before.

"So played the Poet, with his man of parts;

And all the others, found unqualified

To mount cart and be persons, made the mob,

Joined choros, fortified their fellows' fun,

Anticipated the community,

Gave judgment which the public ratified.

Suiting rough weapon doubtless to plain truth,

They flung, for word-artillery, why—filth;

Still, folks who wiped the unsavory salute

From visage, would prefer the mess, to wit—

Steel, poked through midriff with a civil speech,

As now the way is: then, the kindlier mode

Was—drub not stab, rib-roast not scarify!

So did Sousarion introduce, and so

Did I, acceding, find the Comic Art:

Club,—if I call it,—notice what 's implied!

An engine proper for rough chastisement,

No downright slaying: with impunity—

Provided crabtree, steeped in oily joke,

Deal only such a bruise as laughter cures.

I kept the gained advantage: stickled still

For club-law—stout fun and allowanced thumps:

Knocked in each knob a crevice to hold joke

As fig-leaf holds the fat-fry.

"Next, whom thrash?

Only the coarse fool and the clownish knave?

Higher, more artificial, composite

Offence should prove my prowess, eye and arm!

Not who robs henroost, tells of untaxed figs,

Spends all his substance on stewed ellops-fish,

Or gives a pheasant to his neighbor's wife:

No! strike malpractice that affects the State,

The common weal—intriguer or poltroon,

Venality, corruption, what care I

If shrewd or witless merely?—so the thing

Lay sap to aught that made Athenai bright

And happy, change her customs, lead astray

Youth or age, play the demagogue at Pnux,

The sophist in Palaistra, or—what 's worst,

As widest mischief,—from the Theatre

Preach innovation, bring contempt on oaths,

Adorn licentiousness, despise the Cult.

Are such to be my game? Why, then there wants

Quite other cunning than a cudgel-sweep!

Grasp the old stout stock, but new tip with steel

Each boss, if I would bray—no callous hide

Simply, but Lamachos in coat of proof,

Or Kleon cased about with impudence!

Shaft pushed no worse while point pierced sparkling so

That none smiled 'Sportive, what seems savagest,

—Innocuous anger, spiteless rustic mirth!'

Yet spiteless in a sort, considered well,

Since I pursued my warfare till each wound

Went through the mere man, reached the principle

Worth purging from Athenai. Lamachos?

No, I attacked war's representative;

Kleon? No, flattery of the populace;

Sokrates? No, but that pernicious seed

Of sophists whereby hopeful youth is taught

To jabber argument, chop logic, pore

On sun and moon, and worship Whirligig.

Oh, your tragedian, with the lofty grace,

Aims at no other and effects as much?

Candidly: what 's a polished period worth,

Filed curt sententiousness of loaded line,

When he who deals out doctrine, primly steps

From just that selfsame moon he maunders of,

And, blood-thinned by his pallid nutriment,

Proposes to rich earth-blood—purity?

In me, 't was equal-balanced flesh rebuked

Excess alike in stuff-guts Glauketes

Or starveling Chairephon; I challenged both,—

Strong understander of our common life,

I urged sustainment of humanity.

Whereas when your tragedian cries up Peace—

He 's silent as to cheese-cakes Peace may chew;

Seeing through rabble-rule, he shuts his eye

To what were better done than crowding Pnux—

That 's dance 'Threttanelo, the Kuklops drunk!'

"My power has hardly need to vaunt itself!

Opposers peep and mutter, or speak plain:

'No naming names in Comedy!' votes one,

'Nor vilifying live folk!' legislates

Another, 'urge amendment on the dead!'

'Don't throw away hard cash,' supplies a third,

'But crib from actor's dresses, choros-treats!'

Then Kleon did his best to bully me:

Called me before the Law Court: 'Such a play

Satirized citizens with strangers there,

Such other,'—why, its fault was in myself!

I was, this time, the stranger, privileged

To act no play at all,—Egyptian, I—

Rhodian or Kameirensian, Aiginete,

Lindian, or any foreigner he liked—

Because I can't write Attic, probably!

Go ask my rivals,—how they roughed my fleece,

And how, shorn pink themselves, the huddled sheep

Shiver at distance from the snapping shears!

Why must they needs provoke me?

"All the same,

No matter for my triumph, I foretell

Subsidence of the day-star: quench his beams?

No Aias e'er was equal to the feat

By throw of shield, tough-hided seven times seven,

'Twixt sky and earth! 't is dullards soft and sure

Who breathe against his brightest, here a sigh

And there a 'So let be, we pardon you!'

Till the minute mist hangs a block, has tamed

Noonblaze to 'twilight mild and equable,'

Vote the old women spinning out of doors.

Give me the earth-spasm, when the lion ramped

And the bull gendered in the brave gold flare!

Oh, you shall have amusement,—better still,

Instruction! no more horse-play, naming names,

Taxing the fancy when plain sense will serve!

Thearion, now, my friend who bakes you bread,

What 's worthier limning than his household life?

His whims and ways, his quarrels with the spouse,

And how the son, instead of learning knead

Kilikian loaves, brings heartbreak on his sire

By buying horseflesh branded San, each flank,

From shrewd Menippos who imports the ware:

While pretty daughter Kepphé too much haunts

The shop of Sporgilos the barber! brave!

Out with Thearion's meal-tub politics

In lieu of Pisthetairos, Strepsiades!

That 's your exchange? O Muse of Megara!

Advise the fools 'Feed babe on weasel-lap

For wild-boar's marrow, Cheiron's hero-pap,

And rear, for man—Ariphrades, mayhap!'

Yes, my Balaustion, yes, my Euthukles,

That 's your exchange,—who, foreigners in fact

And fancy, would impose your squeamishness

On sturdy health, and substitute such brat

For the right offspring of us Rocky Ones,

Because babe kicks the cradle,—crows, not mewls!

"Which brings me to the prime fault, poison-speck

Whence all the plague springs—that first feud of all

'Twixt me and you and your Euripides.

'Unworld the world,' frowns he, my opposite.

I cry, 'Life!' 'Death,' he groans, 'our better Life!'

Despise what is—the good and graspable,

Prefer the out of sight and in at mind,

To village-joy, the well-side violet-patch,

The jolly club-feast when our field 's in soak,

Roast thrushes, hare-soup, pea-soup, deep washed down

With Peparethian; the prompt paying off

That black-eyed brown-skinned country-flavored wench

We caught among our brushwood foraging:

On these look fig-juice, curdle up life's cream,

And fall to magnifying misery!

Or, if you condescend to happiness,

Why, talk, talk, talk about the empty name

While thing's self lies neglected 'neath your nose!

I need particular discourtesy

And private insult from Euripides

To render contest with him credible?

Say, all of me is outraged! one stretched sense,

I represent the whole Republic,—gods,

Heroes, priests, legislators, poets,—prone,

And pummelled into insignificance,

If will in him were matched with power of stroke.

For see what he has changed or hoped to change!

How few years since, when he began the fight,

Did there beat life indeed Athenai through!

Plenty and peace, then! Hellas thundersmote

The Persian. He himself had birth, you say,

That morn salvation broke at Salamis,

And heroes still walked earth. Themistokles—

Surely his mere back-stretch of hand could still

Find, not so lost in dark, Odusseus?—he

Holding as surely on to Herakles,—

Who touched Zeus, link by link, the unruptured chain!

Were poets absent? Aischulos might hail—

With Pindaros, Theognis,—whom for sire?

Homeros' self, departed yesterday!

While Hellas, saved and sung to, then and thus,—

Ah, people,—ah, lost antique liberty!

We lived, ourselves, undoubted lords of earth:

Wherever olives flourish, corn yields crop

To constitute our title—ours such land!

Outside of oil and breadstuff,—barbarism!

What need of conquest? Let barbarians starve!

Devote our whole strength to our sole defence,

Content with peerless native products, home,

Beauty profuse in earth's mere sights and sounds,

Such men, such women, and such gods their guard!

The gods? he worshipped best who feared them most,

And left their nature uninquired into,

—Nature? their very names! pay reverence,

Do sacrifice for our part, theirs would be

To prove benignantest of playfellows.

With kindly humanism they countenanced

Our emulation of divine escapes

Through sense and soul: soul, sense are made to use;

Use each, acknowledging its god the while!

Crush grape, dance, drink, indulge, for Bacchos' sake!

'T is Aphrodité's feast-day—frisk and fling,

Provided we observe our oaths, and house

Duly the stranger: Zeus takes umbrage else!

Ah, the great time—had I been there to taste!

Perikles, right Olumpian,—occupied

As yet with getting an Olumpos reared

Marble and gold above Akropolis,—

Wisely so spends what thrifty fools amassed

For cut-throat projects. Who carves Promachos?

Who writes the Oresteia?

"Ah, the time!

For, all at once, a cloud has blanched the blue,

A cold wind creeps through the close vineyard-rank,

The olive-leaves curl, violets crisp and close

Like a nymph's wrinkling at the bath's first splash

On breast. (Your pardon!) There 's a restless change,

Deterioration. Larks and nightingales

Are silenced, here and there a gor-crow grim

Flaps past, as scenting opportunity.

