Lines 337–478

XANTHIAS.
Holy and sacred queen, Demeter’s daughter,
O, what a jolly whiff of pork breathed o’er me!

DIONYSUS.
Hist! and perchance you’ll get some tripe yourself.

(The welcome to Iacchus.)

CHORUS.
Come, arise, from sleep awaking,
come the fiery torches shaking,
O Iacchus! O Iacchus!
Morning Star that shinest nightly.
Lo, the mead is blazing brightly,
Age forgets its years and sadness,
Agèd knees curvet for gladness,
Lift thy flashing torches o’er us,
Marshal all thy blameless train,
Lead, O lead the way before us;
lead the lovely youthful Chorus
To the marshy flowery plain.

(The warning-off of the profane.)
All evil thoughts and profane be still:
far hence, far hence from our choirs depart,
Who knows not well what the Mystics tell,
or is not holy and pure of heart;
Who ne’er has the noble revelry learned,
or danced the dance of the Muses high;
Or shared in the Bacchic rites which old
bull-eating Cratinus’s words supply;
Who vulgar coarse buffoonery loves,
though all untimely the jests they make;
Or lives not easy and kind with all,
or kindling faction forbears to slake,
But fans the fire, from a base desire
some pitiful gain for himself to reap;
Or takes, in office, his gifts and bribes,
while the city is tossed on the stormy deep;
Who fort or fleet to the foe betrays;
or, a vile Thorycion, ships away
Forbidden stores from Aegina’s shores,
to Epidaurus across the Bay
Transmitting oar-pads and sails and tar,
that curst collector of five per cents;
The knave who tries to procure supplies
for the use of the enemy’s armaments;
The Cyclian singer who dares befoul
the Lady Hecate’s wayside shrine;
The public speaker who once lampooned
in our Bacchic feasts would, with heart malign,
Keep nibbling away the Comedians’ pay;—
to these I utter my warning cry,
I charge them once, I charge them twice,
I charge them thrice, that they draw not nigh
To the sacred dance of the Mystic choir.
But YE, my comrades, awake the song,
The night-long revels of joy and mirth
which ever of right to our feast belong.

(The start of the procession.)
Advance, true hearts, advance!
On to the gladsome bowers,
On to the sward, with flowers
Embosomed bright!
March on with jest, and jeer, and dance,
Full well ye’ve supped to-night.

(The processional hymn to Persephone.)
March, chanting loud your lays,
Your hearts and voices raising,
The Saviour goddess praising
Who vows she’ll still
Our city save to endless days,
Whate’er Thorycion’s will.

Break off the measure, and change the time;
and now with chanting and hymns adorn
Demeter, goddess mighty and high,
the harvest-queen, the giver of corn.

(The processional hymn to Demeter.)
O Lady, over our rites presiding,
Preserve and succour thy choral throng,
And grant us all, in thy help confiding,
To dance and revel the whole day long;
AND MUCH in earnest, and much in jest,
Worthy thy feast, may we speak therein.
And when we have bantered and laughed our best,
The victor’s wreath be it ours to win.

Call we now the youthful god,
call him hither without delay,
Him who travels amongst his chorus,
dancing along on the Sacred Way.

(The processional hymn to Iacchus.)
O, come with the joy of thy festival song,
O, come to the goddess, O, mix with our throng
Untired, though the journey be never so long.
O Lord of the frolic and dance,
Iacchus, beside me advance!
For fun, and for cheapness, our dress thou hast rent,
Through thee we may dance to the top of our bent,
Reviling, and jeering, and none will resent.
O Lord of the frolic and dance,
Iacchus, beside me advance!
A sweet pretty girl I observed in the show,
Her robe had been torn in the scuffle, and lo,
There peeped through the tatters a bosom of snow.
O Lord of the frolic and dance,
Iacchus, beside me advance!

DIONYSUS.
Wouldn’t I like to follow on, and try
A little sport and dancing?

XANTHIAS.
Wouldn’t I?

(The banter at the bridge of Cephisus.)

CHORUS.
Shall we all a merry joke
At Archedemus poke,
Who has not cut his guildsmen yet, though seven years old;
Yet up among the dead
He is demagogue and head,
And contrives the topmost place of the rascaldom to hold?
And Cleisthenes, they say,
Is among the tombs all day,
Bewailing for his lover with a lamentable whine.
And Callias, I’m told,
Has become a sailor bold,
And casts a lion’s hide o’er his members feminine.

DIONYSUS.
Can any of you tell
Where Pluto here may dwell,
For we, sirs, are two strangers who were never here before?

CHORUS.
O, then no further stray,
Nor again inquire the way,
For know that ye have journeyed to his very entrance-door.

DIONYSUS.
Take up the wraps, my lad.

XANTHIAS.
Now is not this too bad?
Like “Zeus’s Corinth,” he “the wraps” keeps saying o’er and o’er.

CHORUS.
Now wheel your sacred dances through the glade with flowers bedight,
All ye who are partakers of the holy festal rite;
And I will with the women and the holy maidens go
Where they keep the nightly vigil, an auspicious light to show.

(The departure for the Thriasian Plain.)

Now haste we to the roses,
And the meadows full of posies,
Now haste we to the meadows
In our own old way,
In choral dances blending,
In dances never ending,
Which only for the holy
The Destinies array.

O, happy mystic chorus,
The blessed sunshine o’er us
On us alone is smiling,
In its soft sweet light:
On us who strove for ever
With holy, pure endeavour,
Alike by friend and stranger
To guide our steps aright.

DIONYSUS.
What’s the right way to knock? I wonder how
The natives here are wont to knock at doors.

XANTHIAS.
No dawdling: taste the door. You’ve got, remember,
The lion-hide and pride of Heracles.

DIONYSUS.
Boy! boy!

AEACUS.
Who’s there?

DIONYSUS.
I, Heracles the strong!

AEACUS.
O, you most shameless desperate ruffian, you!
O, villain, villain, arrant vilest villain!
Who seized our Cerberus by the throat, and fled,
And ran, and rushed, and bolted, haling off
The dog, my charge! But now I’ve got thee fast.
So close the Styx’s inky-hearted rock,
The blood-bedabbled peak of Acheron
Shall hem thee in: the hell-hounds of Cocytus
Prowl round thee; whilst the hundred-headed Asp
Shall rive thy heart-strings: the Tartesian Lamprey
Prey on thy lungs: and those Tithrasian Gorgons
Mangle and tear thy kidneys, mauling them,
Entrails and all, into one bloody mash.
I’ll speed a running foot to fetch them hither.