Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/451

Rh Wide-sundered lies his corse: part 'neath rough rocks,

Part mid the tangled depths of forest-shades:—

Hard were the search. His miserable head

Which in her hands his mother chanced to seize,

Impaled upon her thyrsus-point she bears,

Like mountain-lion's, through Kithairon's midst,

Leaving her sisters in their Maenad dance;

And, in her ghastly quarry exulting, comes

Within these walls, to Bacchus crying aloud,

Her fellow-hunter, helper in the chase

Triumphant—all its triumph-prize is tears!

But from this sight of misery will I

Depart, or ever Agavê reach the halls.

Ay, self-restraint, and reverence for the Gods

Are best, I ween; 'tis wisest far for men

To get these in possession, and cleave thereto.

Raise we to Bacchus the choral acclaim,

Shout we aloud for the fall

Of the king, of the blood of the Serpent who came,

Who arrayed him in woman's pall;

And the thyrsus-ferule he grasped—but the same

Was a passport to Hades' hall:

And a bull was his guide to a doom of shame!

O Bacchanal-maids Kadmeian,

Ye have gained for you glory —a victory-pæan

To be drowned in lamenting and weeping.

O contest triumphantly won, when a mother in blood of her son

Her fingers is steeping!