Satire XV (Gifford)

Who knows not to what monstrous gods, my friend,
The mad inhabitants of Egypt bend?--
The snake-devouring ibis, these enshrine,
Those think the crocodile alone divine;
Others, where Thebes' vast ruins strew the ground,
And shattered Memnon yields a magic sound,
Set up a glittering brute of uncouth shape,
And bow before the image of an ape!
Thousands regard the hound with holy fear,
Not one, Diana: and 'tis dangerous here,
To violate an onion, or to stain
The sanctity of leeks with tooth profane.
O holy nations! Sacro-sanct abodes!
Where every garden propagates its gods!
They spare the fleecy kind, and think it ill,
The blood of lambkins, or of kids, to spill:
But, human flesh--O! that is lawful fare.
And you may eat it without scandal there.
When, at the amazed Alcinous' board, of old,
Ulysses of so strange an action told,
He moved of some the mirth, of more the gall,
And, for a lying vagrant, passed with all.
"Will no one plunge this babbler in the waves
(Worthy a true Charybdis)--while he raves
Of monsters seen not since the world began,
Cyclops and Læstrigons, who feed on man!
For me--I less should doubt of Scylla's train,
Of rocks that float and jostle in the main,
Of bladders filled with storms, of men, in fine,
By magic changed, and driven to grunt with swine,
Than of his cannibals:--the fellow feigns,
As if he thought Phæacians had no brains."
Thus, one, perhaps, more sober than the rest,
Observed, and justly, of their traveled guest,
Who spoke of prodigies till then unknown;
Yet brought no attestation but his own.
--I bring my wonders, too; and I can tell,
When Junius, late, was consul, what befell,
Near Coptus' walls; tell of a people stained
With deeper guilt than tragedy e'er feigned:
For, sure, no buskined bard, from Pyrrha's time,
E'er taxed a whole community with crime;
Take then a scene yet to the stage unknown,
And, by a nation, acted--IN OUR OWN!
Between two neighboring towns a deadly hate,
Sprung from a sacred grudge of ancient date,
Yet burns; a hate no lenients can assuage,
No time subdue, a rooted, rancorous rage!
Blind bigotry, at first, the evil wrought:
For each despised the other's gods, and thought
Its own the true, the genuine, in a word,
The only deities to be adored!
And now the Ombite festival drew near:
When the prime Tent'rites, envious of their cheer,
Resolved to seize the occasion, to annoy
Their feast, and spoil the sacred week of joy.--
It came: the hour the thoughtless Ombites greet,
And crowd the porches, crowd the public street,
With tables richly spread; where, night and day,
Plunged in the abyss of gluttony, they lay:
(For savage as the nome appears, it vies
In luxury, if I MAY TRUST MY EYES,
With dissolute Canopus:) Six were past,
Six days of riot, and the seventh and last
Rose on the feast; and now the Tent'rites thought,
A cheap, a bloodless victory might be bought,
O'er such a helpless crew: nor thought they wrong,
Nor could the event be doubtful, where a throng
Of drunken revelers, stammering, reeling-ripe,
And capering to a sooty minstrel's pipe.
Coarse unguents, chaplets, flowers, on this side fight,
On that, keen hatred, and deliberate spite!
At first both sides, though eager to engage.
With taunts and jeers, the heralds of their rage,
Blow up their mutual fury; and anon,
Kindled to madness, with loud shouts rush on;
Deal, though unarmed, their vengeance blindly round,
And with clenched fists print many a ghastly wound.
Then might you see, amid the desperate fray,
Features disfigured, noses torn away,
Hands, where the gore of mangled eyes yet reeks,
And jaw-bones starting through the cloven cheeks!
But this is sport, mere children's play, they cry--
As yet beneath their feet no bodies lie,
And, to what purpose should such armies fight
The cause of heaven, if none be slain outright?
Roused at the thought, more fiercely they engage,
With stones, the weapons of intestine rage;
Yet not precisely such, to tell you true,
As Turnus erst, or mightier Ajax, threw:
Nor quite so large as that two-handed stone,
Which bruised Æneas on the huckle-bone;
But such as men, in our degenerate days,
Ah, how unlike to theirs! make shift to raise.
Even in his time, Mæonides could trace
Some diminution of the human race:
Now, earth, grown old and frigid, rears with pain
A pigmy brood, a weak and wicked train;
Which every god, who marks their passions vile,
Regards with laughter, though he loathes the while.
But to our tale. Enforced with armed supplies.
The zealous Tent'rites feel their courage rise,
And wave their swords, and, kindling at the sight,
Press on, and with fell rage renew the fight.
The Ombites flee; they follow:--in the rear,
A luckless wretch, confounded by his fear,
Trips and falls headlong; with loud yelling cries,
The pack rush in, and seize him as he lies.
And now the conquerors, none to disappoint
Of the dire banquet, tear him joint by joint,
And dole him round; the bones yet warm, they gnaw,
And champ the flesh that heaves beneath their jaw.
They want no cook to dress it--'twould be long,
And appetite is keen, and rage is strong.
And here, Volusius, I rejoice at least,
That fire was unprofaned by this cursed feast,
Fire, rapt from heaven! and you will, sure, agree
To greet the element's escape, with me.
