Enter the GADFLY

MAMMON

Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding.

GADFLY

Hum, hum, hum!

From the lakes of the Alps and the cold gray scalps Of the mountains, I come!

Hum, hum, hum!

From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces
Of golden Byzantium ;

From the temples divine of old Palestine,
From Athens and Rome,

With a ha! and a hum!
I come, I come!

All inn-doors and windows

Were open to me;

I saw all that sin does,

Which lamps hardly see

That burn in the night by the curtained bedThe impudent lamps! for they blushed not red. Dinging and singing,

From slumber I rung her,

Loud as the clank of an ironmonger;
Hum, hum, hum!

Far, far, far,

With the trump of my lips and the sting at my hips,

I drove her afar!

Far, far, far,

From city to city, abandoned of pity,

A ship without needle or star;

Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast,
Seeking peace, finding war;

She is here in her car,
From afar, and afar.
Hum, hum!

I have stung her and wrung her!

The venom is working;

And if you had hung her

With canting and quirking,

She could not be deader than she will be soon;
I have driven her close to you, under the moon,
Night and day, hum, hum, ha!

I have hummed her and drummed her

From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her, Hum, hum, hum!

Enter the LEECH and the RAT

LEECH

I will suck

Blood or muck!

The disease of the state is a plethory,

Who so fit to reduce it as I?

Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny, With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny.

PURGANAX

Aroint ye, thou unprofitable worm!

(To the LEECH)

And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell,

(To the GADFLY)

To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings,

And the ox-headed Io.

SWINE (within)

Ugh, ugh, ugh!

Hail, Iona the divine!

We will be no longer Swine,

But Bulls with horns and dewlaps.

RAT

For,

You know, my lord, the Minotaur —

PURGANAX (fiercely)

Be silent! get to hell! or I will call

The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord Mammon, This is a pretty business!

[Exit the RAT.

MAMMON

I will go

And spell some scheme to make it ugly then.

Enter SWELLFOOT

She is returned!

SWELLFOOT

Taurina is in Thebes

When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell!

O Hymen! clothed in yellow jealousy
And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings
The torch of Discord with its fiery hair

[Exit.

This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens!
Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea,
The very name of wife had conjugal rights;
Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with me,
And in the arms of Adiposa oft

Her memory has received a husband's

(A loud tumult, and cries of "IONA FOREVER!

FOOT!")

No SWELL

Or fattening some few in two separate sties,
And giving them clean straw, tying some bits
Of ribbon round their legs — giving their Sows
Some tawdry lace and bits of lustre glass,
And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails
Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers
Between the ears of the old ones; and when
They are persuaded that, by the inherent virtue
Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs,
Good Lord! they'd rip each other's bellies up,
Not to say help us in destroying her.

295 Go pack, Rossetti conj.; Well, pack, Forman conj.

SWELLFOOT

This plan might be tried too. Where's General Laoctonos?

Enter LAOCTONOS

It is my royal pleasure

That you, Lord General, bring the head and body, If separate it would please me better, hither

Of Queen Iona.

LAOCTONOS

That pleasure I well knew,

And made a charge with those battalions bold,
Called, from their dress and grin, the Royal Apes,
Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square
Enclosed her, and received the first attack
Like so many rhinoceroses, and then
Retreating in good order, with bare tusks
And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,
Bore her in triumph to the public sty.

What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground
Have given the Ape-guards apples, nuts and gin,
And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,
"Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!"