Lines 1003–1205

PEISTHETAERUS.
I don’t.

METON.
With the straight rod I measure out, that so
The circle may be squared; and in the centre
A market-place; and streets be leading to it
Straight to the very centre; just as from
A star, though circular, straight rays flash out
In all directions.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Why, the man’s a Thales!
Meton!

METON.
Yes, what?

PEISTHETAERUS.
You know I love you, Meton,
Take my advice, and slip away unnoticed.

METON.
Why, what’s the matter?

PEISTHETAERUS.
As in Lacedaemon
There’s stranger-hunting; and a great disturbance;
And blows in plenty.

METON.
What, a Revolution?

PEISTHETAERUS.
No, no, not that.

METON.
What then?

PEISTHETAERUS.
They’ve all resolved
With one consent to wallop every quack.

METON.
I’d best be going.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Faith, I’m not quite certain
If you’re in time; see, see the blows are coming!
[Striking him.]

METON.
O, murder! help!

PEISTHETAERUS.
I told you how ’twould be.
Come, measure off your steps some other way.

COMMISSIONER.
Ho! consuls, ho!

PEISTHETAERUS.
Sardanapalus, surely!

COMMISSIONER.
Lo, I to your Cloudcuckooburies come,
By lot Commissioner.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Commissioner?
Who sent you hither?

COMMISSIONER.
Lo, a paltry scroll
Of Teleas.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Come now, will you take your pay
And get you gone in peace?

COMMISSIONER.
By Heaven I will.
I ought to be at home on public business,
Some little jobs I’ve had with Pharnaces.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Then take your pay, and go: your pay’s just—this.
[Striking him.]

COMMISSIONER.
What’s that?

PEISTHETAERUS.
A motion about Pharnaces.

COMMISSIONER.
Witness! he’s striking a Commissioner.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Shoo! shoo! begone; you and your verdict-urns.
The shame it is! They send Commissioners
Before we’ve finished our inaugural rites.

STATUTE-SELLER.
(reading) But if the Cloudcuckooburian
wrong the Athenian—

PEISTHETAERUS.
Here’s some more writing. What new misery’s this?

STATUTE-SELLER.
I am a Statute-seller, and I’m come
Bringing new laws to sell you.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Such as what?

STATUTE-SELLER.
Item, the Cloudcuckooburians are to use the selfsame
weights and measures, and the selfsame coinage as
the Olophyxians.

PEISTHETAERUS.
And you the selfsame as the Oh! Oh! -tyxians.
[Striking him.]

STATUTE-SELLER.
Hi! what are you at?

PEISTHETAERUS.
Take off those laws, you rascal.
Laws you won’t like I’ll give you in a minute.

COMMISSIONER.
(reappearing) I summon Peisthetaerus for next Munychion on a charge of outrage.

PEISTHETAERUS.
O that’s it, is it? What, are you there still?

STATUTE-SELLER.
(reappearing) Item, if any man drive away the magistrates, and do not receive them according to the
pillar—

PEISTHETAERUS.
O mercy upon us, and are you there still?

COMMISSIONER.
(reappearing) I’ll ruin you! I claim ten thousand
drachmas!

PEISTHETAERUS.
I’ll overturn your verdict-urn, I will.

STATUTE-SELLER.
(reappearing) Think of that evening when you
fouled the pillar.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Ugh! seize him, somebody! Ha, you’re off there,
are you?
Let’s get away from this, and go within,
And there we’ll sacrifice the goat in peace.

CHORUS.
Unto me, the All-controlling,
All-surveying,
Now will men, at every altar,
Prayers be praying;
Me who watch the land, protecting
Fruit and flower,
Slay the myriad-swarming insects
Who the tender buds devour
In the earth and on the branches
with a never-satiate malice,
Nipping off the blossom as it widens from the chalice.
And I slay the noisome creatures
Which consume
And pollute the garden’s freshly scented bloom;
And every little biter, and every creeping thing
Perish in destruction at the onset of my wing.
Listen to the City’s notice,
specially proclaimed to-day;
Sirs, Diagoras the Melian
whosoever of you slay,
Shall receive, reward, one talent;
and another we’ll bestow
If you slay some ancient tyrant,
dead and buried long ago.
We, the Birds, will give a notice,
we proclaim with right good will,
Sirs, Philocrates, Sparrovian,
whosoever of you kill,
Shall receive, reward, one talent,
if alive you bring him, four;
Him who strings and sells the finches,
seven an obol, at his store,
Blows the thrushes out and, rudely,
to the public gaze exposes,
Shamefully entreats the blackbirds,
thrusting feathers up their noses.
Pigeons too the rascal catches,
keeps and mews them up with care,
Makes them labour as decoy-birds,
tethered underneath a snare.
Such the notice we would give you.
And we wish you all to know,
Who are keeping birds in cages,
you had better let them go.
Else the Birds will surely catch you,
and yourselves in turn employ,
Tied and tethered up securely,
other rascals to decoy.
O the happy clan of birds
Clad in feather;
Needing not a woollen vest in
Wintry weather;
Heeding not the warm far-flashing
Summer ray,
For within the leafy bosoms
Of the flowery meads I stay,
When the Chirruper in ecstasy
is shrilling forth his tune,
Maddened with the sunshine,
and the rapture of the noon.
And I winter in the caverns’
Hollow spaces,
With the happy Oreads playing; and in Spring
I crop the virgin flowers of the myrtles white and tender,
Dainties that are fashioned in the gardens of the Graces.

