Part 26 (2/2)

CIRCE Cryllus, loo, your summons called.

THE THREE Hira of yore thy powerful spell Doomed in swinish shape to dwell; Vet such life he reckoned then Happier than the life of men, Now, when carefully he ponders All our scientific wonders, Steam-driven myriads, all in motion, On the land and on the ocean, Going, for the sake of going, Wheresoever waves are flowing, Wheresoever winds are blowing; Converse through the sea transmitted, Swift as ever thought has flitted; All the glories of our time, Past the praise of loftiest rhyme; Will he, seeing these, indeed, Still retain his ancient creed, Ranking, in his mental plan, Life of beast o'er life of man?

CIRCE Speak, Gryllus.

GRYLLUS It is early yet to judge: But all the novelties I yet have seen Seem changes for the worse.

THE THREE If we could show him Our triumphs in succession, one by one, 'Twould surely change his judgment: and herein How might'st thou aid us, Circe!

CIRCE I will do so: And calling down, like Socrates, of yore, The clouds to aid us, they shall shadow forth, In bright succession, all that they behold, From air, on earth and sea. I wave my wand: And lo! they come, even as they came in Athens, s.h.i.+ning like virgins of ethereal life.

The Chorus of Clouds descended, and a dazzling array of female beauty was revealed by degrees through folds of misty gauze. They sang their first choral song:

CHORUS OF CLOUDS{1}

Clouds ever-flowing, conspicuously soaring, From loud-rolling Ocean, whose stream{2} gave us birth To heights, whence we look over torrents down-pouring To the deep quiet vales of the fruit-giving earth,-- As the broad eye of aether, unwearied in brightness, Dissolves our mist-veil in glittering rays, Our forms we reveal from its vapoury lightness, In semblance immortal, with far-seeing gaze.

1 The first stanza is pretty closely adapted from the strophe of Aristophanes. The second is only a distant imitation of the antistrophe.

2 In Homer, and all the older poets, the ocean is a river surrounding the earth, and the seas are inlets from it.

Shower-bearing Virgins, we seek not the regions Whence Pallas, the Muses, and Bacchus have fled,

But the city, where Commerce embodies her legions, And Mammon exalts his omnipotent head.

All joys of thought, feeling, and taste are before us, Wherever the beams of his favour are warm:

Though transient full oft as the veil of our chorus, Now golden with glory, now pa.s.sing in storm.

Reformers, scientific, moral, educational, political, pa.s.sed in succession, each answering a question of Gryllus. Gryllus observed, that so far from everything being better than it had been, it seemed that everything was wrong and wanted mending. The chorus sang its second song.

Seven compet.i.tive examiners entered with another table, and sat down on the opposite side of the stage to the spirit-rappers. They brought forward Hermogenes{1} as a crammed fowl to argue with Gryllus. Gryllus had the best of the argument; but the examiners adjudged the victory to Hermogenes. The chorus sang its third song.

1 See chapter xv.

Circe, at the request of the spirit-rappers, whose power was limited to the production of sound, called up several visible spirits, all ill.u.s.trious in their day, but all appearing as in the days of their early youth, 'before their renown was around them.' They were all subjected to compet.i.tive examination, and were severally p.r.o.nounced disqualified for the pursuit in which they had shone. At last came one whom Circe recommended to the examiners as a particularly promising youth. He was a candidate for military life. Every question relative to his profession he answered to the purpose. To every question not so relevant he replied that he did not know and did not care. This drew on him a reprimand. He was p.r.o.nounced disqualified, and ordered to join the rejected, who were ranged in a line along the back of the scene. A touch of Circe's wand changed them into their semblance of maturer years.

Among them were Hannibal and Oliver Cromwell; and in the foreground was the last candidate, Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Richard flourished his battle-axe over the heads of the examiners, who jumped up in great trepidation, overturned their table, tumbled over one another, and escaped as best they might in haste and terror. The heroes vanished. The chorus sang its fourth song.

CHORUS As before the pike will fly Dace and roach and such small fry; As the leaf before the gale, As the chaff beneath the flail; As before the wolf the flocks, As before the hounds the fox; As before the cat the mouse, As the rat from falling house; As the fiend before the spell Of holy water, book, and bell; As the ghost from dawning day,-- So has fled, in gaunt dismay, This septemvirate of quacks From the shadowy attacks Of Coeur-de-Lion's battle-axe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coeur-de-Lion's battle-axe. 260-221]

Could he in corporeal might, Plain to feeling as to sight, Rise again to solar light, How his arm would put to flight All the forms of Stygian night That round us rise in grim array, Darkening the meridian day: Bigotry, whose chief employ Is embittering earthly joy; Chaos, throned in pedant state, Teaching echo how to prate; And 'Ignorance, with looks profound,'

Not 'with eye that loves the ground,'

But stalking wide, with lofty crest, In science's pretentious vest.

And now, great masters of the realms of shade, To end the task which called us down from air, We shall present, in pictured show arrayed, Of this your modern world the triumphs rare,

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