Lines 223–402

SOCRATES.
Mortal! why call’st thou me?

STREPSIADES.
O, first of all, please tell me what you are doing.

SOCRATES.
I walk on air, and contemplate the Sun.

STREPSIADES.
O then from a basket you contemn the Gods,
And not from the earth, at any rate?

SOCRATES.
Most true.
I could not have searched out celestial matters
Without suspending judgement, and infusing
My subtle spirit with the kindred air.
If from the ground I were to seek these things,
I could not find: so surely doth the earth
Draw to herself the essence of our thought.
The same too is the case with water-cress.

STREPSIADES.
Hillo! what’s that?
Thought draws the essence into water-cress?
Come down, sweet Socrates, more near my level,
And teach the lessons which I come to learn.

SOCRATES.
And wherefore art thou come?

STREPSIADES.
To learn to speak.
For owing to my horrid debts and duns,
My goods are seized, I’m robbed, and mobbed, and plundered.

SOCRATES.
How did you get involved with your eyes open?

STREPSIADES.
A galloping consumption seized my money.
Come now: do let me learn the unjust Logic
That can shirk debts: now do just let me learn it.
Name your own price, by all the Gods I’ll pay it.

SOCRATES.
The Gods! why you must know the Gods with us
Don’t pass for current coin.

STREPSIADES.
Eh? what do you use then?
Have you got iron, as the Byzantines have?

SOCRATES.
Come, would you like to learn celestial matters.
How their truth stands?

STREPSIADES.
Yes, if there’s any truth.

SOCRATES.
And to hold intercourse with yon bright Clouds,
Our virgin Goddesses?

STREPSIADES.
Yes, that I should.

SOCRATES.
Then sit you down upon that sacred bed.

STREPSIADES.
Well, I am sitting.

SOCRATES.
Here then, take this chaplet.

STREPSIADES.
Chaplet? why? why? now, never, Socrates:
Don’t sacrifice poor me, like Athamas.

SOCRATES.
Fear not: our entrance-services require
All to do this.

STREPSIADES.
But what am I to gain?

SOCRATES.
You’ll be the flower of talkers, prattlers, gossips:
Only keep quiet.

STREPSIADES.
Zeus! your words come true!
I shall be flour indeed with all this peppering.

SOCRATES.
Old man sit you still, and attend to my will,
and hearken in peace to my prayer,
O Master and King, holding earth in your swing,
O measureless infinite Air;
And thou glowing Ether, and Clouds who enwreathe her
with thunder, and lightning, and storms,
Arise ye and shine, bright Ladies Divine,
to your student in bodily forms.

STREPSIADES.
No, but stay, no, but stay, just one moment I pray,
while my cloak round my temples I wrap.
To think that I’ve come, stupid fool, from my home,
with never a waterproof cap!

SOCRATES.
Come forth, come forth, dread Clouds, and to earth
your glorious majesty show;
Whether lightly ye rest on the time-honoured crest
of Olympus environed in snow,
Or tread the soft dance ’mid the stately expanse
of Ocean, the nymphs to beguile,
Or stoop to enfold with your pitchers of gold,
the mystical waves of the Nile,
Or around the white foam of Maeotis ye roam,
or Mimas all wintry and bare,
O hear while we pray, and turn not away
from the rites which your servants prepare,

CHORUS.
Clouds of all hue,
Rise we aloft with our garments of dew.
Come from old Ocean’s unchangeable bed,
Come, till the mountain’s green summits we tread,
Come to the peaks with their landscapes untold,
Gaze on the Earth with her harvests of gold,
Gaze on the rivers in majesty streaming,
Gaze on the lordly, invincible Sea,
Come, for the Eye of the Ether is beaming,
Come, for all Nature is flashing and free.
Let us shake off this close-clinging dew
From our members eternally new,
And sail upwards the wide world to view.
Come away! Come away!

SOCRATES.
O Goddesses mine, great Clouds and divine,
ye have heeded and answered my prayer.
Heard ye their sound, and the thunder around,
as it thrilled through the tremulous air?

STREPSIADES.
Yes, by Zeus, and I shake, and I’m all of a quake,
and I fear I must sound a reply,
Their thunders have made my soul so afraid,
and those terrible voices so nigh:
So if lawful or not, I must run to a pot,
by Zeus, if I stop I shall die.

