Page:Acharnians and two other plays (1909).djvu/191

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What are you laughing at? Peis. At your pen feathers:

I'll tell ye exactly now, the thing you're like;

You're just the perfect image of a Goose,

Drawn with a pen in a writing master's flourish. Eu. And you're like a plucked Blackbird to a tittle. Peis. Well then, according to the line in Æschylus,

"It's our own fault, the feathers are our own." Eu. Come, what's to be done. Hoo. First, we must choose a name,

Some grand sonorous name, for our new city:

Then we must sacrifice. Eu. I think so too, Peis. Let's see—let's think of a name—what shall it be?

What say ye, to the Lacedæmonian name?

Sparta sounds well—suppose we call it Sparta. Eu. Sparta! What Sparto? Rushes!—no, not I,

I'd not put up with Sparto for a mattress,

Much less for a city—we're not come to that. Peis. Come then, what name shall it be? Eu. Something appropriate,

Something that sounds majestic, striking and grand,

Alluding to the clouds and the upper regions. Peis. What think ye of Clouds and Cuckoos? Cuckoo-cloudlands

Or Nephelococcugia? Hoo. That will do;

A truly noble and sonorous name! Eu. I wonder, if that Nephelococcugia,

Is the same place I've heard of: people tell me,

That all Theagenes's rich possessions

Lie there; and Æschines's whole estate. Peis. Yes! and a better country it is by far,