Lines 518–627

POVERTY.
Your servants! But how will ye get any now?
I pray you the secret to tell.

CHREMYLUS.
With the silver we’ve got we can purchase a lot,

POVERTY.
But who is the man that will sell?

CHREMYLUS.
Some merchant from Thessaly coming, belike,
where most of the kidnappers dwell.
Who still, for the sake of the gain he will make,
with the slaves that we want will provide us.

POVERTY.
But first let me say, if we walk in the way
wherein ye are seeking to guide us,
There’ll be never a kidnapper left in the world.
No merchant of course (can ye doubt it?)
His life would expose to such perils as those
had he plenty of money without it.
No, no; I’m afraid you must handle the spade
and follow the plough-tail in person,
Your life will have double the toil and the trouble
it used to.

CHREMYLUS.
Thyself be thy curse on!

POVERTY.
No more on a bed will you pillow your head,
for there won’t be a bed in the land,
Nor carpets; for whom will you find at the loom,
when he’s plenty of money in hand?
Rich perfumes no more will ye sprinkle and pour
as home ye are bringing the bride,
Or apparel the fair in habiliments rare
so cunningly fashioned and dyed.
Yet of little avail is your wealth if it fail
such enjoyments as these to procure you.
Ye fools, it is I who alone a supply
of the goods which ye covet ensure you.
I sit like a Mistress, by Poverty’s lash
constraining the needy mechanic;
When I raise it, to earn his living he’ll turn,
and work in a terrible panic.

CHREMYLUS.
Why, what have you got to bestow but a lot
of burns from the bathing-room station
And a hollow-cheeked rabble of destitute hags,
and brats on the verge of starvation?
And the lice, if you please, and the gnats and the fleas
whom I can’t even count for their numbers,
Who around you all night will buzz and will bite,
and arouse you betimes from your slumbers.
Up! up! they will shrill, ’tis to hunger, but still
up! up! to your pain and privation.
For a robe but a rag, for a bed but a bag
of rushes which harbour a nation
Of bugs whose envenomed and tireless attacks
would the soundest of sleepers awaken.
And then for a carpet a sodden old mat,
which is falling to bits, must be taken.
And a jolly hard stone for a pillow you’ll own;
and, for girdle-cakes barley and wheaten,
Must leaves dry and lean of the radish or e’en
sour stalks of the mallow be eaten.
And the head of a barrel, stove in, for a chair;
and, instead of a trough, for your kneading
A stave of a vat you must borrow, and that
all broken. So great and exceeding
Are the blessings which Poverty brings in her train
on the children of men to bestow!

POVERTY.
The life you define with such skill is not mine:
’tis the life of a beggar, I trow.

CHREMYLUS.
Well, Poverty, Beggary, truly the twain
to be sisters we always declare.

POVERTY.
Aye you! who to good Thrasybulus forsooth
Dionysius the Tyrant compare!
But the life I allot to my people is not,
nor shall be, so full of distresses.
’Tis a beggar alone who has nought of his own,
nor even an obol possesses.
My poor man, ’tis true, has to scrape and to screw
and his work he must never be slack in;
There’ll be no superfluity found in his cot;
but then there will nothing be lacking.

CHREMYLUS.
Damater! a life of the Blessed you give:
for ever to toil and to slave
At Poverty’s call, and to leave after all
not even enough for a grave.

POVERTY.
You are all for your jeers and your comedy-sneers,
and you can’t be in earnest a minute
Nor observe that alike in their bodily frame
and the spirit residing within it.
My people are better than Wealth’s; for by him,
men bloated and gross are presented,
Fat rogues with big bellies and dropsical legs,
whose toes by the gout are tormented;
But mine are the lean and the wasplike and keen,
who strike at their foemen and sting them.

CHREMYLUS.
Ah, yes; to a wasplike condition, no doubt,
by the pinch of starvation you bring them.

POVERTY.
I can show you besides that Decorum abides
with those whom I visit; that mine
Are the modest and orderly folk, and that Wealth’s
are “with insolence flushed and with wine.”

CHREMYLUS.
’Tis an orderly job, then, to thieve and to rob
and to break into houses by night.

