Lines 814–1003

EUELPIDES.
What! Sparta for my city? No.
I wouldn’t use esparto for my pallet,
Not if I’d cords; by Heracles, not I.

PEISTHETAERUS.
How shall we name it then?

CHORUS.
Invent some fine
Magniloquent name, drawn from these upper spaces
And clouds.

PEISTHETAERUS.
What think you of Cloudcuckoobury?

CHORUS.
Good! Good!
You have found a good big name, and no mistake.

EUELPIDES.
Is this the great Cloudcuckoobury town
Where all the wealth of Aeschines lies hid,
And all Theagenes’s?

PEISTHETAERUS.
Best of all,
This is the plain of Phlegra, where the Gods
Outshot the giants at the game of Brag.

EUELPIDES.
A glistering sort of a city! Who shall be
Its guardian God? For whom shall we weave the Peplus?

PEISTHETAERUS.
Why not retain Athene, City-keeper?

EUELPIDES.
And how can that be a well-ordered State,
Where she, a woman born, a Goddess, stands
Full-armed, and Cleisthenes assumes a spindle?

PEISTHETAERUS.
And who shall hold the citadel’s Storkade?

CHORUS.
A bird of ours, one of the Persian breed,
Everywhere noted as the War-god’s own
Armipotent cockerel.

EUELPIDES.
O, Prince Cockerel? Yes,
He’s just the God to perch upon the rocks.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Now, comrade, get you up into the air,
And lend a hand to those that build the wall.
Bring up the rubble; strip, and mix the mortar;
Run up the ladder with the hod; fall off;
Station the sentinels; conceal the fire;
Round with the alarum bell; go fast asleep;
And send two heralds, one to heaven above,
And one to earth below; and let them come
From thence, for me.

EUELPIDES.
And you, remaining here,
Be hanged—for me!

PEISTHETAERUS.
Go where I send you, comrade,
Without your help there, nothing will be done.
But I, to sacrifice to these new Gods,
Must call the priest to regulate the show.
Boy! Boy! take up the basket and the laver.

CHORUS.
I’m with you, you’ll find me quite willing:
I highly approve of your killing
A lambkin, to win us the favour divine,
Mid holy processionals, stately and fine.
Up high, up high, let the Pythian cry,
The Pythian cry to the God be sent;
Let Chaeris play the accompaniment.

PEISTHETAERUS.
O stop that puffing! Heracles, what’s this?
Faith, I’ve seen many a sight, but never yet
A mouth-band-wearing raven! Now then, priest,
To the new Gods commence the sacrifice.

PRIEST.
I’ll do your bidding. Where’s the basket-bearer?
Let us pray
To the Hestia-bird of the household shrine,
And the Kite that watches her feasts divine,
And to all the Olympian birds and birdesses,

PEISTHETAERUS.
O Sunium-hawking, King of the Sea—mew, hail!

PRIEST.
And to the holy Swan, the Pythian and Delian one,
And to thee too, Quail-guide Leto,
And to Artemis the Thistle-finch,

PEISTHETAERUS.
Aye, Thistle-finch; no more Colaenis now!

PRIEST.
And to Sabazius the Phrygian linnet; and then
To Rhea the Great Mother of Gods and men;

PEISTHETAERUS.
Aye, Ostrich-queen, Cleocritus’s Mother!

PRIEST.
That they may grant health and salvation
To the whole Cloudcuckooburian nation,
For themselves and the Chians,

PEISTHETAERUS.
I like the Chians everywhere tacked on.

PRIEST.
And to the hero-birds and sons of heroes,
And to the Porphyrion rail;
And to the pelican white, and pelican grey;
And to the eagle, and to the capercaillie;
And to the peacock, and to the sedgewarbler;
And to the teal, and to the skua;
And to the heron, and to the gannet;
And to the blackcap, and to the titmouse;—

PEISTHETAERUS.
Stop, stop your calling, hang you. O, look here.
To what a victim, idiot, are you calling
Ospreys and vultures? Don’t you see that one
One single kite could carry off the whole?
Get away hence, you and your garlands too!
Myself alone will sacrifice this victim.

CHORUS.
Once more as the laver they’re bringing,
Once more I my hymns must be singing,
Hymns holy and pious, the Gods to invite—
One alone, only one,—to our festival rite.
Your feast for two, I am sure won’t do.
For what you are going to offer there.
Is nothing at all but horns and hair.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Let us pray,
Offering our victim to the feathery gods.

POET.
(singing) Cloudcuckoobury
With praise and glory crown,
Singing, O Muse,
Of the new and happy town!

PEISTHETAERUS.
Whatever’s this? Why, who in the world are you?

POET.
O I’m a warbler, carolling sweet lays,
An eager meagre servant of the Muses,
As Homer says.

PEISTHETAERUS.
What! you a slave and wear your hair so long?

POET.
No, but all we who teach sweet choral lays
Are eager meagre servants of the Muses,
As Homer says.

