University of Virginia Library

Sing, O goddess, the thunder-breath, the bearer of lightening
From the luminous son of Kronos, the ardent heralding
Of a bright child-birth,—the glow of a nuptial glory, brightening
The fiery bridal chamber of burning Semele! Sing
The double birth of Bacchus, whom, moist from the midst o' the flame,
Zeus pluckt,—the unripe fruit of a motherhood half unblown:
Father and mother both was the god, by a twofold name,
To him, for whose sweet sake a masculine womb in his own
Self-wounded body he wrought; forgetting not how, of yore,
With the pang divine of another birth, parturient, he
Forth from out of his own bright swollen forehead bore
Full-arm'd the dazzling dread of Athenè issuing free.
Bring, O Muses, to me bring bacchanal wands, and smite
The shaken cymbals shrill, and fetch me the thyrsus spear,
Famed of divine Dionysos! And forthwith unto my sight,
As I mingle your dances among, may the multiform Proteus appear,
Leaving afar by the Pharos his favourite isle, and roll'd
In changes many as be these mystical songs of mine!
For, if like an orbèd dragon his trailing from he fold,
I will sing how, under the ivied spear, in a war divine
The turbulent giants were stricken, they and their dragon hair:
And if, as a bellowing lion, he toss his billowy mane,
Ye, as I sing, shall behold young Bacchus, my boy-god fair,
In the arms of Rhea, snatching the nipple her lion cubs drain:
But, if, in the midst of his manifold metamorphose, anon
Like a fretful leopard he leap, into praise my song shall roll,
Singing how over the gorgeous Ind rode the triumphing son
Of Zeus, when the pard and the elephant pull'd at his chariot pole:
Then, if he should fashion himself to the form of a tuskèd boar,
While he fashions himself, will I fashion my song till its strain be aglow
With the loves of the son of Thyone, and how he wedded of yore
Aura, the daughter of Cybele, Aura, the beautiful foe
Of the tuskèd boars, the mother of that third Bacchus to be:
And again, what time away in a wave of the water he glides,
With divine Dionysos my song shall be plunged in the unplumb'd sea,
As when, from the Thracian's assault, he fled under the nethermost tides:
But if, into the shape of a rustling tree, at the last, he shoot,
While his borrow'd branches murmur, my song shall be heard between,
Praising Icarios, lord of the winepress red when the foot,
With the foot competing, crushes the glad grape bunches green.
Bring to me, O Mimelones, the bacchanal wands, and cover
(Brightly replacing thus this common diurnal vest)
With the fair and spotted fawn skin, fragrantly sprinkled over
By odorous drops of the sweet Maronid nectar, my breast!
Keep ye for Menelaos,—led by Homeros, and her
Whose hidden dwelling is down in the depths of the hollow main,
Eidothea,—keep ye the coarse seal's coat of briny fur,
And bring me the cymbals and buckler. Not mine be the dulcet strain
Of the double-throated fife: lest Phœbos offended be.
For I know he is vext by each vivid pipe's importunate din
Since the challenge of Marsyas; when he in scorn uphung on a tree
The flesh of that felon flay'd, and made of it a puft wine-skin,
To punish his insolent pipe, having peel'd the boaster bare,
And left his bleeding limbs of their brown hide dispossest.
But thou, O goddess, begin! begin, and first declare
The story of Kadmos old, and all his wandering quest.

On the beach of Sidon now, bull-shaped, with an upthrust horn,
Zeus from alying throat had sent forth a lovesick lowing,
Softening an ardent eyeball; while, in light bonds upborne,
Round the white limbs of a woman infant Eros was throwing
Intertwinèd hands. For to her his curvèd throat
The mariner bull bends low, down sinking a duteous knee;
And, while o'er his glossy flank the girl's form seems to float,
Bearing Europa, smoothly, silently, saileth he.
Out of the reach of the ripple, though faint with a lovely fear,
She, unmoving, is moved: so, silently, seated high
On the back of a scaly triton, as she on her swimming steer,
Thetis, and Aphroditè, and Galatèa go by.
Kyanochætes admires the cloven-footed swimmer:
Triton afar replies to the gold's insidious lowing,
From his clearly-echoing conch: and, aghast, in the dim green glimmer,
Nereus to Doris turns with a pointed finger, showing
That ravisht maiden fair, that hornèd sailor divine,
Shapes of wonder and awe; for the girl's hand holds the horn
Of her breathing bark, like a helm, as he beats breast-deep the brine,
And the girl's eyes glance o'er the glooming wave with a gaze forlorn,
Desire her pilot is: and the crafty Boreas lifts
And puffs with an amorous breath her grament's floating fold;
Over her bounteous bosom his silken sail he shifts,
And wantons there at his own wild will like a lover bold.
So on a dolphin borne when haply a Nereïd glides
To visit her liquid realms light over the lullèd sea,
At the touch of her guiding hand her seaborn steed divides
With a foamy furrow the fields that his azure pasture be.
Eros, herdsman now for the nonce, with his bow's sharp hook,
Turn'd into a pastoral goad, the mild bull's shoulder smites:
Through Poseidon's liquid fallows while thus, with the shepherd crook
Of Kypris, he the hornèd spouse of Herè excites,
The pure and austere cheek of virgin Pallas (cold maid
That never a mother knew) is flusht with a scornful shame,
Beholding her mighty father, the son of Kronos, wade
In a watery furrow, led by a woman's finger, tame.
But the midsea wave and tide give way to the ardent god;
For was it not down in the midsea deeps that the globèd blue
With the birth of Aphroditè brighten'd and greaten'd and glow'd?
And Europa leads and is led, and is captain and cargo too.