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 Æther, 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 passing in storm. Reformers, scientific, moral, educational, political, passed 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 competitive 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.