Where Kimon passaged to the Boulé once,

A starveling crew, unkempt, unshorn, unwashed,

Occupy altar-base and temple-step,

Are minded to indoctrinate our youth!

How call these carrion kill-joys that intrude?

'Wise men,' their nomenclature! Prodikos—

Who scarce could, unassisted, pick his steps

From way Theseia to the Tripods' way,—

This empty noddle comprehends the sun,—

How he 's Aigina's bigness, wheels no whit

His way from east to west, nor wants a steed!

And here 's Protagoras sets wrongheads right,

Explains what virtue, vice, truth, falsehood mean,

Makes all we seemed to know prove ignorance

Yet knowledge also, since, on either side

Of any question, something is to say,

Nothing to 'stablish, all things to disturb!

And shall youth go and play at kottabos,

Leaving unsettled whether moon-spots breed?

Or dare keep Choes ere the problem 's solved—

Why should I like my wife who dislikes me?

'But sure the gods permit this, censure that?'

So tell them! straight the answer 's in your teeth:

'You relegate these points, then, to the gods?

What and where are they?' What my sire supposed,

And where yon cloud conceals them! 'Till they 'scape,

And scramble down to Leda, as a swan,

Europa, as a bull! why not as—ass

To somebody? Your sire was Zeus perhaps!

Either—away with such ineptitude!

Or, wanting energy to break your bonds,

Stick to the good old stories, think the rain

Is—Zeus distilling pickle through a sieve!

Think thunder 's thrown to break Theoros' head

For breaking oaths first! Meanwhile let ourselves

Instruct your progeny you prate like fools

Of father Zeus, who 's but the atmosphere,

Brother Poseidon, otherwise called—sea,

And son Hephaistos—fire and nothing else!

Over which nothings there 's a something still,

"Necessity," that rules the universe

And cares as much about your Choes-feast

Performed or intermitted, as you care

Whether gnats sound their trump from head or tail!'

When, stupefied at such philosophy,

We cry, 'Arrest the madmen, governor!

Pound hemlock and pour bull's-blood, Perikles!'

Would you believe? The Olumpian bends his brow,

Scarce pauses from his building! 'Say they thus?

Then, they say wisely. Anaxagoras,

I had not known how simple proves eclipse

But for thy teaching! Go, fools, learn like me!'

"Well, Zeus nods: man must reconcile himself,

So, let the Charon's-company harangue,

And Anaxagoras be—as we wish!

A comfort is in nature: while grass grows

And water runs, and sesame pricks tongue,

And honey from Brilesian hollow melts

On mouth, and Bacchis' flavorous lip beats both,

You will not be untaught life's use, young man?

Pho! My young man just proves that panniered ass

Said to have borne Youth strapped on his stout back,

With whom a serpent bargained, bade him swap

The priceless boon for—water to quench thirst!

What 's youth to my young man? In love with age,

He Spartanizes, argues, fasts and frowns,

Denies the plainest rules of life, long since

Proved sound; sets all authority aside,

Must simply recommence things, learn ere act,

And think out thoroughly how youth should pass—

Just as if youth stops passing, all the same!

"One last resource is left us—poetry!

'Vindicate nature, prove Plataian help,

Turn out, a thousand strong, all right and tight,

To save Sense, poet! Bang the sophist-brood

Would cheat man out of wholesome sustenance

By swearing wine is water, honey—gall,

Saperdion—the Empousa! Panic-smit,

Our juveniles abstain from Sense and starve:

Be yours to disenchant them! Change things back!

Or better, strain a point the other way

And handsomely exaggerate wronged truth!

Lend wine a glory never gained from grape,

Help honey with a snatch of him we style

The Muses' Bee, baybloom-fed Sophokles,

And give Saperdion a Kimberic robe!'

"'I, his successor,' gruff the answer grunts,

'Incline to poetize philosophy,

Extend it rather than restrain; as thus—

Are heroes men? No more, and scarce as much,

Shall mine be represented. Are men poor?

Behold them ragged, sick, lame, halt and blind!

Do they use speech? Ay, street-terms, market-phrase!

Having thus drawn sky earthwards, what comes next

But dare the opposite, lift earth to sky?

Mere puppets once, I now make womankind,

For thinking, saying, doing, match the male.

Lift earth? I drop to, dally with, earth's dung!

—Recognize in the very slave—man's mate,

Declare him brave and honest, kind and true,

And reasonable as his lord, in brief.

I paint men as they are—so runs my boast—

Not as they should be: paint—what 's part of man,

—Women and slaves,—not as, to please your pride,

They should be, but your equals, as they are.

Oh, and the Gods! Instead of abject mien,

Submissive whisper, while my Choros cants,

"Zeus,—with thy cubit's length of attributes,—

May I, the ephemeral, ne'er scrutinize

Who made the heaven and earth and all things there!"

Myself shall say ... Ay, 'Herakles' may help!

Give me,—I want the very words,—attend!"

He read. Then—"Murder 's out,—'There are no Gods,'

Man has no master, owns, by consequence,

No right, no wrong, except to please or plague!

His nature: what man likes be man's sole law

Still, since he likes Saperdion, honey, figs,

Man may reach freedom by your roundabout!

'Never believe yourselves the freer thence!

There are no gods, but there 's "Necessity,"—

Duty enjoined you, fact in figment's place,

Throned on no mountain, native to the mind!

Therefore deny yourselves Saperdion, figs

And honey, for the sake of—what I dream,

A-sitting with my legs up!'

"Infamy!

The poet casts in calm his lot with these

Assailants of Apollon! Sworn to serve

Each Grace, the Furies call him minister—

He, who was born for just that roseate world

Renounced so madly, where what 's false is fact,

Where he makes beauty out of ugliness,

Where he lives, life itself disguised for him

As immortality—so works the spell,

The enthusiastic mood which marks a man

Muse-mad, dream-drunken, wrapt around by verse,

Encircled with poetic atmosphere,

As lark emballed by its own crystal song,

Or rose enmisted by that scent it makes!

No, this were unreality! the real

He wants, not falsehood,—truth alone he seeks,

Truth, for all beauty! Beauty, in all truth—

That 's certain somehow! Must the eagle lilt

Lark-like, needs fir-tree blossom rose-like? No!

Strength and utility charm more than grace,

And what 's most ugly proves most beautiful.

So much assistance from Euripides!

"Whereupon I betake me, since needs must,

To a concluding—'Go and feed the crows!

Do! Spoil your art as you renounce your life,

Poetize your so precious system, do,

Degrade the hero, nullify the god,

Exhibit women, slaves and men as peers,—

Your castigation follows prompt enough!

When all 's concocted upstairs, heels o'erhead,

Down must submissive drop the masterpiece

For public praise or blame: so, praise away,

Friend Sokrates, wife's-friend Kephisophon!

Boast innovations, cramp phrase, uncouth song,

Hard matter and harsh manner, gods, men, slaves

And women jumbled to a laughing-stock

Which Hellas shall hold sides at lest she split!

Hellas, on these, shall have her word to say!'

"She has it and she says it—there 's the curse!—

She finds he makes the shag-rag hero-race,

The noble slaves, wise women, move as much

Pity and terror as true tragic types:

Applauds inventiveness—the plot so new,

The turn and trick subsidiary so strange!

She relishes that homely phrase of life,

That common town-talk, more than trumpet-blasts;

Accords him right to chop and change a myth:

What better right had he, who told the tale

In the first instance, to embellish fact?

This last may disembellish yet improve!

Both find a block: this man carves back to bull

What first his predecessor cut to sphinx:

Such genuine actual roarer, nature's brute,

Intelligible to our time, was sure

The old-world artist's purpose, had he worked

To mind; this both means and makes the thing!

If, past dispute, the verse slips oily-bathed

In unctuous music—say, effeminate—

We also say, like Kuthereia's self,

A lulling effluence which enswathes some isle

Where hides a nymph, not seen but felt the more.

That 's Hellas' verdict!

"Does Euripides

Even so far absolved, remain content?

Nowise! His task is to refine, refine,

Divide, distinguish, subtilize away

Whatever seemed a solid planting-place

For footfall,—not in that phantasmal sphere

Proper to poet, but on vulgar earth

Where people used to tread with confidence.

There 's left no longer one plain positive

Enunciation incontestable

Of what is good, right, decent here on earth.

Nobody now can say, 'This plot is mine,

Though but a plethron square,—my duty!'—'Yours?

Mine, or at least not yours,' snaps somebody!

And, whether the dispute be parent-right

Or children's service, husband's privilege

Or wife's submission, there 's a snarling straight,

Smart passage of opposing 'yea' and 'nay,'

'Should,' 'should not,' till, howe'er the contest end,

Spectators go off sighing 'Clever thrust!

Why was I so much hurried to pay debt,

Attend my mother, sacrifice an ox,

And set my name down "for a trireme, good"?