SOCRATES.
Don’t act in our schools like those Comedy-fools
with their scurrilous scandalous ways.
Deep silence be thine: while this Cluster divine
their soul-stirring melody raise.

CHORUS.
Come then with me,
Daughters of Mist, to the land of the free.
Come to the people whom Pallas hath blest,
Come to the soil where the Mysteries rest;
Come, where the glorified Temple invites
The pure to partake of its mystical rites:
Holy the gifts that are brought to the Gods,
Shrines with festoons and with garlands are crowned,
Pilgrims resort to the sacred abodes,
Gorgeous the festivals all the year round.
And the Bromian rejoicings in Spring,
When the flutes with their deep music ring,
And the sweetly-toned Choruses sing
Come away! Come away!

STREPSIADES.
O Socrates pray, by all the Gods, say,
for I earnestly long to be told,
Who are these that recite with such grandeur and might?
are they glorified mortals of old?

SOCRATES.
No mortals are there, but Clouds of the Air,
great Gods who the indolent fill:
These grant us discourse, and logical force,
and the art of persuasion instil,
And periphrasis strange, and a power to arrange,
and a marvellous judgement and skill.

STREPSIADES.
So then when I heard their omnipotent word,
my spirit felt all of a flutter,
And it yearns to begin subtle cobwebs to spin
and about metaphysics to stutter,
And together to glue an idea or two,
and battle away in replies:
So if it’s not wrong, I earnestly long
to behold them myself with my eyes.

SOCRATES.
Look up in the air, towards Parnes out there,
for I see they will pitch before long
These regions about.

STREPSIADES.
Where? point me them out.

SOCRATES.
They are drifting, an infinite throng,
And their long shadows quake over valley and brake.

STREPSIADES.
Why, whatever’s the matter to-day?
I can’t see, I declare.

SOCRATES.
By the Entrance; look there!

STREPSIADES.
Ah, I just got a glimpse, by the way.

SOCRATES.
There, now you must see how resplendent they be,
or your eyes must be pumpkins, I vow.

STREPSIADES.
Ah! I see them proceed; I should think so indeed:
great powers! they fill everything now.

SOCRATES.
So then till this day that celestials were they,
you never imagined or knew?

STREPSIADES.
Why, no, on my word, for I always had heard
they were nothing but vapour and dew.

SOCRATES.
O, then I declare, you can’t be aware
that ’tis these who the sophists protect,
Prophets sent beyond sea, quacks of every degree,
fops signet-and-jewel-bedecked,
Astrological knaves, and fools who their staves
of dithyrambs proudly rehearse—
’Tis the Clouds who all these support at their ease,
because they exalt them in verse.

STREPSIADES.
’Tis for this then they write of “the on-rushin’ might
o’ the light-stappin’ rain-drappin’ Cloud,”
And the “thousand black curls whilk the Tempest-lord whirls,”
and the “thunder-blast stormy an’ loud,”
And “birds o’ the sky floatin’ upwards on high,”
and “air-water leddies” which “droon
Wi’ their saft falling dew the gran’ Ether sae blue,”
and then in return they gulp doon
Huge gobbets o’ fishes an’ bountifu’ dishes
o’ mavises prime in their season.

SOCRATES.
And is it not right such praise to requite?

STREPSIADES.
Ah, but tell me then what is the reason
That if, as you say, they are Clouds, they to-day
as women appear to our view?
For the ones in the air are not women, I swear.

SOCRATES.
Why, what do they seem then to you?

STREPSIADES.
I can’t say very well, but they straggle and swell
like fleeces spread out in the air;
Not like women they flit, no, by Zeus, not a bit,
but these have got noses to wear,

SOCRATES.
Well, now then, attend to this question, my friend.
Look sharp, and propound it to me.
Didst thou never espy a Cloud in the sky,
which a centaur or leopard might be,
Or a wolf, or a cow?

STREPSIADES.
Very often, I vow:
and show me the cause, I entreat.

SOCRATES.
Why, I tell you that these become just what they please,
and whenever they happen to meet
One shaggy and wild, like the tangle-haired child
of old Xenophantes, their rule
Is at once to appear like Centaurs, to jeer
the ridiculous look of the fool.

STREPSIADES.
What then do they do if Simon they view,
that fraudulent harpy to shame?

SOCRATES.
Why, his nature to show to us mortals below,
a wolfish appearance they frame.

