CHORUS

From the Asian shore,

And by the sacred steep of Tmolus hoar,

Light I danced with wing-like feet,

Toilless toil and labour sweet!

Away! away! whoe’er he be;

Leave our path, our temple free!

Seal up each silent lip in holy awe.

But I, obedient to thy law,

O Dionysus! chant the choral hymn to thee

Blest above all of human line,

Who, deep in mystic rites divine,

Leads his hallowed life with us,

Initiate in our Thyasus;

And, purified with holiest waters,

Goes dancing o’er the hills with Bacchus’ daughters.

And thy dark orgies hallows he,

O mighty mother, Cybele!

He his thyrsus shaking round,

All his locks with ivy crowned,

O Dionysus! boasts of thy dread train to be.

Bacchanals! away, away!

Lead your God in fleet array;

Bacchus lead, the ever young,

A God himself from Gods that sprung,

From the Phrygian mountains down

Through every wide-squared Grecian town.

Him the Theban queen of yore

’Mid Jove’s fast-flashing lightnings bore:

In her awful travail wild

Sprung from her womb the untimely child,

While smitten with the thunderblast

The sad mother breathed her last.

Instant him Saturnian Jove

Received with all a mother’s love;

In his secret thigh immured,

There with golden clasps secured,

Safe from Herè’s jealous sight;

Then, as the Fates fulfilled, to light

He gave the hornéd god, and wound

The living snakes his brows around;

Whence still the wandéd Mænads bear

Their serpent prey wreathed in their floating hair.

Put on thy ivy crown,

O Thebes, thou sacred town!

O hallowed house of dark-haired Semele!

Bloom, blossom everywhere,

With flowers and fruitage fair,

And let your frenzied steps supported be

With thyrsi from the oak

Or the green ash-tree broke:

Your spotted fawn-skins line with locks

Torn from the snowy fleecéd flocks:

Shaking his wanton wand let each advance,

And all the land shall madden with the dance.

Bromius, that his revel rout

To the mountains leads about;

To the mountains leads along,

Where awaits the female throng;

From the distaff, from the loom,

Raging with the God they come.

O ye mountains, wild and high,

Where the old Kouretæ lie:

Glens of Crete, where Jove was nurst,

In your sunless caverns first

The crested Korybantes found

The leathern drums mysterious round,

That, mingling in harmonious strife

With the sweet-breathed Phrygian fife,

In Mother Rhea’s hands they place,

Meet the Bacchic song to grace.

And the frantic Satyrs round

That ancient Goddess leap and bound:

And soon the Trieteric dances light

Began, immortal Bacchus’ chief delight.

On the mountains wild ’tis sweet

When faint with rapid dance our feet;

Our limbs on earth all careless thrown

With the sacred fawn-skins strewn,

To quaff the goat’s delicious blood,

A strange, a rich, a savage food.

Then off again the revel goes

O’er Phrygian, Lydian mountain brows;

Evoë! Evoë! leads the road,

Bacchus self the maddening God!

And flows with milk the plain, and flows with wine

Flows with the wild bees’ nectar-dews divine;

And soars, like smoke, the Syrian incense pale —