BLEPSIDEMUS.
Such modesty too! In whatever they do
they are careful to keep out of sight.

POVERTY.
Behold in the cities the Orator tribe;
when poor in their early career
How faithful and just to the popular trust,
how true to the State they appear.
When wealth at the City’s expense they have gained,
they are worsened at once by the pelf,
Intriguing the popular cause to defeat,
attacking the People itself.

CHREMYLUS.
That is perfectly true though ’tis spoken by you,
you spiteful malevolent witch!
But still you shall squall for contending that all
had better be poor than be rich.
So don’t be elate; for a terrible fate
shall your steps overtake before long.

POVERTY.
Why, I haven’t yet heard the ghost of a word
to prove my contention is wrong.
You splutter and try to flutter and fly:
but of argument never a letter.

CHREMYLUS.
Pray why do all people abhor you and shun?

POVERTY.
Because I’m for making them better.
So children, we see, from their parents will flee
who would teach them the way they should go.
So hardly we learn what is right to discern;
so few what is best for them know.

CHREMYLUS.
Then Zeus, I suppose, is mistaken, nor knows
what most for his comfort and bliss is,
Since money and pelf he acquires for himself.

BLEPSIDEMUS.
And her to the earth he dismisses.

POVERTY.
O dullards and blind! full of styes is your mind;
there are tumours titanic within it.
Zeus wealthy! Not he: he’s as poor as can be:
and this I can prove in a minute.
If Zeus be so wealthy, how came it of yore
that out of his riches abounding
He could find but a wreath of wild olive for those
who should win at the games he was founding,
By all the Hellenes in each fourth year
on Olympia’s plains to be holden?
If Zeus were as wealthy and rich as you say,
the wreath should at least have been golden.

CHREMYLUS.
It is plain, I should think, ’tis from love of the chink
that the conduct you mention arises;
The God is unwilling to lavish a doit
of the money he loves upon prizes.
The rubbish may go to the victors below;
the gold he retains in his coffers.

POVERTY.
How dare you produce such a libel on Zeus,
you couple of ignorant scoffers?
’Twere better, I’m sure, to be honest and poor,
than rich and so stingy and screwing.

CHREMYLUS.
Zeus crown you, I pray, with the wild olive spray,
and send you away to your ruin!

POVERTY.
To think that you dare to persist and declare
that Poverty does not present you
With all that is noblest and best in your lives!
Will Hecate’s judgement content you?

CHREMYLUS.
If you question her which are the better, the rich
or the poor, she will say, I opine,
Each month do the wealthy a supper provide,
to be used in my service divine,
But the poor lie in wait for a snatch at the plate,
or e’er it is placed on my shrine.
So away, nor retort with a g-r-r, you degraded
Importunate scold!
Persuade me you may, but I won’t be persuaded.

POVERTY.
O Argos, behold!

CHREMYLUS.
Nay Pauson, your messmate, to aid you invite.

POVERTY.
O woe upon woe!

CHREMYLUS.
Be off to the ravens; get out of my sight.

POVERTY.
O where shall I go?

CHREMYLUS.
Go? Go to the pillory; don’t be so slack,
Nor longer delay.

POVERTY.
Ah me, but ye’ll speedily send for me back,
Who scout me to-day!

CHREMYLUS.
When we send for you, come; not before. So
farewell!
With Wealth as my comrade ’tis better to dwell.
Get you gone, and bemoan your misfortunes alone.

BLEPSIDEMUS.
I too have a mind for an opulent life
Of revel and mirth with my children and wife,
Untroubled by Poverty’s panics.
And then as I’m passing, all shiny and bright,
From my bath to my supper, what joy and delight
My fingers to snap in disdain at the sight
Of herself and her frowsy mechanics.

CHREMYLUS.
That cursed witch, thank Heaven, has gone and left us.
But you and I will take the God at once
To spend the night inside Asclepius’ Temple.
And don’t delay one instant, lest there come
Some other hindrance to the work in hand.
Hi! boy there, Cario, fetch me out the blankets,
And bring the God himself, with due observance,
And whatsoever is prepared within.