When we come back, we’ll counsel what were best.

DIONYSUS

Even as you will: I am here at your command.

PENTHEUS

So let us on; I must go forth in arms,

Or follow the advice thou givest me.

DIONYSUS

Women! this man is in our net; he goes

To find his just doom ’mid the Bacchanals.

Dionysus, to thy work! thou’rt not far off;

Vengeance is ours. Bereave him first of sense:

Yet be his frenzy slight. In his right mind

He never had put on a woman’s dress;

But now, thus shaken in his mind, hell wear it.

A laughing-stock I’ll make him to all Thebes,

Led in a woman’s dress through the wide city.

For those fierce threats in which he was so great.

But I must go, and Pentheus — in the garb

Which wearing, even by his own mother’s hand

Slain, he goes down to Hades. Know he must

Dionysus, son of Jove, among the gods

Mightiest, yet mildest to the sons of men.

CHORUS

O when, through the long night,

With fleet foot glancing white,

Shall I go dancing in my revelry,

My neck cast back, and bare

Unto the dewy air,

Like sportive fawn in the green meadow’s glee?

Lo, in her fear she springs

Over th’ encircling rings,

Over the well-woven nets far off and fast;

While swift along her track

The huntsman cheers his pack,

With panting toil, and fiery storm-wind haste.

Where down the river-bank spreads the wide meadow

Rejoices she in the untrod solitude.

Couches at length beneath the silent shadow

Of the old hospitable wood.

What is wisest? what is fairest,

Of god’s boons to man the rarest?

With the conscious conquering hand

Above the foeman’s head to stand.

What is fairest still is dearest.

Slow come, but come at length,

In their majestic strength

Faithful and true, the avenging deities:

And chastening human folly,

And the mad pride unholy,

Of those who to the gods bow not their knees.

For hidden still and mute,

As glides their printless foot,

The impious on their winding path they hound

For it is ill to know,

And it is ill to do,

Beyond the law’s inexorable bound.

’Tis but light cost in his own power sublime

To array the godhead, whosoe’er he be;

And law is old, even as the oldest time,

Nature’s own unrepealed decree.

What is wisest? what is fairest,

Of god’s boons to man the rarest?

With the conscious conquering hand

Above the foeman’s head to stand

What is fairest still is rarest.

Who hath ’scaped the turbulent sea,

And reached the haven, happy he!

Happy he whose toils are o’er,

In the race of wealth and power!

This one here, and that one there,

Passes by, and everywhere

Still expectant thousands over

Thousands hopes are seen to hover,

Some to mortals end in bliss;

Some have already fled away:

Happiness alone is his

That happy is to-day.

DIONYSUS

Thou art mad to see that which thou shouldst not see,