University of Virginia Library

BOOK V.

“Hail, mighty One! Hail, great Silenus, hail!
Look up, or thou wilt wear the earth to holes
With that hard wistful gaze. Behold the world
In glorious sunshine. Wherefore idly fix
Thy blank regards on nothing? Overhead
The very eagles fluttering for joy
Wing thro' the radiance upward lost in light!”
Thus Dionysus. For the God, to heal
His follower, now prostrate in despair,
Had come with nymphs and satyrs, leaping fauns,
Maenades, wild-haired and rosy-cheeked;
Flecked panthers snarling; serpents lithe and strong
That swathed him grimly, till his fondling hands
Stroked the bright scaling of their golden throats;
Then up in either hand he held them, pleased
To watch their forms disport in vacancy.
At timely glance the cymbals clashed as one,
Shrill shrieked the oaten pipes, bellowed the mouths
Of ramhorns blown by satyrs stout of breath;
While others shouted till the deafening din
Shattered in janglings harsh the outraged air.
“O Dionysus, wherefore thus disturb
This torpor that abates my wretchedness?
The torture slept awhile; why wake afresh
Feelings that hover over memory;
Why mock me, laying bare the cruel past?”
Then madly ramped the God-directed dance,
Where ruddy bodies, circling shapes of white,
Sped round so fast, so swiftly glanced their feet,
That ruddy figures turned on gleaming limbs;
And whirled on hairy legs the gleaming shapes,
While tangled raiment fluttering, intermixed
With floating hair, bright-hued, and many a spear,
Vine-clad, and harmless with fir-cone atop.
By glimpses seen, sliding in glittering curves,
Enamelled serpents mutely third the rout
Where growled the leopards to the panthers' snarl,
Or mumbled, over-rolled, and kicked at will.
Long after Dionysus and his rout
Had vanished, and the airy echoes ceased
Of distant laugh and thrilling cymbal-clash;
When noon, and brooding silence lay like thought
On the green ocean of the woods afar,
Silenus still was standing, cup in hand,
Gazing, or as in gaze, on its device.
He had beheld the baby arms outstretched
To reach the dancing grapes a teasing nymph
Dangled in nearness never to be touched;
And this recalled a tale his Syrinx told:
How when a babe, fresh from her mother's arms,
She first stepped forth and walked. Lying one day
Within her father's orchard, on the grass,
Babbling to one drooped apple overhead,
Her mother noted how she fain would pull
The mellow prize, and plucked it from the bough;
Then, placing Syrinx on her little feet
Against the tree, went off a pace or two,
Holding the bright temptation nigh her reach.
To seize it in her eager hands the babe
Unconsciously moved forward step by step
After the wondering mother; who, enrapt,
Snatched up the child and kissed her out of breath.
Thereafter nestling in the flowers a faun
Came trotting where she lay, and offered fruit;
Which she, remembering Mother's hest, refused.
Whereat the wilful savage raging vowed
That eat she should, or he would ope her mouth
And force the fruitage down. She turned and fled,
The faun pursuing, to a rapid stream
Wherein she leaped. He, shrieking on the brink,
Stood pelting her with berries as she swam
And landed lightly on the other side.
Well he remembered how afresh each day
Her brightened countenance gave, mirror-like,
Clearly each varying passion he disclosed;
And how she stored his sayings as the voice
Of Fate. How, by her graces overcome,
He would forget all beauty of the world
But hers; entranced, would hold her in his arms,
Smoothing her shapely form, from laughing throat
Down to her agile feet, and lingering long
On each bewitching beauty, tho' the next
Enticed with yet more captivating charm:
But this enjoyed, the last forsaken seemed
To tempt return with sweetness multiplied.