STREPSIADES.
O, they then I ween having yesterday seen
Cleonymus quaking with fear,
(Him who threw off his shield—as he fled from the field),
metamorphosed themselves into deer.

SOCRATES.
Yes, and now they espy soft Cleisthenes nigh,
and therefore as women appear.

STREPSIADES.
O then without fail, All hail! and All hail!
my welcome receive; and reply
With your voices so fine, so grand and divine,
majestical Queens of the Sky!

CHORUS.
Our welcome to thee, old man, who wouldst see
the marvels that science can show:
And thou, the high-priest of this subtlety feast,
say what would you have us bestow?
Since there is not a sage for whom we’d engage
our wonders more freely to do,
Except, it may be, for Prodicus; he
for his knowledge may claim them, but you,
For that sideways you throw your eyes as you go,
and are all affectation and fuss;
No shoes will you wear, but assume the grand air
on the strength of your dealings with us.

STREPSIADES.
O Earth! what a sound, how august and profound!
it fills me with wonder and awe.

SOCRATES.
These, these then alone, for true Deities own,
the rest are all Godships of straw.

STREPSIADES.
Let Zeus be left out: He’s a God beyond doubt:
come, that you can scarcely deny.

SOCRATES.
Zeus, indeed! there’s no Zeus: don’t you be so obtuse.

STREPSIADES.
No Zeus up aloft in the sky!
Then, you first must explain, who it is sends the rain;
or I really must think you are wrong.

SOCRATES.
Well then, be it known, these send it alone:
I can prove it by arguments strong.
Was there ever a shower seen to fall in an hour
when the sky was all cloudless and blue?
Yet on a fine day, when the Clouds are away,
he might send one, according to you.

STREPSIADES.
Well, it must be confessed, that chimes in with the rest:
your words I am forced to believe.
Yet before, I had dreamed that the rain-water streamed
from Zeus and his chamber-pot sieve.
But whence then, my friend, does the thunder descend?
that does make me quake with affright!

SOCRATES.
Why ’tis they, I declare, as they roll through the air.

STREPSIADES.
What the Clouds? did I hear you aright?

SOCRATES.
Ay: for when to the brim filled with water they swim,
by Necessity carried along,
They are hung up on high in the vault of the sky,
and so by Necessity strong
In the midst of their course, they clash with great force,
and thunder away without end.

STREPSIADES.
But is it not He who compels this to be?
does not Zeus this Necessity send?

SOCRATES.
No Zeus have we there, but a Vortex of air.

STREPSIADES.
What! Vortex? that’s something, I own.
I knew not before, that Zeus was no more,
but Vortex was placed on his throne!
But I have not yet heard to what cause you referred
the thunder’s majestical roar.

SOCRATES.
Yes, ’tis they, when on high full of water they fly,
and then, as I told you before,
By Compression impelled, as they clash, are compelled
a terrible clatter to make.

STREPSIADES.
Come, how can that be? I really don’t see.
Yourself as my proof I will take.

SOCRATES.
Have you never then eat the broth-puddings you get
when the Panathenaea comes round,
And felt with what might your bowels all night
in turbulent tumult resound?

STREPSIADES.
By Apollo, ’tis true, there’s a mighty to-do,
and my belly keeps rumbling about;
And the puddings begin to clatter within
and kick up a wonderful rout:
Quite gently at first, papapax, papapax,
but soon pappapappax away,
Till at last, I’ll be bound, I can thunder as loud,
papapappappapappax, as They.

SOCRATES.
Shalt thou then a sound so loud and profound
from thy belly diminutive send,
And shall not the high and the infinite Sky
go thundering on without end?
For both, you will find, on an impulse of wind
and similar causes depend.

STREPSIADES.
Well, but tell me from Whom comes the bolt through
the gloom, with its awful and terrible flashes;
And wherever it turns, some it singes and burns,
and some it reduces to ashes!
For this ’tis quite plain, let who will send the rain,
that Zeus against perjurers dashes.

SOCRATES.
And how, you old fool of a dark-ages school,
and an antediluvian wit,
If the perjured they strike, and not all men alike,
have they never Cleonymus hit?
Then of Simon again, and Theorus explain:
known perjurers, yet they escape.
But he smites his own shrine with his arrows divine,
and “Sunium, Attica’s cape,”
And the ancient gnarled oaks: now what prompted
those strokes? They never forswore I should say.