Something I might have urged on t' other side!

No doubt, Chresphontes or Bellerophon

We don't meet every day; but Stab-and-stitch

The tailor—ere I turn the drachmas o'er

I owe him for a chiton, as he thinks,

I 'll pose the blockhead with an argument!'

"So has he triumphed, your Euripides!

Oh, I concede, he rarely gained a prize:

That 's quite another matter! cause for that!

Still, when 't was got by Ions, Iophons,

Off he would pace confoundedly superb,

Supreme, no smile at movement on his mouth

Till Sokrates winked, whispered: out it broke!

And Aristullos jotted down the jest,

While Iophons or Ions, bay on brow,

Looked queerly, and the foreigners—like you—

Asked o'er the border with a puzzled smile,

—'And so, you value Ions, Iophons,

Euphorions! How about Euripides?'

(Eh, brave bard's-champion? Does the anger boil?

Keep within bounds a moment,—eye and lip

Shall loose their doom on me, their fiery worst!)

What strangers? Archelaos heads the file!

He sympathizes, he concerns himself,

He pens epistle, each successless play:

'Athenai sinks effete; there 's younger blood

In Makedonia. Visit where I rule!

Do honor to me and take gratitude!

Live the guest's life, or work the poet's way,

Which also means the statesman's: he who wrote

"Erechtheus" may seem rawly politic

At home where Kleophon is ripe; but here

My council-board permits him choice of seats.'

"Now, this was operating,—what should prove

A poison-tree, had flowered far on to fruit

For many a year,—when I was moved, first man,

To dare the adventure, down with root and branch.

So, from its sheath I drew my Comic steel,

And dared what I am now to justify.

A serious question first, though!

"Once again!

Do you believe, when I aspired in youth,

I made no estimate of power at all,

Nor paused long, nor considered much, what class

Of fighters I might claim to join, beside

That class wherewith I cast in company?

Say, you—profuse of praise no less than blame—

Could not I have competed—franker phrase

Might trulier correspond to meaning—still,

Competed with your Tragic paragon?

Suppose me minded simply to make verse,

To fabricate, parade resplendent arms,

Flourish and sparkle out a Trilogy,—

Where was the hindrance? But my soul bade 'Fight!

Leave flourishing for mock-foe, pleasure-time;

Prove arms efficient on real heads and hearts!'

How? With degeneracy sapping fast

The Marathonian muscle, nerved of old

To maul the Mede, now strung at best to help

—How did I fable?—War and Hubbub mash

To mincemeat Fatherland and Brotherhood,

Pound in their mortar Hellas, State by State,

That greed might gorge, the while frivolity

Rubbed hands and smacked lips o'er the dainty dish!

Authority, experience—pushed aside

By any upstart who pleads throng and press,

O' the people! 'Think, say, do thus!' Wherefore, pray?

'We are the people: who impugns our right

Of choosing Kleon that tans hide so well,

Huperbolos that turns out lamps so trim,

Hemp-seller Eukrates or Lusikles

Sheep-dealer, Kephalos the potter's son,

Diitriphes who weaves the willow-work

To go round bottles, and Nausikudes

The meal-man? Such we choose and more, their mates,

To think and say and do in our behalf!'

While sophistry wagged tongue, emboldened still,

Found matter to propose, contest, defend,

'Stablish, turn topsyturvy,—all the same,

No matter what, provided the result

Were something new in place of something old,—

Set wagging by pure insolence of soul

Which needs must pry into, have warrant for

Each right, each privilege good policy

Protects from curious eye and prating mouth!

Everywhere lust to shape the world anew,

Spurn this Athenai as we find her, build

A new impossible Cloudcuckooburg

For feather-headed birds, once solid men,

Where rules, discarding jolly habitude,

Nourished on myrtle-berries and stray ants,

King Tereus who, turned Hoopoe Triple-Crest,

Shall terrify and bring the gods to terms!

"Where was I? Oh! Things ailing thus—I ask,

What cure? Cut, thrust, hack, hew at heap-on-heaped

Abomination with the exquisite

Palaistra-tool of polished Tragedy?

Erechtheus shall harangue Amphiktuon,

And incidentally drop word of weight

On justice, righteousness, so turn aside

The audience from attacking Sicily!—

The more that Choros, after he recounts

How Phrixos rode the ram, the far-famed Fleece,

Shall add—at last fall of grave dancing-foot—

'Aggression never yet was helped by Zeus!'

That helps or hinders Alkibiades?

As well expect, should Pheidias carve Zeus' self

And set him up, some half a mile away,

His frown would frighten sparrows from your field!

Eagles may recognize their lord, belike,

But as for vulgar sparrows,—change the god,

And plant some big Priapos with a pole!

I wield the Comic weapon rather—hate!

Hate! honest, earnest, and directest hate—

Warfare wherein I close with enemy,

Call him one name and fifty epithets,

Remind you his great-grandfather sold bran,

Describe the new exomion, sleeveless coat

He knocked me down last night and robbed me of,

Protest he voted for a tax on air!

And all this hate—if I write Comedy—

Finds tolerance, most like—applause, perhaps

True veneration; for I praise the god

Present in person of his minister,

And pay—the wilder my extravagance—

The more appropriate worship to the Power

Adulterous, night-roaming, and the rest:

Otherwise,—that originative force

Of nature, impulse stirring death to life,

Which, underlying law, seems lawlessness,

Yet is the outbreak which, ere order be,

Must thrill creation through, warm stocks and stones,

Phales Iacchos.

"Comedy for me!

Why not for you, my Tragic masters? Sneaks

Whose art is mere desertion of a trust!

Such weapons lay to hand, the ready club,

The clay-ball, on the ground a stone to snatch,—

Arms fit to bruise the boar's neck, break the chine

O' the wolf,—and you must impiously—despise?

No, I 'll say, furtively let fall that trust

Consigned you! 'T was not 'take or leave alone,'

But 'take and, wielding, recognize your god

In his prime attributes!' And though full soon

You sneaked, subsided into poetry,

Nor met your due reward, still,—heroize

And speechify and sing-song and forego

Far as you may your function,—still its pact

Endures, one piece of early homage still

Exacted of you; after your three bouts

At hoitytoity, great men with long words,

And so forth,—at the end, must tack itself

The genuine sample, the Satyric Play,

Concession, with its wood-boys' fun and freak,

To the true taste of the mere multitude.

Yet, there again! What does your Still-at-itch,

Always-the-innovator? Shrugs and shirks!

Out of his fifty Trilogies, some five

Are somehow suited: Satyrs dance and sing,

Try merriment, a grimly prank or two,

Sour joke squeezed through pursed lips and teeth on edge,

Then quick on top of toe to pastoral sport,

Goat-tending and sheep-herding, cheese and cream,

Soft grass and silver rillets, country-fare—

When throats were promised Thasian! Five such feats,—

Then frankly off he threw the yoke: next Droll,

Next festive drama, covenanted fun,

Decent reversion to indecency,

Proved—your 'Alkestis'! There 's quite fun enough,

Herakles drunk! From out fate's blackening wave

Calamitous, just zigzags some shot star,

Poor promise of faint joy, and turns the laugh

On dupes whose fears and tears were all in waste!

"For which sufficient reasons, in truth's name,

I closed with whom you count the Meaner Muse,

Classed me with Comic Poets who should weld

Dark with bright metal, show their blade may keep

Its adamantine birthright though ablaze

With poetry, the gold, and wit, the gem,

And strike mere gold, unstiffened out by steel,

Or gem, no iron joints its strength around,

From hand of—posturer, not combatant!

"Such was my purpose: it succeeds, I say!

Have not we beaten Kallikratidas,

Not humbled Sparté? Peace awaits our word,

Spite of Theramenes, and fools his like.

Since my previsions—warranted too well

By the long war now waged and worn to end—

Had spared such heritage of misery,

My after-counsels scarce need fear repulse.

Athenai, taught prosperity has wings,

Cages the glad recapture. Demos, see,

From folly's premature decrepitude

Boiled young again, emerges from the stew

Of twenty-five years' trouble, sits and sways,

One brilliance and one balsam,—sways and sits

Monarch of Hellas! ay, and, sage again,

No longer jeopardizes chieftainship,

No longer loves the brutish demagogue

Appointed by a bestial multitude,

But seeks out sound advisers. Who are they?

Ourselves, of parentage proved wise and good!

To such may hap strains thwarting quality,

(As where shall want its flaw mere human stuff?)

Still, the right grain is proper to right race;

What 's contrary, call curious accident!

Hold by the usual! Orchard-grafted tree,

Not wilding, racehorse-sired, not rouncey-born,

Aristocrat, no sausage-selling snob!

Nay, why not Alkibiades, come back

Filled by the Genius, freed of petulance,

Frailty,—mere youthfulness that 's all at fault,—

Advanced to Perikles and something more?

—Being at least our duly born and bred,—

Curse on what chaunoprockt first gained his ear

And got his ... well, once true man in right place,

Our commonalty soon content themselves

With doing just what they are born to do,

Eat, drink, make merry, mind their own affairs

And leave state-business to the larger brain!

