CIRCE Wake, Gryllus, and arise in human form.

GRYLLUS I have slept soundly, and had pleasant dreams.

CIRCE I, too, have soundly slept--Divine how long.

GRYLLUS Why, judging by the sun, some fourteen hours.

CIRCE Three thousand years

GRYLLUS That is a nap indeed.

But this is not your garden, nor your palace.

Where are we now?

CIRCE Three thousand years ago, This land was forest, and a bright pure river Ran through it to and from the Ocean stream.

Now, through a wilderness of human forms, And human dwellings, a polluted flood Rolls up and down, charged with all earthly poisons, Poisoning the air in turn.

GRYLLUS I see vast ma.s.ses Of strange unnatural things.

CIRCE Houses, and ships, And boats, and chimneys vomiting black smoke, Horses, and carriages of every form, And restless bipeds, rushing here and there For profit or for pleasure, as they phrase it.

GRYLLUS Oh, Jupiter and Bacchus! what a crowd, Flitting, like shadows without mind or purpose, Such as Ulysses saw in Erebus.

But wherefore are we here?

CIRCE There have arisen Some mighty masters of the invisible world, And these have summoned us.

GRYLLUS With what design?

CIRCE That they themselves must tell. Behold they come, Carrying a mystic table, around which They work their magic spells. Stand by, and mark.

[Three spirit-rappers appeared, carrying a table, which they placed on one side of the stage:]

1. Carefully the table place, Let our gifted brother trace A ring around the enchanted s.p.a.ce

2. Let him tow'rd the table point With his first fore-finger joint, And with mesmerised beginning Set the sentient oak-slab spinning.

3. Now it spins around, around, Sending forth a murmuring sound, By the initiate understood

As of spirits in the wood.

ALL.

Once more Circe we invoke.

CIRCE Here: not bound in ribs of oak, Nor, from wooden disk revolving, In strange sounds strange riddles solving, But in native form appearing, Plain to sight, as clear to heating.

THE THREE Thee with wonder we behold.

By thy hair of burning gold, By thy face with radiance bright, By thine eyes of beaming light, We confess thee, mighty one, For the daughter of the Sun.

On thy form we gaze appalled.

CIRCE Cryllus, loo, your summons called.

THE THREE Hira of yore thy powerful spell Doomed in swinish shape to dwell; Vet such life he reckoned then Happier than the life of men, Now, when carefully he ponders All our scientific wonders, Steam-driven myriads, all in motion, On the land and on the ocean, Going, for the sake of going, Wheresoever waves are flowing, Wheresoever winds are blowing; Converse through the sea transmitted, Swift as ever thought has flitted; All the glories of our time, Past the praise of loftiest rhyme; Will he, seeing these, indeed, Still retain his ancient creed, Ranking, in his mental plan, Life of beast o'er life of man?

CIRCE Speak, Gryllus.

GRYLLUS It is early yet to judge: But all the novelties I yet have seen Seem changes for the worse.

THE THREE If we could show him Our triumphs in succession, one by one, 'Twould surely change his judgment: and herein How might'st thou aid us, Circe!

CIRCE I will do so: And calling down, like Socrates, of yore, The clouds to aid us, they shall shadow forth, In bright succession, all that they behold, From air, on earth and sea. I wave my wand: And lo! they come, even as they came in Athens, Shining like virgins of ethereal life.

The Chorus of Clouds descended, and a dazzling array of female beauty was revealed by degrees through folds of misty gauze. They sang their first choral song:

CHORUS OF CLOUDS{1}

Clouds ever-flowing, conspicuously soaring, From loud-rolling Ocean, whose stream{2} gave us birth To heights, whence we look over torrents down-pouring To the deep quiet vales of the fruit-giving earth,-- As the broad eye of aether, unwearied in brightness, Dissolves our mist-veil in glittering rays, Our forms we reveal from its vapoury lightness, In semblance immortal, with far-seeing gaze.

1 The first stanza is pretty closely adapted from the strophe of Aristophanes. The second is only a distant imitation of the antistrophe.

2 In Homer, and all the older poets, the ocean is a river surrounding the earth, and the seas are inlets from it.

Shower-bearing Virgins, we seek not the regions Whence Pallas, the Muses, and Bacchus have fled,

But the city, where Commerce embodies her legions, And Mammon exalts his omnipotent head.

All joys of thought, feeling, and taste are before us, Wherever the beams of his favour are warm:

Though transient full oft as the veil of our chorus, Now golden with glory, now pa.s.sing in storm.

Reformers, scientific, moral, educational, political, pa.s.sed in succession, each answering a question of Gryllus. Gryllus observed, that so far from everything being better than it had been, it seemed that everything was wrong and wanted mending. The chorus sang its second song.

Seven compet.i.tive examiners entered with another table, and sat down on the opposite side of the stage to the spirit-rappers. They brought forward Hermogenes{1} as a crammed fowl to argue with Gryllus. Gryllus had the best of the argument; but the examiners adjudged the victory to Hermogenes. The chorus sang its third song.

1 See chapter xv.

Circe, at the request of the spirit-rappers, whose power was limited to the production of sound, called up several visible spirits, all ill.u.s.trious in their day, but all appearing as in the days of their early youth, 'before their renown was around them.' They were all subjected to compet.i.tive examination, and were severally p.r.o.nounced disqualified for the pursuit in which they had shone. At last came one whom Circe recommended to the examiners as a particularly promising youth. He was a candidate for military life. Every question relative to his profession he answered to the purpose. To every question not so relevant he replied that he did not know and did not care. This drew on him a reprimand. He was p.r.o.nounced disqualified, and ordered to join the rejected, who were ranged in a line along the back of the scene. A touch of Circe's wand changed them into their semblance of maturer years.

Among them were Hannibal and Oliver Cromwell; and in the foreground was the last candidate, Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Richard flourished his battle-axe over the heads of the examiners, who jumped up in great trepidation, overturned their table, tumbled over one another, and escaped as best they might in haste and terror. The heroes vanished. The chorus sang its fourth song.

CHORUS As before the pike will fly Dace and roach and such small fry; As the leaf before the gale, As the chaff beneath the flail; As before the wolf the flocks, As before the hounds the fox; As before the cat the mouse, As the rat from falling house; As the fiend before the spell Of holy water, book, and bell; As the ghost from dawning day,-- So has fled, in gaunt dismay, This septemvirate of quacks From the shadowy attacks Of Coeur-de-Lion's battle-axe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coeur-de-Lion's battle-axe. 260-221]

Could he in corporeal might, Plain to feeling as to sight, Rise again to solar light, How his arm would put to flight All the forms of Stygian night That round us rise in grim array, Darkening the meridian day: Bigotry, whose chief employ Is embittering earthly joy; Chaos, throned in pedant state, Teaching echo how to prate; And 'Ignorance, with looks profound,'

Not 'with eye that loves the ground,'

But stalking wide, with lofty crest, In science's pretentious vest.

And now, great masters of the realms of shade, To end the task which called us down from air, We shall present, in pictured show arrayed, Of this your modern world the triumphs rare,