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| CHREMYLUS:—As matters now stand (who will dare contradict it?) the life of us men is compos’d | |
| Of a system where folly, absurdity, madness, ay, raving downright is disclosed; | |
| Since, how many a knave we see revel in wealth—the rich heap of his ill-gotten store— | |
| And how many a good man, by fortune unblest, with thee begging bread at the door! (Turns to Poverty.) | |
| I say, then, there is but one thing to be done, and if we succeed, what a prize | 5 |
| Will we bring to mankind! That thing it will be—to give Plutus the use of his eyes. | |
| POVERTY:—A pest on your prate, and palavering stuff! back! begone with ye, blockheads, to school! | |
| You pair of old dotards, you drivelling comrades in trifling and playing the fool! | |
| If the plan ye propose be accomplish’d at last nothing worse could mankind e’er befall, | |
| Than that Plutus should have the full use of his eyes, and bestow himself equal on all! | 10 |
| See you not, that at once, to all arts there would be, to each craft that you reckon, an end? | |
| If these were exploded (so much to your joy), say who then should there be, who would lend | |
| To the forge, to the hammer, the adze or the loom—to the rule or the mallet—his hand? | |
| Not a soul! The mechanic, the carpenter, shipwright—would all be expelled from the land. | |
| Where would tailor, or cobbler, or dyer of leather, or bricklay’r, or tanner be found? | 15 |
| Who would e’er condescend in this golden vacation, to till, for his bread’s sake, the ground? | |
| BLEPSIDEMUS:—Hold, hold, jade! Whatever essentials of life in your catalogue’s column you string, | |
| Our servants, of course, shall provide us. | |
| POVERTY:—Your servants? and whence do you think they shall spring? | |
| BLEPSIDEMUS:—We shall buy them with cash— | 20 |
| POVERTY:—But with cash all the world as well as yourself is supplied! | |
| Who will care about selling? | |
| BLEPSIDEMUS:—Some dealer, no doubt, coming down from the Thessaly side, | |
| (A rare kidnapping nest) who may wish to secure a good bargain to profit the trade. | |
| POVERTY (impatiently):—You will not understand! In the lots of mankind when this grand revolution is made | 25 |
| ’Twill at once put an end to all wants—and of course then, the kidnapper’s business will cease: | |
| For who will court danger, and hazard his life, when, grown rich, he may live at his ease? | |
| Thus each for himself will be forced to turn plowman, to dig and to delve and to sweat; | |
| Wearing out an existence more grievous by far than he ever experienced yet. | |
| CHREMYLUS:—Curses on you! | 30 |
| POVERTY:—You’ll not have a bed to lie down on—no goods of the sort will be seen! | |
| Not a carpet to tread on—for who, pray, will weave one, when well stock’d his coffers have been? | |
| Farewell to your essences, perfumes, pastilles! When you lead to the altar your bride | |
| Farewell to your roseate veil’s drooping folds, the bright hues of its glittering pride! | |
| Yet forsooth “to be rich”—say what is it, without all these gew-gaws to swell the detail? | 35 |
| Now with me, every item that wish can suggest springs abundant and never can fail; | |
| For who, but myself, urges on to his toil, like a mistress, and drives the mechanic? | |
| If he flags, I but show him my face at the door, and he hies to his work in a panic! | |
| CHREMYLUS:—Pshaw! What good can you bring but sores, blisters and blains, on the wretch as he shivering goes | |
| From the baths’ genial clime driv’n forth to the cold, at the certain expense of his toes? | 40 |
| What, but poor little urchins, whose stomachs are craving, and little old beldames in shoals; | |
| And lice by the thousand, mosquitoes and flies? (I can’t count you the cloud as it rolls!) | |
| Which keep humming and buzzing about one, a language denying the respite of sleep, | |
| In a strain thus consoling—“Poor starveling, awake, tho to hunger!”—yet up you must leap! | |
| Add to this, that you treat us with rags to our backs and a bundle of straw for a bed | 45 |
| (Woe betide the poor wretch on whose carcass the bugs of that ravenous pallet have fed!) | |
| For a carpet, a rotten old mat—for a pillow, a great stone picked out of the street— | |
| And for porridge, or bread, a mere leaf of radish, or stem of a mallow, to eat. | |
| The head that remains of some wreck of a pitcher, by way of a seat you provide; | |
| For the trough we make use of in kneading, we’re driven to shift with a wine barrel’s side,— | 50 |
| And this, too, all broken and split:—in a word, your magnificent gifts to conclude, | |
| (Ironically) To mankind you indeed are a blessed dispenser of mighty and manifold good!… | |
| On my word, dame, your fav’rites are happily off, after striving and toiling to save, | |
| If at last they are able to levy enough to procure them a cheque to the grave! | |
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