I do not stickle for their punishment;

But certain culprits have a cloak to twitch,

A purse to pay the piper: flog, say I,

Your fine fantastics, paragons of parts,

Who choose to play the important! Far from side

With us, their natural supports, allies,—

And, best by brain, help who are best by birth

To fortify each weak point in the wall

Built broad and wide and deep for permanence

Between what 's high and low, what 's rare and vile,—

They cast their lot perversely in with low

And vile, lay flat the barrier, lift the mob

To dizzy heights where Privilege stood firm.

And then, simplicity become conceit,—

Woman, slave, common soldier, artisan,

Crazy with new-found worth, new-fangled claims,—

These must be taught next how to use their heads

And hands in driving man's right to mob's rule!

What fellows thus inflame the multitude?

Your Sokrates, still crying 'Understand!'

Your Aristullos,—'Argue!' Last and worst,

Should, by good fortune, mob still hesitate,

Remember there 's degree in heaven and earth,

Cry 'Aischulos enjoined us fear the gods,

And Sophokles advised respect the kings!'

Why, your Euripides informs them—Gods?

They are not! Kings? They are, but ... do not I,

In 'Suppliants,' make my Theseus,—yours, no more,—

Fire up at insult of who styles him King?

Play off that Herald, I despise the most,

As patronizing kings' prerogative

Against a Theseus proud to dare no step

Till he consult the people?

"Such as these—

Ah, you expect I am for strangling straight?

Nowise, Balaustion! All my roundabout

Ends at beginning, with my own defence!

I dose each culprit just with—Comedy.

Let each be doctored in exact the mode

Himself prescribes: by words, the word-monger—

My words to his words,—my lies, if you like,

To his lies. Sokrates I nickname thief,

Quack, necromancer; Aristullos,—say,

Male Kirké who bewitches and bewrays

And changes folk to swine; Euripides,—

Well, I acknowledge! Every word is false,

Looked close at; but stand distant and stare through,

All 's absolute indubitable truth

Behind lies, truth which only lies declare!

For come, concede me truth 's in thing not word,

Meaning not manner! Love smiles 'rogue' and 'wretch'

When 'sweet' and 'dear' seem vapid; Hate adopts

Love's 'sweet' and 'dear,' when 'rogue' and 'wretch' fall flat;

Love, Hate—are truths, then, each, in sense not sound.

Further: if Love, remaining Love, fell back

On 'sweet' and 'dear,'—if Hate, though Hate the same,

Dropped down to 'rogue' and 'wretch,'—each phrase were false.

Good! and now grant I hate no matter whom

With reason: I must therefore fight my foe,

Finish the mischief which made enmity.

How? By employing means to most hurt him

Who much harmed me. What way did he do harm?

Through word or deed? Through word? with word, wage war!

Word with myself directly? As direct

Reply shall follow: word to you, the wise,

Whence indirectly came the harm to me?

What wisdom I can muster waits on such!

Word to the populace which, misconceived

By ignorance and incapacity,

Ends in no such effect as follows cause

When I, or you the wise, are reasoned with,

So damages what I and you hold dear?

In that event, I ply the populace

With just such word as leavens their whole lump

To the right ferment for my purpose. They

Arbitrate properly between us both?

They weigh my answer with his argument,

Match quip with quibble, wit with eloquence?

All they attain to understand is—blank!

Two adversaries differ; which is right

And which is wrong, none takes on him to say,

Since both are unintelligible. Pooh!

Swear my foe's mother vended herbs she stole,

They fall a-laughing! Add,—his household drudge

Of all-work justifies that office well,

Kisses the wife, composing him the play,—

They grin at whom they gaped in wonderment,

And go off—'Was he such a sorry scrub?

This other seems to know! we praised too fast!'

When then, my lies have done the work of truth,

Since 'scrub,' improper designation, means

Exactly what the proper argument

—Had such been comprehensible—proposed

To proper audience—were I graced with such—

Would properly result in; so your friend

Gets an impartial verdict on his verse,

'The tongue swears, but the soul remains unsworn!'

"There, my Balaustion! All is summed and said.

No other cause of quarrel with yourself!

Euripides and Aristophanes

Differ: he needs must round our difference

Into the mob's ear; with the mob I plead.

You angrily start forward 'This to me?'

No speck of this on you the thrice refined!

Could parley be restricted to us two,

My first of duties were to clear up doubt

As to our true divergence each from each.

Does my opinion so diverge from yours?

Probably less than little—not at all!

To know a matter, for my very self

And intimates—that 's one thing: to imply

By 'knowledge'—loosing whatsoe'er I know

Among the vulgar who, by mere mistake,

May brain themselves and me in consequence,—

That 's quite another. 'O the daring flight!

This only bard maintains the exalted brow,

Nor grovels in the slime nor fears the gods!'

Did I fear—I play superstitious fool,

Who, with the due proviso, introduced,

Active and passive, their whole company

As creatures too absurd for scorn itself?

Zeus? I have styled him—'slave, mere thrashing-block!'

I 'll tell you: in my very next of plays,

At Bacchos' feast, in Bacchos' honor, full

In front of Bacchos' representative.

I mean to make main-actor—Bacchos' self!

Forth shall he strut, apparent, first to last,

A blockhead, coward, braggart, liar, thief,

Demonstrated all these by his own mere

Xanthias the man-slave: such man shows such god

Shamed to brute-beastship by comparison!

And when ears have their fill of his abuse,

And eyes are sated with his pummelling,—

My Choros taking care, by, all the while

Singing his glory, that men recognize

A god in the abused and pummelled beast,—

Then, should one ear be stopped of auditor,

Should one spectator shut revolted eye,—

Why, the Priest's self will first raise outraged voice:

'Back, thou barbarian, thou ineptitude!

Does not most license hallow best our day,

And least decorum prove its strictest rite?

Since Bacchos bids his followers play the fool,

And there 's no fooling like a majesty

Mocked at,—who mocks the god, obeys the law—

Law which, impute but indiscretion to,

And ... why, the spirit of Euripides

Is evidently active in the world!'

Do I stop here? No! feat of flightier force!

See Hermes! what commotion raged,—reflect!—

When imaged god alone got injury

By drunkards' frolic! How Athenai stared

Aghast, then fell to frenzy, fit on fit,—

Ever the last, the longest! At this hour,

The craze abates a little: so, my Play

Shall have up Hermes: and a Karion, slave,

(Since there 's no getting lower) calls our friend

The profitable god, we honor so,

Whatever contumely fouls the mouth—

Bids him go earn more honest livelihood

By washing tripe in well-trough—wash he does,

Duly obedient! Have I dared my best?

Asklepios, answer!—deity in vogue,

Who visits Sophokles familiarly,

If you believe the old man,—at his age,

Living is dreaming, and strange guests haunt door

Of house, belike, peep through and tap at times

When a friend yawns there, waiting to be fetched,—

At any rate, to memorize the fact,

He has spent money, set an altar up

In the god's temple, now in much repute.

That temple-service trust me to describe—

Cheaters and choused, the god, his brace of girls,

Their snake, and how they manage to snap gifts

'And consecrate the same into a bag,'

For whimsies done away with in the dark!

As if, a stone's throw from that theatre

Whereon I thus unmask their dupery,

The thing were not religious and august!

"Of Sophokles himself—nor word nor sign

Beyond a harmless parody or so!

He founds no anti-school, upsets no faith,

But, living, lets live, the good easy soul

Who,—if he saves his cash, unpoetlike,

Loves wine and—never mind what other sport,

Boasts for his father just a swordblade-smith,

Proves but queer captain when the people claim,

For one who conquered with 'Antigone,'

The right to undertake a squadron's charge,—

And needs the son's help now to finish plays,

Seeing his dotage calls for governance

And Iophon to share his property,—

Why, of all this, reported true, I breathe

Not one word—true or false, I like the man!

Sophokles lives and lets live: long live he!

Otherwise,—sharp the scourge and hard the blow!

"And what 's my teaching but—accept the old,

Contest the strange! acknowledge work that 's done,

Misdoubt men who have still their work to do!

Religions, laws and customs, poetries,

Are old? So much achieved victorious truth!

Each work was product of a lifetime, wrung

From each man by an adverse world: for why?

He worked, destroying other older work

Which the world loved and so was loth to lose.

Whom the world beat in battle—dust and ash!

Who beat the world, left work in evidence,

And wears its crown till new men live new lives,

And fight new fights, and triumph in their turn.

I mean to show you on the stage! you 'll see

My Just Judge only venture to decide

Between two suitors, which is god, which man,

By thrashing both of them as flesh can bear.

You shall agree,—whichever bellows first,

He 's human; who holds longest out, divine:

That is the only equitable test!

Cruelty? Pray, who pricked them on to court

My thong's award? Must they needs dominate?

Then I—rebel! Their instinct grasps the new?

Mine bids retain the old: a fight must be,

And which is stronger the event will show.

