Lines 575–732

CHORUS.
O most sapient wise spectators,
hither turn attention due,
We complain of sad ill-treatment,
we’ve a bone to pick with you:
We have ever helped your city,
helped with all our might and main;
Yet you pay us no devotion,
that is why we now complain.
We who always watch around you.
For if any project seems
Ill-concocted, then we thunder,
then the rain comes down in streams.
And, remember, very lately,
how we knit our brows together,
“Thunders crashing, lightnings flashing,”
never was such awful weather;
And the Moon in haste eclipsed her,
and the Sun in anger swore
He would curl his wick within him
and give light to you no more,
Should you choose that mischief-worker,
Cleon, whom the Gods abhor,
Tanner, Slave, and Paphlagonian,
to lead out your hosts to war.
Yet you chose him! yet you chose him!
For they say that Folly grows
Best and finest in this city,
but the gracious Gods dispose
Always all things for the better,
causing errors to succeed:
And how this sad job may profit,
surely he who runs may read.
Let the Cormorant be convicted,
in command, of bribes and theft,
Let us have him gagged and muzzled,
in the pillory chained and left,
Then again, in ancient fashion,
all that ye have erred of late,
Will turn out your own advantage,
and a blessing to the State.

“Phoebus, my king, come to me still.”
Thou who holdest the Cynthian hill,
The lofty peak of the Delian isle;—
And Thou, his sister, to whom each day
Lydian maidens devoutly pray
In Thy stately gilded Ephesian pile;—
And Athene, our Lady, the queen of us all,
With the Aegis of God, O come to my call;—
And Thou whose dancing torches of pine
Flicker, Parnassian glades along,
Dionysus, Star of Thy Maenad throng,
Come, Reveller most divine!

We, when we had finished packing,
and prepared our journey down,
Met the Lady Moon, who charged us
with a message for your town.
First, All hail to noble Athens,
and her faithful true Allies;
Then, she said, your shameful conduct
made her angry passions rise,
Treating her so ill who always
aids you, not in words, but clearly;
Saves you, first of all, in torchlight
every month a drachma nearly,
So that each one says, if business
calls him out from home by night,
“Buy no link, my boy, this evening,
for the Moon will lend her light.”
Other blessings too she sends you,
yet you will not mark your days
As she bids you, but confuse them,
jumbling them all sorts of ways,
And, she says, the Gods in chorus
shower reproaches on her head,
When in bitter disappointment
they go supperless to bed,
Not obtaining festal banquets
duly on the festal day;
Ye are badgering in the law-courts
when ye should arise and slay!
And full oft when we celestials
some strict fast are duly keeping,
For the fate of mighty Memnon,
or divine Sarpedon weeping,
Then you feast and pour libations:
and Hyperbolus of late
Lost the crown he wore so proudly
as Recorder of the Gate,
Through the wrath of us immortals:
so perchance he’ll rather know
Always all his days in future
by the Lady Moon to go.

SOCRATES.
Never by Chaos, Air, and Respiration,
Never, no never have I seen a clown
So helpless, and forgetful, and absurd!
Why if he learns a quirk or two he clean
Forgets them ere he has learnt them: all the same,
I’ll call him out of doors here to the light,
Take up your bed, Strepsiades, and come!

STREPSIADES.
By Zeus, I can’t: the bugs make such resistance.

SOCRATES.
Make haste. There, throw it down, and listen.

STREPSIADES.
Well!

SOCRATES.
Attend to me: what shall I teach you first
That you’ve not learnt before? Which will you have,
Measures or rhythms or the right use of words?

STREPSIADES.
Oh! measures to be sure: for very lately
A grocer swindled me of full three pints.

SOCRATES.
I don’t mean that: but which do you like the best
Of all the measures; six feet, or eight feet?

STREPSIADES.
Well, I like nothing better than the yard.

SOCRATES.
Fool! don’t talk nonsense,

STREPSIADES.
What will you bet me now
That two yards don’t exactly make six feet?

SOCRATES.
Consume you! what an ignorant clown you are!
Still, perhaps you can learn tunes more easily.

STREPSIADES.
But will tunes help me to repair my fortunes?

SOCRATES.
They’ll help you to behave in company:
If you can tell which kind of tune is best
For the sword-dance, and which for finger music.

STREPSIADES.
For fingers! aye, but I know that.

SOCRATES.
Say on, then.

STREPSIADES.
What is it but this finger? though before,
Ere this was grown, I used to play with that.

SOCRATES.
Insufferable dolt!

