Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/449

Rh High up into the heights of air it soared,

Bearing my master throned upon its crest,

More by the Maenads seen than seeing them.

For scarce high-lifted was he manifest,

When lo, the stranger might no more be seen;

And fell from heaven a voice—the voice, most like,

Of Dionysus,—crying, "O ye maids,

I bring him who would mock at you and me,

And at my rites. Take vengeance on him ye!"

Even as he cried, up heavenward, down to earth,

He flashed a pillar-splendour of awful flame.

Hushed was the welkin: that fair grassy glen

Held hushed its leaves; no wild thing's cry was heard.

But they, whose ears not clearly caught the sound,

Sprang up, and shot keen glances right and left.

Again he cried his hest: then Kadmus' daughters

Knew certainly the Bacchic God's command,

And darted: and the swiftness of their feet

Was as of doves in onward-straining race—

His mother Agavê and her sisters twain,

And all the Bacchanals. Through torrent gorge,

O'er boulders, leapt they, with the God's breath mad.

When seated on the pine they saw my lord,

First torrent-stones with might and main they hurled,

Scaling a rock, their counter-bastion,

And javelined him with branches of the pine:

And others shot their thyrsi through the air

At Pentheus—woeful mark!—yet nought availed.

For, at a height above their fury's pitch,

Trapped in despair's gin, horror-struck he sat.

Last, oak-limbs from their trunks they thundered down,

And heaved at the roots with levers—not of iron.

But when they won no end of toil and strain,