Oh, but the pain! Your proved divinity

Still smarts all reddened? And the rightlier served!

Was not some man's-flesh in him, after all?

Do let us lack no frank acknowledgment

There 's nature common to both gods and men!

All of them—spirit? What so winced was clay!

Away pretence to some exclusive sphere

Cloud-nourishing a sole selected few

Fume-fed with self-superiority!

I stand up for the common coarse-as-clay

Existence,—stamp and ramp with heel and hoof

On solid vulgar life, you fools disown!

Make haste from your unreal eminence,

And measure lengths with me upon that ground

Whence this mud-pellet sings and summons you!

I know the soul, too, how the spark ascends

And how it drops apace and dies away.

I am your poet-peer, man thrice your match!

I too can lead an airy life when dead,

Fly like Kinesias when I 'm cloud-ward bound;

But here, no death shall mix with life it mars!

"So, my old enemy who caused the fight,

Own I have beaten you, Euripides!

Or,—if your advocate would contravene,—

Help him, Balaustion! Use the rosy strength!

I have not done my utmost,—treated you

As I might Aristullos, mint-perfumed,—

Still, let the whole rage burst in brave attack!

Don't pay the poor ambiguous compliment

Of fearing any pearl-white knuckled fist

Will damage this broad buttress of a brow!

Fancy yourself my Aristonumos,

Ameipsias or Sannurion: punch and pound!

Three cuckoos who cry 'cuckoo'! much I care!

They boil a stone! Neblaretai! Rattei!"

---

Cannot your task have end here, Euthukles?

Day by day glides our galley on its path:

Still sunrise and still sunset, Rhodes half-reached,

And still, my patient scribe! no sunset's peace

Descends more punctual than that brow's incline

O'er tablets which your serviceable hand

Prepares to trace. Why treasure up, forsooth,

These relics of a night that make me rich,

But, half-remembered merely, leave so poor

Each stranger to Athenai and her past?

For—how remembered! As some greedy hind

Persuades a honeycomb, beyond the due,

To yield its hoarding,—heedless what alloy

Of the poor bee's own substance taints the gold

Which, unforced, yields few drops, but purity,—

So would you fain relieve of load this brain,

Though the hived thoughts must bring away, with strength,

What words and weakness, strength's receptacle—

Wax from the store! Yet,—aching soothed away,—

Accept the compound! No suspected scent

But proves some rose was rifled, though its ghost

Scarce lingers with what promised musk and myrrh.

No need of farther squeezing! What remains

Can only be Balaustion, just her speech!

Ah, but—because speech serves a purpose still!—

---

He ended with that flourish. I replied:

"Fancy myself your Aristonumos?

Advise me, rather, to remain myself,

Balaustion,—mindful what mere mouse confronts

The forest-monarch Aristophanes!

I who, a woman, claim no quality

Beside the love of all things lovable

Created by a power pre-eminent

In knowledge, as in love I stand perchance,

—You, the consummately-creative! How

Should I, then, dare deny submissive trust

To any process aiming at result

Such as you say your songs are pregnant with?

Result, all judge: means, let none scrutinize

Save those aware how glory best is gained

By daring means to end, ashamed of shame,

Constant in faith that only good works good,

While evil yields no fruit but impotence!

Graced with such plain good, I accept the means!

Nay, if result itself in turn become

Means,—who shall say?—to ends still loftier yet,—

Though still the good prove hard to understand,

The bad still seemingly predominate,—

Never may I forget which order bears

The burden, toils to win the great reward,

And finds, in failure, the grave punishment,

So, meantime, claims of me a faith I yield!

Moreover, a mere woman, I recoil

From what may prove man's-work permissible,

Imperative. Rough strokes surprise: what then?

Some lusty armsweep needs must cause the crash

Of thorn and bramble, ere those shrubs, those flowers,

We fain would have earth yield exclusively,

Are sown, matured and garlanded for boys

And girls, who know not how the growth was gained.

Finally, am I not a foreigner?

No born and bred Athenian,—isled about,

I scarce can drink, like you, at every breath,

Just some particular doctrine which may best

Explain the strange thing I revolt against—

How—by involvement, who may extricate?—

Religion perks up through impiety,

Law leers with license, folly wise-like frowns,

The seemly lurks inside the abominable.

But opposites,—each neutralizes each

Haply by mixture: what should promise death,

May haply give the good ingredient force,

Disperse in fume the antagonistic ill.

This institution, therefore,—Comedy,—

By origin, a rite; by exercise,

Proved an achievement tasking poet's power

To utmost, eking legislation out

Beyond the legislator's faculty,

Playing the censor where the moralist

Declines his function, far too dignified

For dealing with minute absurdities;

By efficacy,—virtue's guard, the scourge

Of vice, each folly's fly-flap, arm in aid

Of all that 's righteous, customary, sound

And wholesome; sanctioned therefore,—better say,

Prescribed for fit acceptance of this age

By, not alone the long recorded roll

Of earlier triumphs, but, success to-day—

(The multitude as prompt recipient still

Of good gay teaching from that monitor

They crowned this morning—Aristophanes—

As when Sousarion's car first traversed street)—

This product of Athenai—I dispute,

Impugn? There 's just one only circumstance

Explains that! I, poor critic, see, hear, feel;

But eyes, ears, senses prove me—foreigner!

Who shall gainsay that the raw new-come guest

Blames oft, too sensitive? On every side

Of—larger than your stage—life's spectacle,

Convention here permits and there forbids

Impulse and action, nor alleges more

Than some mysterious 'So do all, and so

Does no one:' which the hasty stranger blames

Because, who bends the head unquestioning,

Transgresses, turns to wrong what else were right,

By failure of a reference to law

Beyond convention; blames unjustly, too—

As if, through that defect, all gained were lost

And slave-brand set on brow indelibly;—

Blames unobservant or experienceless

That men, like trees, if stout and sound and sane,

Show stem no more affected at the root

By bough's exceptional submissive dip

Of leaf and bell, light danced at end of spray

To windy fitfulness in wayward sport,—

No more lie prostrate,—than low files of flower

Which, when the blast goes by, unruffled raise

Each head again o'er ruder meadow-wreck

Of thorn and thistle that refractory

Demurred to cower at passing wind's caprice.

Why shall not guest extend like charity,

Conceive how,—even when astounded most

That natives seem to acquiesce in muck

Changed by prescription, they affirm, to gold,—

Such may still bring to test, still bear away

Safely and surely much of good and true

Though latent ore, themselves unspecked, unspoiled?

Fresh bathed i' the icebrook, any hand may pass

A placid moment through the lamp's fierce flame:

And who has read your 'Lemnians,' seen 'The Hours,'

Heard 'Female-Playhouse-seat-Preoccupants,'

May feel no worse effect than, once a year,

Those who leave decent vesture, dress in rags

And play the mendicant, conform thereby

To country's rite, and then, no beggar-taint

Retained, don vesture due next morrow-day.

What if I share the stranger's weakness then?

Well, could I also show his strength, his sense

Untutored, ay!—but then untampered with!

"I fancy, though the world seems old enough,

Though Hellas be the sole unbarbarous land,

Years may conduct to such extreme of age,

And outside Hellas so isles new may lurk,

That haply,—when and where remain a dream!—

In fresh days when no Hellas fills the world,

In novel lands as strange where, all the same,

Their men and women yet behold, as we,

Blue heaven, black earth, and love, hate, hope and fear.

Over again, unhelped by Attiké—

Haply some philanthropic god steers bark,

Gift-laden, to the lonely ignorance

Islanded, say, where mist and snow mass hard

To metal—ay, those Kassiterides!

Then asks: 'Ye apprehend the human form.

What of this statue, made to Pheidias' mind,

This picture, as it pleased our Zeuxis paint?

Ye too feel truth, love beauty: judge of these!'

Such strangers may judge feebly, stranger-like:

'Each hair too indistinct—for, see our own!

Hands, not skin-colored as these hands we have,

And lo, the want of due decorum here!

A citizen, arrayed in civic garb,

Just as he walked your streets apparently,

Yet wears no sword by side, adventures thus,

In thronged Athenai! foolish painter's-freak!

While here 's his brother-sculptor found at fault

Still more egregiously, who shames the world,

Shows wrestler, wrestling at the public games,

Atrociously exposed from head to foot!'

Sure, the Immortal would impart at once

Our slow-stored knowledge, how small truths suppressed

Conduce to the far greater truth's display,—

Would replace simple by instructed sense,

And teach them how Athenai first so tamed

The natural fierceness that her progeny

Discarded arms nor feared the beast in man:

Wherefore at games, where earth's wise gratitude,

Proved by responsive culture, claimed the prize

For man's mind, body, each in excellence,—

When mind had bared itself, came body's turn,

And only irreligion grudged the gods

One naked glory of their master-work

Where all is glorious rightly understood,—

The human frame; enough that man mistakes:

Let him not think the gods mistaken too!

"But, peradventure, if the stranger's eye

Detected ... Ah, too high my fancy-flight!