--But all who ventured on the carcass, swore
They never tasted--aught so sweet before!
Nor did the relish charm the first alone--
Those who arrived too late for flesh, or bone,
Stooped down, and scraping where the wretch had lain,
With savage pleasure licked the gory plain!
The Vascons once (the story yet is rife),
With such dire sustenance prolonged their life;
But then the cause was different: Fortune, there,
Proved adverse: they had borne the extremes of war,
The rage of famine, the still-watchful foe,
And all the ills beleaguered cities know.
(And nothing else should prompt mankind to use
Such desperate means.) May this their crime excuse!
For after every root and herb were gone,
And every aliment to hunger known;
When their lean frames, and cheeks of sallow hue,
Struck even the foe with pity at the view,
And all were ready their own flesh to tear,
They first adventured on this horrid fare.
And surely every god would pity grant
To men so worn by wretchedness and want,
And even the very ghosts of those they ate,
Absolve them, mindful of their dreadful state!
True, we are wiser; and, by Zeno taught,
Know life itself may be too dearly bought;
But the poor Vascon, in that early age,
Knew naught of Zeno, or the Stoic page.--
Now, thanks to Greece and Rome, in wisdom's robe
The bearded tribes rush forth, and seize the globe;
Already, learned Gaul aspires to teach
Your British orators the Art of Speech,
And Thulé, blessings on her, seems to say,
She'll hire a good grammarian, cost what may.
The Vascons, then, who thus prolonged their breath,
And the Saguntines, true, like them, to death,
Brave too, like them, but by worse ills subdued,
Had some small plea for this abhorred food.
Diana first (and let us doubt no more
The barbarous rites we disbelieved of yore)
Reared her dread altar near the Tauric flood,
And asked the sacrifice of human blood:
Yet there the victim only lost his life,
And feared no cruelty beyond the knife.
Far, far more savage Egypt's frantic train,
They butcher first, and then devour the slain!
But say, what causa impelled them to proceed,
What siege, what famine, to this monstrous deed?
What could they more, had Nile refused to rise,
And the soil gaped with ever-glowing skies,
What could they more, the guilty Flood to shame,
And heap opprobrium on his hateful name!
Lo! what the barbarous hordes of Scythia, Thrace,
Gaul, Britain, never dared--dared by a race
Of puny dastards, who, with fingers frail,
Tug the light oar, and hoist the little sail,
In painted pans! What tortures can the mind
Suggest for miscreants of this abject kind,
Whom spite impelled worse horrors to pursue,
Than famine, in its deadliest form, e'er knew!
NATURE, who gave us tears, by that alone
Proclaims she made the feeling heart our own;
And 'tis her noblest boon: This bids us fly,
To wipe the drops from sorrowing friendship's eye,
Sorrowing ourselves; to wail the prisoner's state,
And sympathize in the wronged orphan's fate,
Compelled his treacherous guardian to accuse,
While many a shower his blooming cheek bedews,
And through his scattered tresses, wet with tears,
A doubtful face, or boy or girl's, appears.
As Nature bids, we sigh, when some bright maid
Is, ere her spousals, to the pyre conveyed;
Some babe--by fate's inexorable doom,
Just shown on earth, and hurried to the tomb.
For who, that to the sanctity aspires
Which Ceres, for her mystic torch, requires,
Feels not another's woes? This marks our birth;
The great distinction from the beasts of earth!
And therefore--gifted with superior powers,
And capable of things divine--'tis ours,
To learn, and practice, every useful art;
And, from high heaven, deduce that better part,
That moral sense, denied to creatures prone,
And downward bent, and found with man alone!--
For He, who gave this vast machine to roll,
Breathed LIFE in them, in us a REASONING SOUL;
That kindred feelings might our state improve,
And mutual wants conduct to mutual love;
Woo to one spot the scattered hordes of men,
From their old forest and paternal den;
Raise the fair dome, extend the social line,
And, to our mansion, those of others join,
Join too our faith, our confidence to theirs,
And sleep, relying on the general cares:--
In war, that each to each support might lend,
When wounded, succor, and when fallen, defend;
At the same trumpet's clangor rush to arms,
By the same walls be sheltered from alarms,
Near the same tower the foe's incursions wait,
And trust their safety to one common gate.
--But serpents, now, more links of concord bind:
The cruel leopard spares the spotted kind;
No lion spills a weaker lion's gore,
No boar expires beneath a stronger boar;
In leagues of friendship tigers roam the plain,
And bears with bears perpetual peace maintain.
While man, alas! fleshed in the dreadful trade,
Forges without remorse the murderous blade,
On that dire anvil, where primæval skill,
As yet untaught a brother's blood to spill,
Wrought only what meek nature would allow,
Goads for the ox, and coulters for the plow!
Even this is trifling: we have seen a rage
Too fierce for murder only to assuage;
Seen a whole state their victim piecemeal tear,
And count each quivering limb delicious fare.
O, could the Samian Sage these horrors see,
What would he say? or to what deserts flee?
He, who the flesh of beasts, like man's, declined,
And scarce indulged in pulse--of every kind!