STREPSIADES.
Well but, you goose,
I don’t want to learn this.

SOCRATES.
What do you want then?

STREPSIADES.
Teach me the Logic! teach me the unjust Logic!

SOCRATES.
But you must learn some other matters first
As, what are males among the quadrupeds.

STREPSIADES.
I should be mad indeed not to know that.
The Ram, the Bull, the Goat, the Dog, the Fowl.

SOCRATES.
Ah! there you are! there’s a mistake at once!
You call the male and female fowl the same.

STREPSIADES.
How! tell me how.

SOCRATES.
Why fowl and fowl of course.

STREPSIADES.
That’s true though! what then shall I say in future?

SOCRATES.
Call one a fowless and the other a fowl.

STREPSIADES.
A fowless? Good! Bravo! Bravo! by Air.
Now for that one bright piece of information
I’ll give you a barley bumper in your trough.

SOCRATES.
Look there, a fresh mistake: you called it trough,
Masculine, when it’s feminine.

STREPSIADES.
How, pray?
How did I make it masculine?

SOCRATES.
Why “trough,”
Just like “Cleonymus.”

STREPSIADES.
I don’t quite catch it.

SOCRATES.
Why “trough, Cleonymus,” both masculine.

STREPSIADES.
Ah, but Cleonymus has got no trough,
His bread is kneaded in a rounded mortar:
Still, what must I say in future?

SOCRATES.
What! why call it
A “troughess,” female, just as one says “an actress.”

STREPSIADES.
A “troughess,” female?

SOCRATES.
That’s the way to call it.

STREPSIADES.
O “troughess” then and Miss Cleonymus.

SOCRATES.
Still you must learn some more about these names
Which are the names of men and which of women.

STREPSIADES.
Oh, I know which are women.

SOCRATES.
Well, repeat some.

STREPSIADES.
Demetria, Cleitagora, Philinna.

SOCRATES.
Now tell me some men’s names.

STREPSIADES.
O yes, ten thousand,
Philon, Melesias, Amynias.

SOCRATES.
Hold! I said men’s names: these are women’s names.

STREPSIADES.
No, no, they’re men’s.

SOCRATES.
They are not men’s, for how
Would you address Amynias if you met him?

STREPSIADES.
How? somehow thus: “Here, here, Amynia!”

SOCRATES.
Amynia! a woman’s name, you see.

STREPSIADES.
And rightly too; a sneak who shirks all service!
But all know this: let’s pass to something else.

SOCRATES.
Well, then, you get into the bed.

STREPSIADES.
And then?

SOCRATES.
Excogitate about your own affairs.

STREPSIADES.
Not there: I do beseech, not there: at least
Let me excogitate on the bare ground.

SOCRATES.
There is no way but this.

STREPSIADES.
O luckless me!
How I shall suffer from the bugs to-day.

SOCRATES.
Now then survey in every way,
with airy judgement sharp and quick:
Wrapping thoughts around you thick:
And if so be in one you stick,
Never stop to toil and bother,
Lightly, lightly, lightly leap,
To another, to another;
Far away be balmy sleep.

STREPSIADES.
Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!

SOCRATES.
What’s the matter? where’s the pain?

STREPSIADES.
Friends! I’m dying. From the bed
Out creep bugbears scantly fed,
And my ribs they bite in twain,
And my life-blood out they suck,
And my manhood off they pluck,
And my loins they dig and drain,
And I’m dying, once again.

CHORUS.
O take not the smart so deeply to heart.

STREPSIADES.
Why, what can I do?
Vanished my skin so ruddy of hue,
Vanished my life-blood, vanished my shoe,
Vanished my purse, and what is still worse
As I hummed an old tune till my watch should be past,
I had very near vanished myself at the last.

SOCRATES.
Hallo there, are you pondering?

STREPSIADES.
Eh! what? I?

SOCRATES.
Yes to be sure.
And what have your ponderings come to?

STREPSIADES.
Whether these bugs will leave a bit of me.

SOCRATES.
Consume you, wretch!

STREPSIADES.
Faith, I’m consumed already.

SOCRATES.
Come, come, don’t flinch: pull up the clothes again:
Search out and catch some very subtle dodge
To fleece your creditors.

STREPSIADES.
O me, how can I
Fleece any one with all these fleeces on me?
[Puts his head under the clothes.]

SOCRATES.
Come, let me peep a moment what he’s doing.
Hey! he’s asleep!

STREPSIADES.
No, no! no fear of that!

SOCRATES.
Caught anything?