CHORUS Have lost it, have lost it, for me! But now thou art come, by good Fortune’s decree, Our Saviour to be, And under thy charge, whatsoever befall, I will place my own self, and my nestlings, and all. Now therefore do you tell us what we must do; since life is not worth our retaining, Unless we be Lords of the world as before, our ancient dominion regaining. Then first I propose that the Air ye enclose, and the space twixt the Earth and the sky, Encircling it all with a brick-builded wall, like Babylon’s, solid and high; And there you must place the abode of your race, and make them one State, and one nation. O Porphyrion! O Cebriones! how stupendous the fortification! When the wall is complete, send a messenger fleet, the empire from Zeus to reclaim. And if he deny, or be slow to comply, nor retreat in confusion and shame, Proclaim ye against him a Holy War, and announce that no longer below, On their lawless amours through these regions of yours, will the Gods be permitted to go. No more through the air, (to their Alopes fair, their Alcménas, their Semeles wending) May they post in hot love, as of old, from above, for if ever you catch them descending, You will clap on their dissolute persons a seal, their evil designs to prevent!
PEISTHETAERUS And then let another ambassador-bird to men with this message be sent, That the Birds being Sovereigns, to them must be paid all honour and worship divine, And the Gods for the future to them be postponed. Now therefore assort and combine Each God with a bird, whichever will best with his nature and attributes suit; If to Queen Aphrodite a victim ye slay, first sacrifice grain to the coot; If a sheep to Poseidon ye slay, to the duck let wheat as a victim be brought; And a big honey-cake for the cormorant make, if ye offer to Heracles aught. Bring a ram for King Zeus! But ye first must produce for our Kinglet, the gold-crested wren, A masculine midge, full formed and entire, to be sacrificed duly by men.
EUELPIDES I am tickled and pleased with the sacrificed midge. Now thunder away, great Zan!
CHORUS But men, will they take us for Gods, and not daws,—do ye really believe that they can— If they see us on wings flying idly about?
PEISTHETAERUS Don’t say such ridiculous things!
PEISTHETAERUS Why Hermes, and lots of the deities too, go flying about upon wings. There is Victory, bold on her pinions of gold; and then, by the Powers, there is Love; And Iris, says Homer, shoots straight through the skies, with the ease of a terrified dove. And the thunderbolt flies upon wings, I surmise: what if Zeus upon us let it fall? But suppose that mankind, being stupid and blind, should account you as nothing at all, And still in the Gods of Olympus believe—why then, like a cloud, shall a swarm Of sparrows and rooks settle down on their stooks, and devour all the seed in the farm. Demeter may fill them with grain, if she will, when hungry and pinched they entreat her.
PEISTHETAERUS O no, for by Zeus, she will make some excuse; that is always the way with Demeter. And truly the ravens shall pluck out the eyes of the oxen that work in the plough, Of the flocks and the herds, as a proof that the Birds are the Masters and Potentates now. Apollo the leech, if his aid they beseech, may cure them; but then they must pay! Nay but hold, nay but hold, nor begin till I’ve sold my two little oxen I pray. But when once to esteem you as God, and as Life, and as Cronos and Earth they’ve begun, And as noble Poseidon, what joys shall be theirs!
CHORUS Will you kindly inform me of one? The delicate tendrils and bloom of the vine no more shall the locusts molest, One gallant brigade of the kestrels and owls shall rid them at once of the pest. No more shall the mite and the gall-making blight the fruit of the fig-tree devour; Of thrushes one troop on their armies shall swoop, and clear them all off in an hour.
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