Pheidias, forgive, and Zeuxis bear with me—

How on your faultless should I fasten fault

Of my own framing, even? Only say,—

Suppose the impossible were realized,

And some as patent incongruity,

Unseemliness,—of no more warrant, there

And then, than now and here, whate'er the time

And place,—I say, the Immortal,—who can doubt?—

Would never shrink, but own, 'The blot escaped

Our artist: thus he shows humanity!'

"May stranger tax one peccant part in thee,

Poet, three-parts divine! May I proceed?

"'Comedy is prescription and a rite.'

Since when? No growth of the blind antique time,

'It rose in Attiké with liberty;

When freedom falls, it too will fall.' Scarce so!

Your games,—the Olumpian, Zeus gave birth to these;

Your Puthian,—these were Phoibos' institute.

Isthmian, Nemeian,—Theseus, Herakles

Appointed each, the boys and barbers say!

Earth's day is growing late: where 's Comedy?

'Oh, that commenced an age since,—two, belike,—

In Megara, whence here they brought the thing!'

Or I misunderstand, or here 's the fact—

Your grandsire could recall that rustic song,

How such-an-one was thief, and miser such,

And how,—immunity from chastisement

Once promised to bold singers of the same

By daylight on the drunkard's holiday,—

The clever fellow of the joyous troop

Tried acting what before he sang about,

Acted and stole, or hoarded, acting too:

While his companions ranged a-row, closed up

For Choros,—bade the general rabblement

Sit, see, hear, laugh,—not join the dance themselves.

Soon, the same clever fellow found a mate,

And these two did the whole stage-mimicking,

Still closer in approach to Tragedy,—

So led the way to Aristophanes,

Whose grandsire saw Sousarion, and whose sire—

Chionides; yourself wrote 'Banqueters'

When Aischulos had made 'Prometheus,' nay,

All of the marvels; Sophokles,—I 'll cite,

'Oidipous'—and Euripides—I bend

The head—'Medeia' henceforth awed the world!

'Banqueters,' 'Babylonians'—next come you!

Surely the great days that left Hellas free

Happened before such advent of huge help,

Eighty-years-late assistance? Marathon,

Plataia, Salamis were fought, I think,

Before new educators stood reproved,

Or foreign legates blushed, excepted to!

Where did the helpful rite pretend its rise?

Did it break forth, as gifts divine are wont,

Plainly authentic, incontestably

Adequate to the helpful ordinance?

Founts, dowered with virtue, pulse out pure from source;

'T is there we taste the god's benign intent:

Not when,—fatigued away by journey, foul

With brutish trampling,—crystal sinks to slime,

And lymph forgets the first salubriousness.

Sprang Comedy to light thus crystal-pure?

'Nowise!' yourself protest with vehemence;

'Gross, bestial, did the clowns' diversion break;

Every successor paddled in the slush;

Nay, my contemporaries one and all

Gay played the mudlark till I joined their game;

Then was I first to change buffoonery

For wit, and stupid filth for cleanly sense,

Transforming pointless joke to purpose fine,

Transfusing rude enforcement of home-law—

"Drop knave's-tricks, deal more neighbor-like, ye boors!"—

With such new glory of poetic breath

As, lifting application far past use

O' the present, launched it o'er men's lowly heads

To future time, when high and low alike

Are dead and done with, while my airy power

Flies disengaged, as vapor from what stuff

It—say not, dwelt in—fitlier, dallied with

To forward work, which done,—deliverance brave,—

It soars away, and mud subsides to dust.

Say then, myself invented Comedy!'

"So mouths full many a famed Parabasis!

Agreed! No more, then, of prescriptive use,

Authorization by antiquity,

For what offends our judgment! 'T is your work,

Performed your way: not work delivered you

Intact, intact producible in turn.

Everywhere have you altered old to new—

Your will, your warrant: therefore, work must stand

Or stumble by intrinsic worth. What worth?

Its aim and object! Peace you advocate,

And war would fain abolish from the land:

Support religion, lash irreverence,

Yet laughingly administer rebuke

To superstitious folly,—equal fault!

While innovating rashness, lust of change,

New laws, new habits, manners, men and things,

Make your main quarry,—'oldest' meaning 'best.'

You check the fretful litigation-itch,

Withstand mob-rule, expose mob-flattery,

Punish mob-favorites; most of all press hard

On sophists who assist the demagogue,

And poets their accomplices in crime.

Such your main quarry,—by the way, you strike

Ignobler game, mere miscreants, snob or scamp,

Cowardly, gluttonous, effeminate:

Still with a bolt to spare when dramatist

Proves haply unproficient in his art,

Such aims—alone, no matter for the means—

Declare the unexampled excellence

Of their first author—Aristophanes!

"Whereat—Euripides, oh, not thyself—

Augustlier than the need!—thy century

Of subjects dreamed and dared and done, before

'Banqueters' gave dark earth enlightenment,

Or 'Babylonians' played Prometheus here,—

These let me summon to defend thy cause!

Lo, as indignantly took life and shape

Labor by labor, all of Herakles,—

Palpably fronting some o'erbold pretence

'Eurustheus slew the monsters, purged the world!'

So shall each poem pass you and imprint

Shame on the strange assurance. You praised Peace?

Sing him full-face, Kresphontes! 'Peace' the theme?

'Peace, in whom depths of wealth lie,—of the blest

Immortals beauteousest,—

Come! for the heart within me dies away,

So long dost thou delay!

Oh, I have feared lest old age, much annoy,

Conquer me, quite outstrip the tardy joy,

Thy gracious triumph-season I would see,

The song, the dance, the sport, profuse of crowns to be.

But come! for my sake, goddess great and dear.

Come to the city here!

Hateful Sedition drive thou from our homes,

With Her who madly roams

Rejoicing in the steel against the life

That 's whetted—banish Strife!'

"Shall I proceed? No need of next and next!

That were too easy, play so presses play,

Trooping tumultuous, each with instance apt,

Each eager to confute the idle boast!

What virtue but stands forth panegyrized,

What vice, unburned by stigma, in the books

Which bettered Hellas,—beyond graven gold

Or gem-indenture, sung by Phoibos' self

And saved in Kunthia's mountain treasure-house—

Ere you, man, moralist, were youth or boy?

—Not praise which, in the proffer, mocks the praised

By sly admixture of the blameworthy

And enforced coupling of base fellowship,—

Not blame which gloats the while it frowning laughs,

'Allow one glance on horrors—laughable!'—

This man's entire of heart and soul, discharged

Its love or hate, each unalloyed by each,

On objects worthy either; earnestness,

Attribute him, and power! but novelty?

Nor his nor yours a doctrine—all the world's!

What man of full-grown sense and sanity

Holds other than the truth,—wide Hellas through,—

Though truth he acts discredit truth he holds?

What imbecile has dared to formulate

'Love war, hate peace, become a litigant!'—

And so preach on, reverse each rule of right

Because he quarrels, combats, goes to law?

No, for his comment runs, with smile or sigh

According to heart's temper, 'Peace were best,

Except occasions when we put aside

Peace, and bid all the blessings in her gift

Quick join the crows, for sake of Marathon!'

"'Nay,' you reply; for one, whose mind withstands

His heart, and, loving peace, for conscience' sake

Wants war,—you find a crowd of hypocrites

Whose conscience means ambition, grudge and greed.

On such, reproof, sonorous doctrine, melts

Distilled like universal but thin dew

Which all too sparsely covers country: dear,

No doubt, to universal crop and clown,

Still, each bedewed keeps his own head-gear dry

With upthrust skiadeion, shakes adroit

The droppings to his neighbor. No! collect

All of the moisture, leave unhurt the heads

Which nowise need a washing, save and store

And dash the whole condensed to one fierce spout

On some one evil-doer, sheltered close,—

The fool supposed,—till you beat guard away,

And showed your audience, not that war was wrong,

But Lamachos absurd,—case, crests and all,—

Not that democracy was blind of choice,

But Kleon and Huperbolos were shams:

Not superstition vile, but Nikias crazed,—

The concrete for the abstract; that 's the way!

What matters Choros crying 'Hence, impure!'

You cried 'Ariphrades does thus and thus!'

Now, earnestness seems never earnest more

Than when it dons for garb—indifference;

So, there 's much laughing: but, compensative,

When frowning follows laughter, then indeed

Scout innuendo, sarcasm, irony!—

Wit's polished warfare glancing at first graze

From off hard headpiece, coarsely-coated brain

O' the commonalty—whom, unless you prick

To purpose, what avails that finer pates

Succumb to simple scratching? Those—not these—

'T is Multitude, which, moved, fines Lamachos,

Banishes Kleon and burns Sokrates,

House over head, or, better, poisons him.

Therefore in dealing with King Multitude,

Club-drub the callous numskulls! In and in

Beat this essential consequential fact

That here they have a hater of the three,

Who hates in word, phrase, nickname, epithet

And illustration, beyond doubt at all!