PEISTHETAERUS.
That’s why your cloak so meagre seems, no doubt.
But, poet, what ill wind has blown you hither?

POET.
Oh I’ve been making, making lovely songs,
Simonideans, virgin songs, and sweet
Dithyrambic songs, on your Cloudcuckooburies,

PEISTHETAERUS.
When did you first begin these lovely songs?

POET.
Long, long ago, O yes! Long, long ago!

PEISTHETAERUS.
Why, is not this the City’s Tenth-day feast?
I’ve just this instant given the child its name.

POET.
But fleet, as the merry many-twinkling horses’ feet,
The airy fairy Rumour of the Muses.
Aetna’s Founder, father mine,
Whose name is the same as the holy altar flame,
Give to me what thy bounty chooses
To give me willingly of thine.

PEISTHETAERUS.
He’ll cause us trouble now, unless we give him
Something, and so get off. Hallo, you priest,
Why, you’ve a jerkin and a tunic too;
Strip, give the jerkin to this clever poet.
Take it; upon my word you do seem cold.

POET.
This little kindly gift the Muse
Accepts with willing condescension;
But let me to an apt remark
Of Pindar call my lord’s attention.

PEISTHETAERUS.
The fellow does not seem inclined to leave us.

POET.
Out among the Scythians yonder
See poor Straton wander, wander,
Poor poor Straton, not possessed
of a whirly-woven vest.
All inglorious comes, I trow, leather jerkin, if below
No soft tunic it can show.
Conceive my drift, I pray.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Aye, I conceive you want the tunic too.
Off with it, you. Needs must assist a Poet.
There, take it, and depart.

POET.
Yes, I’ll depart,
And make to the city pretty songs like this;
O Thou of the golden throne,
Sing Her, the quivering, shivering;
I came to the plains many-sown,
I came to the snowy, the blowy.
Alalae!

PEISTHETAERUS.
Well, well, but now you surely have escaped
From all those shiverings, with that nice warm vest.
This is, by Zeus, a plague I never dreamed of
That he should find our city out so soon.
Boy, take the laver and walk round once more.
Now hush!

ORACLE-MONGER.
Forbear! touch not the goat awhile.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Eh? Who are you?

ORACLE-MONGER.
A soothsayer.

PEISTHETAERUS.
You be hanged!

ORACLE-MONGER.
O think not lightly, friend, of things divine;
Know I’ve an oracle of Bakis, bearing
On your Cloudcuckooburies.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Eh? then why
Did you not soothsay that before I founded
My city here?

ORACLE-MONGER.
The Power within forbade me.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Well, well, there’s nought like hearing what it says.

ORACLE-MONGER.
Nay but if once grey crows
and wolves shall be banding together,
Out in the midway space,
twixt Corinth and Sicyon, dwelling,—

PEISTHETAERUS.
But what in the world have I to do with Corinth?

ORACLE-MONGER.
Bakis is riddling: Bakis means the Air.
First to Pandora offer
a white-fleeced ram for a victim.
Next, who first shall arrive
my verses prophetic expounding,
Give him a brand-new cloak
and a pair of excellent sandals.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Are sandals in it?

ORACLE-MONGER.
Take the book and see.
Give him moreover a cup,
and fill his hands with the inwards.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Are inwards in it?

ORACLE-MONGER.
Take the book and see.
Youth, divinely inspired,
if thou dost as I bid, thou shalt surely
Soar in the clouds as an Eagle;
refuse, and thou ne’er shalt become an
Eagle, or even a dove,
or a woodpecker tapping the oak-tree.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Is all that in it?

ORACLE-MONGER.
Take the book and see.

PEISTHETAERUS.
O how unlike your oracle to mine,
Which from Apollo’s words I copied out;
But if a cheat, an impostor,
presume to appear uninvited,
Troubling the sacred rites,
and lusting to taste of the inwards,
Hit him betwixt the ribs
with all your force and your fury.

ORACLE-MONGER.
You’re jesting surely.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Take the book and see.
See that ye spare not the rogue,
though he soar in the clouds as an Eagle,
Yea, be he Lampon himself
or even the great Diopeithes.

ORACLE-MONGER.
Is all that in it?

PEISTHETAERUS.
Take the book and see.
Get out! be off, confound you! (Striking him.)

ORACLE-MONGER.
O! O! O!

PEISTHETAERUS.
There, run away and soothsay somewhere else.

METON.
I come amongst you—

PEISTHETAERUS.
Some new misery this!
Come to do what? What’s your scheme’s form and outline?
What’s your design? What buskin’s on your foot?

METON.
I come to land-survey this Air of yours,
And mete it out by acres.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Heaven and Earth!
Whoever are you?

METON.
(scandalised) Whoever am I! I’m Meton,
Known throughout Hellas and Colonus.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Aye,
And what are these?

METON.
They’re rods for Air-surveying.
I’ll just explain. The Air’s, in outline, like
One vast extinguisher; so then, observe,
Applying here my flexible rod, and fixing
My compass there,—you understand?