DIONYSUS

In thy mother’s hands.

PENTHEUS

Wilt make me thus luxurious?

DIONYSUS

Strange luxury, indeed!

PENTHEUS

’Tis my desert.

DIONYSUS

Thou art awful! — awful! Doomed to awful end!

Thy glory shall soar up to the high heaven’s!

Stretch forth thine hand, Agave! — ye her kin,

Daughters of Cadmus! To a terrible grave

Lead I this youth! Myself shall win the prize —

Bromius and I; the event will show the rest.

CHORUS

Ho! fleet dogs and furious, to the mountains, ho!

Where their mystic revels Cadmus’ daughters keep.

Rouse them, goad them out,

’Gainst him, in woman’s mimic garb concealed,

Gazer on the Mænads in their dark rites unrevealed.

First his mother shall behold him on his watch below,

From the tall tree’s trunk or from the wild scaur steep;

Fiercely will she shout —

“Who the spy upon the Mænads on the rocks that roam

To the mountain, to the mountain, Bacchanals, has come?”

Who hath borne him?

He is not of woman’s blood —

The lioness!

Or the Lybian Gorgon’s brood?

Come, vengeance, come, display thee!

With thy bright sword array thee!

The bloody sentence wreak

On the dissevered neck

Of him who god, law, justice hath not known,

Echion’s earth-born son.

He, with thought unrighteous and unholy pride,

’Gainst Bacchus and his mother, their orgies’ mystic mirth

Still holds his frantic strife,

And sets him up against the god, deeming it light

To vanquish the invincible of might.

Hold thou fast the pious mind; so, only so, shall glide

In peace with gods above, in peace with men on earth,

Thy smooth painless life.

I admire not, envy not, who would be otherwise:

Mine be still the glory, mine be still the prize,

By night and day

To live of the immortal gods in awe;

Who fears them not

Is but the outcast of all law.

Come, vengeance, come display thee!

With thy bright sword array thee!

The bloody sentence wreak

On the dissevered neck

Of him who god, law, justice has not known,

Echion’s earth-born son.

Appear! appear!

Or as the stately steer!

Or many-headed dragon be!

Or the fire-breathing lion, terrible to see.

Come, Bacchus, come ’gainst the hunter of the Bacchanals,

Even now, now as he falls

Upon the Mænads’ fatal herd beneath,

With smiling brow,

Around him throw

The inexorable net of death.

MESSENGER

O house most prosperous once throughout all Hellas!

House of the old Sidonian! — in this land

Who sowed the dragon’s serpent’s earth-born harvest —

How I deplore thee! I a slave, for still

Grieve for their master’s sorrows faithful slaves.

CHORUS

What’s this? Aught new about the Bacchanals?

MESSENGER

Pentheus hath perished, old Echion’s son.

CHORUS

King Bromius, thou art indeed a mighty god!

MESSENGER

What sayst thou? How is this? Rejoicest thou,

O woman, in my master’s awful fate?

CHORUS

Light chants the stranger her barbarous strains;

I cower not in fear for the menace of chains.

MESSENGER

All Thebes thus void of courage deemest thou?