And similarly, would you win assent

To—Peace, suppose? You tickle the tough hide

With good plain pleasure her concomitant—

And, past mistake again, exhibit Peace—

Peace, vintager and festive, cheesecake-time,

Hare-slice-and-peasoup-season, household-joy;

Theoria's beautiful belongings match

Opora's lavish condescendings: brief,

Since here the people are to judge, you press

Such argument as people understand:

If with exaggeration—what care you?

"Have I misunderstood you in the main?

No! then must answer be, such argument,

Such policy, no matter what good love

Or hate it help, in practice proves absurd,

Useless and null: henceforward intercepts

Sober effective blow at what you blame,

And renders nugatory rightful praise

Of thing or person. The coarse brush has daubed—

What room for the finer limner's pencil-mark?

Blame? You curse, rather, till who blames must blush—

Lean to apology or praise, more like!

Does garment, simpered o'er as white, prove gray?

'Black, blacker than Acharnian charcoal, black

Beyond Kimmerian, Stugian blackness black,'

You bawl, till men sigh 'nearer snowiness!'

What follows? What one faint-rewarding fall

Of foe belabored ne'er so lustily?

Laugh Lamachos from out the people's heart?

He died, commanding, 'hero,' say yourself!

Gibe Nikias into privacy?—nay, shake

Kleon a little from his arrogance

By cutting him to shoe-sole-shreds? I think,

He ruled his life long, and, when time was ripe,

Died fighting for amusement,—good tough hide!

Sokrates still goes up and down the streets,

And Aristullos puts his speech in book,

When both should be abolished long ago.

Nay, wretchedest of rags, Ariphrades—

You have been fouling that redoubtable

Harp-player, twenty years, with what effect?

Still he strums on, strums ever cheerily,

And earns his wage,—'Who minds a joke?' men say.

No, friend! The statues stand—mud-stained at most—

Titan or pygmy: what achieves their fall

Will be, long after mud is flung and spent,

Some clear thin spirit-thrust of lightning—truth!

"Your praise, then—honey-smearing helps your friend,

More than blame's ordure-smirch hurts foe, perhaps?

Peace, now, misunderstood, ne'er prized enough,

You have interpreted to ignorance

Till ignorance opes eye, bat-blind before,

And for the first time knows Peace means the power

On maw of pancake, cheese-cake, barley-cake,

No stop nor stint to stuffing. While, in camp,

Who fights chews rancid tunny, onions raw,

Peace sits at cosy feast with lamp and fire,

Complaisant smooth-sleeked flute-girls giggling gay.

How thick and fast the snow falls, freezing War

Who shrugs, campaigns it, and may break a shin

Or twist an ankle! come, who hesitates

To give Peace, over War, the preference?

Ah, friend—had this indubitable fact

Haply occurred to poor Leonidas,

How had he turned tail on Thermopulai!

It cannot be that even his few wits

Were addled to the point that, so advised,

Preposterous he had answered—'Cakes are prime,

Hearth-sides are snug, sleek dancing-girls have worth,

And yet—for country's sake, to save our gods

Their temples, save our ancestors their tombs,

Save wife and child and home and liberty,—

I would chew sliced salt-fish, bear snow—nay, starve,

If need were,—and by much prefer the choice!'

Why, friend, your genuine hero, all the while,

Has been—who served precisely for your butt—

Kleonumos that, wise, cast shield away

On battle-ground; cried 'Cake my buckler be,

Embossed with cream-clot! peace, not war, I choose,

Holding with Dikaiopolis!' Comedy

Shall triumph, Dikaiopolis win assent,

When Miltiades shall next shirk Marathon,

Themistokles swap Salamis for—cake,

And Kimon grunt 'Peace, grant me dancing-girls!'

But sooner, hardly! twenty-five years since,

The war began,—such pleas for Peace have reached

A reasonable age. The end shows all!

And so with all the rest you advocate!

'Wise folk leave litigation! 'ware the wasps!

Whoso loves law and lawyers, heliast-like,

Wants hemlock!' None shows that so funnily.

But, once cure madness, how comports himself

Your sane exemplar, what 's our gain thereby?

Philokleon turns Bdelukleon! just this change,—

New sanity gets straightway drunk as sow,

Cheats baker-wives, brawls, kicks, cuffs, curses folk,

Parades a shameless flute-girl, bandies filth

With his own son who cured his father's cold

By making him catch fever—funnily!

But as for curing love of lawsuits—faugh!

"And how does new improve upon the old

—Your boast—in even abusing? Rough, may be—

Still, honest was the old mode. 'Call thief—thief!'

But never call thief even—murderer!

Much less call fop and fribble, worse one whit

Than fribble and fop! Spare neither! beat your brains

For adequate invective,—cut the life

Clean out each quality,—but load your lash

With no least lie, or we pluck scourge from hand!

Does poet want a whipping, write bad verse,

Inculcate foul deeds? There 's the fault to flog!

You vow, 'The rascal cannot read nor write,

Spends more in buying fish than Morsimos,

Somebody helps his Muse and courts his wife,

His uncle deals in crockery, and last—

Himself 's a stranger!' That 's the cap and crown

Of stinging-nettle, that 's the master-stroke!

What poet-rival,—after 'housebreaker,'

'Fish-gorging,' 'midnight footpad,' and so forth,—

Proves not, beside, 'a stranger'? Chased from charge

To charge, and, lie by lie, laughed out of court,—

Lo, wit's sure refuge, satire's grand resource—

All, from Kratinos downward—'strangers' they!

Pity the trick's too facile! None so raw

Among your playmates but have caught the ball

And sent it back as briskly to—yourself!

You too, my Attic, are styled 'stranger'—Rhodes,

Aigina, Lindos or Kameiros,—nay,

'T was Egypt reared (if Eupolis be right)

Who wrote the comedy (Kratinos vows)

Kratinos helped a little! Kleon's self

Was nigh promoted Comic, when he haled

My poet into court, and o'er the coals

Hauled and re-hauled 'the stranger,—insolent,

Who brought out plays, usurped our privilege!'

Why must you Comics one and all take stand

On lower ground than truth from first to last?

Why all agree to let folk disbelieve,

So laughter but reward a funny lie?

Repel such onslaughts—answer, sad and grave,

Your fancy-fleerings—who would stoop so low?

Your own adherents whisper,—when disgust

Too menacingly thrills Logeion through

At—Perikles invents this present war

Because men robbed his mistress of three maids—

Or—Sokrates wants burning, house o'er head,—

'What, so obtuse, not read between the lines?

Our poet means no mischief! All should know—

Ribaldry here implies a compliment!

He deals with things, not men,—his men are things—

Each represents a class, plays figure-head

And names the ship: no meaner than the first

Would serve; he styles a trireme "Sokrates"—

Fears "Sokrates" may prove unseaworthy,

(That's merely—"Sophists are the bane of boys")

Rat-riddled ("they are capable of theft")

Rotten or whatsoe'er shows ship-disease,

("They war with gods and worship whirligig.")

You never took the joke for earnest? scarce

Supposed mere figure-head meant entire ship,

And Sokrates—the whole fraternity?'

"This then is Comedy, our sacred song,

Censor of vice, and virtue's guard as sure:

Manners-instructing, morals' stop-estray,

Which, born a twin with public liberty,

Thrives with its welfare, dwindles with its wane!

Liberty? what so exquisitely framed

And fitted to suck dry its life of life

To last faint fibre?—since that life is truth.

You who profess your indignation swells

At sophistry, when specious words confuse

Deeds right and wrong, distinct before, you say—

(Though all that 's done is—dare veracity,

Show that the true conception of each deed

Affirmed, in vulgar parlance, 'wrong' or 'right,'

Proves to be neither, as the hasty hold,

But, change your side, shoots light, where dark alone

Was apprehended by the vulgar sense)—

You who put sophistry to shame, and shout

'There 's but a single side to man and thing;

A side so much more big than thing or man

Possibly can be, that—believe 't is true?

Such were too marvellous simplicity!'—

Confess, those sophists whom yourself depict,

(—Abide by your own painting!) what they teach,

They wish at least their pupil to believe,

And, what believe, to practise! Did you wish

Hellas should haste, as taught, with torch in hand,

And fire the horrid Speculation-shop?

Straight the shop's master rose and showed the mob

What man was your so monstrous Sokrates;

Himself received amusement, why not they?

Just as did Kleon first play magistrate

And bid you put your birth in evidence—

Since no unbadged buffoon is licensed here

To shame us all when foreign guests may mock—

Then,—birth established, fooling licensed you,—

He, duty done, resumed mere auditor,

Laughed with the loudest at his Lamia-shape,

Kukloboros-roaring, and the camel-rest.

Nay, Aristullos,—once your volley spent

On the male-Kirké and her swinish crew,—

Platon,—so others call the youth we love,—

Sends your performance to the curious king—

'Do you desire to know Athenai's knack

At turning seriousness to pleasantry?

Read this! One Aristullos means myself.

The author is indeed a merry grig!'

