University of Virginia Library

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 loveable
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 licence, 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-coloured 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 Olympian, Zeus gave birth to these;
Your Pythian,—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 suchanone 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 neighbour-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 vapour 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-favourites; 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
Labour by labour, 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!
O 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 neighbour. 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 evildoer, 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
Succumbto 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 fine 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 grey?
“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 belaboured 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—mudstained 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 pan-cake, 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 grey
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 thro' 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 stye!
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 odour in the hog's-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
Coöperant! 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 Oporia? 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 doating 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 honour 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.