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 Baccha

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?
Chorus. O Dionysus! Dionysus! Thebes

Hath o'er me now no power.

Messenger. 'Tis pardonable, yet it is not well,
Woman, in others' miseries to rejoice.

Chorus. Tell me, then, by what fate died the unjust
The man, the dark contriver of injustice?
Messenger. Therapnæ having left the Theban city,
And passed along Asopus' winding shore,
We 'gan to climb Citharon's upward steep-
Pentheus and I (I waited on my lord),

And he that led us on our quest, the stranger

And first we crept along a grassy glade,

With silent footsteps, and with silent tongues

Slow moving, as to see, not being seen.

There was a rock-walled glen, watered by a streamlet,
And shadowed o'er with pines; the Mænads there
Sate, all their hands busy with pleasant toil;

And some the leafy thyrsus, that its ivy

Had dropped away, were garlanding anew;

Like fillies some, unharnessed from the yoke;
Chanted alternate all the Bacchic hymn.

Ill-fated Pentheus, as he scarce could see

That womanly troop, spake thus: "Where we stand,

stranger,

We see not well the unseemly Mænad dance:

But, mounting on a bank, or a tall tree,

Clearly shall I behold their deeds of shame."

A wonder then I saw that stranger do.

He seized an ash-tree's high heaven-reaching stem,
And dragged it down, dragged, dragged to the low earth;
And like a bow it bent. As a curved wheel

Becomes a circle in the turner's lathe,

The stranger thus that mountain tree bent down

To the earth, a deed of more than mortal strength.
Then seating Pentheus on those ash-tree boughs,
Upward he let it rise, steadily, gently

Through his hands, careful lest it shake him off;
And slowly rose it upright to its height,

Bearing my master seated on its ridge.

There was he seen, rather than saw the Mænads,
More visible he could not be, seated aloft.
The stranger from our view had vanished quite.
Then from the heavens a voice, as it should seem
Dionysus, shouted loud, "Behold! I bring,

O maidens, him that you and me, our rites,
Our orgies laughed to scorn; now take your vengeance.
And as he spake, a light of holy fire
Stood up, and blazed from earth straight up to heaven
Silent the air, silent the verdant grove

Held its still leaves; no sound of living thing.
They, as their ears just caught the half-heard voice,
Stood up erect, and rolled their wondering eyes.
Again he shouted. But when Cadmus' daughters
Heard manifest the god's awakening voice,
Forth rushed they, fleeter than the wingéd dove,
Their nimble feet quick coursing up and down.
Agave first, his mother, then her kin,

The Mænads, down the torrents' bed, in the grove,
From crag to crag they leaped, mad with the god.
And first with heavy stones they hurled at him,
Climbing a rock in front; the branches some
Of the ash-tree darted; some like javelins
Sent their sharp thyrsi through the sounding air,
Pentheus their mark: but yet they struck him not;
His height still baffled all their eager wrath.
There sat the wretch, helpless in his despair.
The oaken boughs, by lightning as struck off,
Roots torn from the earth, but with no iron wedge,
They hurled, but their wild labors all were vain.
Agave spake, "Come all, and stand around,
And grasp the tree, ye Mænads; soon we will seize
The beast that rides thereon. He will ne'er betray

The mysteries of our god."

A thousand hands

Were on the ash, and tore it from the earth:
And he that sat aloft, down, headlong, down
Fell to the ground, with thousand piteous shrieks,
Pentheus, for well he knew his end was near.
His mother first began the sacrifice,

And fell on him. His bonnet from his hair

He threw, that she might know and so not slay him,
The sad Agave. And he said, her cheek

Fondling, "I am thy child, thine own, my mother!
Pentheus, whom in Echion's house you bare.
Have mercy on me, mother! For his sins,
Whatever be his sins, kill not thy son."
She, foaming at the mouth, her rolling eyeballs
Whirling around, in her unreasoning reason,
By Bacchus all possessed, knew, heeded not.
She caught him in her arms, seized his right hand,
And, with her feet set on his shrinking side,

Tore out the shoulder not with her own strength:
The god made easy that too cruel deed.
And Ino labored on the other side,
Rending the flesh: Autonoë, all the rest,
Pressed fiercely on, and there was one wild din
He groaning deep, while he had breath to groan,
They shouting triumph; and one bore an arm,
One a still-sandalled foot; and both his sides
Lay open, rent. Each in her bloody hand
Tossed wildly to and fro lost Pentheus' limbs.
The trunk lay far aloof, 'neath the rough rocks
Part, part amid the forest's thick-strewn leaves
Not easy to be found. The wretched head,
Which the mad mother, seizing in her hands
Had on a thyrsus fixed, she bore aloft
All o'er Citharon, as a mountain lion's,
Leading her sisters in their Mænad dance.
And she comes vaunting her ill-fated chase
Unto these walls, invoking Bacchus still,
Her fellow-hunter, partner in her prey,

Her triumph — triumph soon to end in tears!

Chorus.

I fled the sight of that dark tragedy,
Hastening, ere yet Agave reached the palace.
Oh! to be reverent, to adore the gods,
This is the noblest, wisest course of man,
Taking dread warning from this dire event.
Dance and sing

In Bacchic ring,

Shout, shout the fate, the fate of gloom,
Of Pentheus, from the dragon born;
He the woman's garb hath worn,

Following the bull, the harbinger, that led him to his doom.
O ye Theban Bacchanals!
Attune ye now the hymn victorious,

Agave.

Chorus.

Agave.

Chorus.
Agave.

Chorus.

The hymn all glorious,

To the tear, and to the groan!
Oh game of glory!

To bathe the hands besprent and gory,
In the blood of her own son.

But I behold Agave, Pentheus' mother,
Nearing the palace with distorted eyes.
Hail we the ovation of the Evian god.
O ye Asian Bacchanals!
Who is she on us who calls?
From the mountains, lo! we bear
To the palace gate

Our new-slain quarry fair.

I see, I see! and on thy joy I wait.
Without a net, without a snare,
The lion's cub, I took him there.
In the wilderness, or where?

Agave. Cithæron