Nay, it would seem as if yourself were bent

On laying down the law, 'Tell lies I must—

Aforethought and of purpose, no mistake!'

When forth yourself step, tell us from the stage,

'Here you behold the King of Comedy—

Me, who, the first, have purged my every piece

From each and all my predecessors' filth,

Abjured those satyr-adjuncts sewn to bid

The boys laugh, satyr-jokes whereof not one

Least sample but would make my hair turn gray

Beyond a twelvemonth's ravage! I renounce

Mountebank-claptrap, such as firework-fizz

And torchflare, or else nuts and barleycorns

Scattered among the crowd, to scramble for

And stop their mouths with; no such stuff shames me!

Who—what's more serious—know both when to strike

And when to stay my hand: once dead, my foe,

Why, done, my fighting! I attack a corpse?

I spare the corpse-like even! punish age?

I pity from my soul that sad effete

Toothless old mumbler called Kratinos! once

My rival,—now, alack, the dotard slinks

Ragged and hungry to what hole 's his home;

Ay, slinks through byways where no passenger

Flings him a bone to pick. You formerly

Adored the Muses' darling: dotard now,

Why, he may starve! O mob most mutable!'

So you harangued in person; while,—to point

Precisely out, these were but lies you launched,—

Prompt, a play followed primed with satyr-frisks,

No spice spared of the stomach-turning stew,

Full-fraught with torch-display, and barley-throw,

And Kleon, dead enough, bedaubed afresh;

While daft Kratinos—home to hole trudged he,

Wrung dry his wit to the last vinous dregs,

Decanted them to 'Bottle,'—beat, next year,—

'Bottle' and dregs—your best of 'Clouds' and dew!

Where, Comic King, may keenest eye detect

Improvement on your predecessors' work

Except in lying more audaciously?

"Why—genius! That's the grandeur, that 's the gold—

That 's you—superlatively true to touch—

Gold, leaf or lump—gold, anyhow the mass

Takes manufacture and proves Pallas' casque

Or, at your choice, simply a cask to keep

Corruption from decay. Your rivals' hoard

May ooze forth, lacking such preservative:

Yours cannot—gold plays guardian far too well!

Genius, I call you: dross, your rivals share;

Ay, share and share alike, too! says the world,

However you pretend supremacy

In aught beside that gold, your very own.

Satire? 'Kratinos for our satirist!'

The world cries. Elegance? 'Who elegant

As Eupolis?' resounds as noisily.

Artistic fancy? Choros-creatures quaint?

Magnes invented 'Birds' and 'Frogs' enough,

Archippos punned, Hegemon parodied,

To heart's content, before you stepped on stage.

Moral invective? Eupolis exposed

'That prating beggar, he who stole the cup,'

Before your 'Clouds' rained grime on Sokrates;

Nay, what beat 'Clouds' but 'Konnos,' muck for mud?

Courage? How long before, well-masked, you poured

Abuse on Eukrates and Lusikles,

Did Telekleides and Hermippos pelt

Their Perikles and Kumon? standing forth,

Bareheaded, not safe crouched behind a name,—

Philonides or else Kallistratos,

Put forth, when danger threatened,—mask for face,

To bear the brunt,—if blame fell, take the blame,—

If praise ... why, frank laughed Aristophanes

'They write such rare stuff? No, I promise you!'

Rather, I see all true improvements, made

Or making, go against you—tooth and nail

Contended with; 't is still Moruchides,

'T is Euthumenes, Surakosios, nay,

Argurrhios and Kinesias,—common sense

And public shame, these only cleanse your sty!

Coerced, prohibited,—you grin and bear,

And, soon as may be, hug to heart again

The banished nastiness too dear to drop!

Krates could teach and practise festive song

Yet scorn scurrility; as gay and good,

Pherekrates could follow. Who loosed hold,

Must let fall rose-wreath, stoop to muck once more?

Did your particular self advance in aught,

Task the sad genius—steady slave the while—

To further—say, the patriotic aim?

No, there 's deterioration manifest

Year by year, play by play! survey them all,

From that boy's-triumph when 'Acharnes' dawned,

To 'Thesmophoriazousai,'—this man's-shame!

There, truly, patriot zeal so prominent

Allowed friends' plea perhaps: the baser stuff

Was but the nobler spirit's vehicle.

Who would imprison, unvolatilize

A violet's perfume, blends with fatty oils

Essence too fugitive in flower alone;

So, calling unguent—violet, call the play—

Obscenity impregnated with 'Peace'!

But here 's the boy grown bald, and here 's the play

With twenty years' experience: where 's one spice

Of odor in the hogs'-lard? what pretends

To aught except a grease-pot's quality?

Friend, sophist-hating! know,—worst sophistry

Is when man's own soul plays its own self false,

Reasons a vice into a virtue, pleads

'I detail sin to shame its author'—not

'I shame Ariphrades for sin's display!'

'I show Opora to commend Sweet Home'—

Not 'I show Bacchis for the striplings' sake!'

"Yet all the same—O genius and O gold—

Had genius ne'er diverted gold from use

Worthy the temple, to do copper's work

And coat a swine's trough—which abundantly

Might furnish Phoibos' tripod, Pallas' throne!

Had you, I dream, discarding all the base,

The brutish, spurned alone convention's watch

And ward against invading decency

Disguised as license, law in lawlessness,

And so, re-ordinating outworn rule,

Made Comedy and Tragedy combine,

Prove some new Both-yet-neither, all one bard,

Euripides with Aristophanes

Co-operant! this, reproducing Now

As that gave Then existence: Life to-day,

This, as that other—Life dead long ago!

The mob decrees such feat no crown, perchance,

But—why call crowning the reward of quest?

Tell him, my other poet,—where thou walk'st

Some rarer world than e'er Ilissos washed!

"But dream goes idly in the air. To earth!

Earth's question just amounts to—which succeeds,

Which fails of two life-long antagonists?

Suppose my charges all mistake! assume

Your end, despite ambiguous means, the best—

The only! you and he, a patriot-pair,

Have striven alike for one result—say, Peace!

You spoke your best straight to the arbiters—

Our people: have you made them end this war

By dint of laughter and abuse and lies

And postures of Opora? Sadly—No!

This war, despite your twenty-five years' work,

May yet endure until Athenai falls,

And freedom falls with her. So much for you!

Now, the antagonist Euripides—

Has he succeeded better? Who shall say?

He spoke quite o'er the heads of Kleon's crowd

To a dim future, and if there he fail,

Why, you are fellows in adversity.

But that 's unlike the fate of wise words launched

By music on their voyage. Hail, Depart,

Arrive, Glad Welcome! Not my single wish—

Yours also wafts the white sail on its way,

Your nature too is kingly. All beside

I call pretension,—no true potentate,

Whatever intermediary be crowned,

Zeus or Poseidon, where the vulgar sky

Lacks not Triballos to complete the group.

I recognize—behind such phantom-crew—

Necessity, Creation, Poet's Power,

Else never had I dared approach, appeal

To poetry, power, Aristophanes!

But I trust truth's inherent kingliness,

Trust who, by reason of much truth, shall reign

More or less royally—may prayer but push

His sway past limit, purge the false from true!

Nor, even so, had boldness nerved my tongue

But that the other king stands suddenly,

In all the grand investiture of death,

Bowing your knee beside my lowly head—

Equals one moment!

"Now, arise and go!

Both have done homage to Euripides!"

Silence pursued the words: till he broke out—

"Scarce so! This constitutes, I may believe,

Sufficient homage done by who defames

Your poet's foe, since you account me such;

But homage-proper,—pay it by defence

Of him, direct defence and not oblique,

Not by mere mild admonishment of me!"

"Defence? The best, the only!" I replied.

"A story goes—When Sophokles, last year,

Cited before tribunal by his son

(A poet—to complete the parallel),

Was certified unsound of intellect,

And claimed as only fit for tutelage,

Since old and doting and incompetent

To carry on this world's work,—the defence

Consisted just in his reciting (calm

As the verse bore, which sets our heart a-swell

And voice a-heaving too tempestuously)

That choros-chant 'The station of the steed,

Stranger! thou comest to,—Kolonos white!'

Then he looked round and all revolt was dead.

You know the one adventure of my life—

What made Euripides Balaustion's friend.

When I last saw him, as he bade farewell,

'I sang another "Herakles,"' smiled he;

'It gained no prize: your love be prize I gain!

Take it—the tablets also where I traced

The story first with stulos pendent still—

Nay, the psalterion may complete the gift,

So, should you croon the ode bewailing Age,

Yourself shall modulate—same notes, same strings—

With the old friend who loved Balaustion once.'

There they lie! When you broke our solitude,

We were about to honor him once more

By reading the consummate Tragedy.

Night is advanced; I have small mind to sleep;

May I go on, and read,—so make defence,

So test true godship? You affirm, not I,

—Beating the god, affords such test: I hold

That when rash hands but touch divinity,

The chains drop off, the prison-walls dispart,

And—fire—he fronts mad Pentheus! Dare we try?"

Accordingly I read the perfect piece.