Now we wish to tell the Judges,
in a friendly sort of way,
All the blessings we shall give them
if we gain the prize to-day.
Ne’er were made to Alexander
lovelier promises or grander.
First, what every Judge amongst you
most of all desires to win,
Little Lauriotic owlets
shall be always flocking in.
Ye shall find them all about you,
as the dainty brood increases,
Building nests within your purses,
hatching little silver pieces.
Then as if in stately Temples
shall your happy lives be spent,
For the birds will top your mansions
with the Eagle pediment.
If you hold some petty office,
if you wish to steal and pick,
In your hands we’ll place a falcon,
very keen and small and quick.
If a dinner is in question,
crops we’ll send you for digestion.
But should you the prize deny us,
you had better all prepare,
Like the statues in the open,
little copper disks to wear;
Else whene’er abroad ye’re walking,
clad in raiment white and new,
Angry birds will wreak their vengeance,
spattering over it and you.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Dear Birds, our sacrifice is most auspicious.
But strange it is, no messenger has come
From the great wall we are building, with the news.
Hah! here runs one with true Alpheian pantings.

MESSENGER.
Where, where,—O where, where, where,—
O where, where, where,
Where, where’s our leader Peisthetaerus?

PEISTHETAERUS.
Here.

MESSENGER.
Your building’s built! The wall’s complete!

PEISTHETAERUS.
Well done.

MESSENGER.
And a most grand, magnificent work it is.
So broad, that on its top the Braggadocian
Proxenides could pass Theagenes
Each driving in his chariot, drawn by horses
As bulky as the Trojan.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Heracles!

MESSENGER.
And then its height, I measured that, is just
Six hundred feet.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Poseidon, what a height!
Who built it up to that enormous size?

MESSENGER.
The birds, none other; no Egyptian, bearing
The bricks, no mason, carpenter was there;
Their own hands wrought it, marvellous to see.
From Libya came some thirty thousand cranes
With great foundation-stones they had swallowed down;
And these the corn-crakes fashioned with their beaks.
Ten thousand storks were carrying up the bricks;
And lapwings helped, and the other water-birds,
To bring the water up into the air.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Who bare aloft the mortar for them?

MESSENGER.
Herons
In hods.

PEISTHETAERUS.
But how did they get the mortar in?

MESSENGER.
O that was most ingeniously contrived.
The geese struck down their feet, and slid them under,
Like shovels, and so heaved it on the hods.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Then is there anything that FEET can’t do!

MESSENGER.
And then the ducks, with girdles round their waists,
Carried the bricks: and up the swallows flew,
Like serving-lads, carrying behind them each
His trowel, and the mortar in their mouths.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Then why should men hire hirelings any more!
Well, well, go on; who was it finished off
The great wall’s woodwork?

MESSENGER.
Canny Pelicans,
Excellent workmen, hewing with huge beaks
Gate-timber; and the uproar as they hewed
Was like an arsenal when ships are building.
Now every gateway has its gate, fast-barred,
And watched the whole way round; and birds are pacing
Their beats, and carrying bells, and everywhere
The guards are stationed, and the beacons blaze
On every tower. But I must hurry off
And wash myself. You, manage what remains.

CHORUS.
O man, what ails you? Do you feel surprised
To hear the building has been built so soon?

PEISTHETAERUS.
By all the Gods I do; and well I may.
In very truth it seems to me like—lies.
But see! a guard, a messenger from thence
Is running towards us with a war-dance look!

GUARD.
Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!

PEISTHETAERUS.
Why, what’s up now?

GUARD.
A terrible thing has happened.
One of the Gods, of Zeus’s Gods, has just,
Giving our jackdaw sentinels the slip,
Shot through the gates and flown into the air.

PEISTHETAERUS.
A dreadful deed! A wicked scandalous deed!
Which of the Gods?

GUARD.
We know not. Wings he had,
So much we know.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Ye should have sent at once
The civic guard in hot pursuit.

GUARD.
We sent
The mounted archers, thirty thousand falcons,
All with their talons curved, in fighting trim,
Hawk, buzzard, vulture, eagle, eagle-owl.
Yea, Ether vibrates with the whizz and whirr
Of beating pinions, as they seek the God.
Ay, and he’s near methinks; he’s very near;
He’s somewhere here.

PEISTHETAERUS.
A sling, a sling, I say!
Arrows and bows! Fall in, my merrymen all!
Shoot, smite, be resolute. A sling! a sling!

CHORUS.
War is begun, inexpressive war,
War is begun twixt the Gods and me!
Look out, look out, through the cloud-wrapt air
Which erst the Darkness of Erebus bare,
Lest a God slip by, and we fail to see.
Glance eager-eyed on every side,
For close at hand the wingéd sound I hear
Of some Immortal hurtling through the Sky.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Hoi! whither away there? whither away? Stop! stop!
Stop where you are! keep quiet! stay! remain!
Who, what, whence are you? where do you come from? Quick!

IRIS.
Whence do I come? From the Olympian Gods.

PEISTHETAERUS.
Your name! What is it? Sloop or Head-dress?

IRIS.
Iris
The fleet.

PEISTHETAERUS.
The Paralus, or the Salaminian?

IRIS.
Why, what’s all this?