Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/400

372 Made meet by the sacred purifying

For the Bacchanal rout o'er the mountains flying,

For the orgies of Cybelê mystery-folden,

Of the Mother olden,

Wreathed with the ivy sprays,

The thyrsus on high doth he raise,

Singing the Vine-god's praise—

Come, Bacchanals, come!

The Clamour-king, child of a God,

O'er the mountains of Phrygia who trod,

Unto Hellas's highways broad

Bring him home, bring him home!—

The God whom his mother,—when anguish tore her

Of the travail resistless that deathward bore her

On the wings of the thunder of Zeus down-flying,—

Brought forth at her dying

An untimely birth, as her spirit departed

Stricken from life by the flame down-darted:

But in birth-bowers new did Zeus Kronion

Receive his scion;

For, hid in a cleft of his thigh,

By the gold-clasps knit, did he lie

Safe hidden from Hera's eye

Till the Fates' day came;

Then a God bull-horned Zeus bare,

And with serpents entwined his hair:

And for this do his Maenads wear

In their tresses the same.

Thebes, nursing-town of Semelê, crown

With the ivy thy brows, and be

All bloom, embowered in the starry-flowered

Lush green of the briony,