  "Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io! O Dionysos! Dionysos! ivy-crowned! O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!" I slept; and dreamed a MÆnad came to me: A harp of hollow agate strung with gold Wailed 'neath her waxen fingers, and her heart Under its gauze, through which the moonlight shone, Kept time with its wild throbbings to her song. "Ægeus sleeps, O Dionysos! sleeps Beneath the restless waves that sigh his name Eternally at my dew-glistening feet. Here 'twas he died, O Dionysos! here The great king died for whom is named this sea.— O let me sing thy triumph ere I die! "With the shrill syrinx and the kissing clang Of silver cymbals, and the sound of flutes, O pard-drawn youth, thou dist awake the world To joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine! Mad'st India bow and the dun, flooding Nile Grow purple with the murex of the wine Cast from the fullness of Silenus' cup, While yet the heavens of heat saw sarabands Whirl 'mid the redness of the Libyan sands, That drank the spilth of Bacchus, sparkling-spun From the Bacchante bowl, a beaded red O'er the slant edge, that twinkled in the sun, The tiger sun fierce-glaring overhead. "What made gold Horus smile with golden lips? Anubis dire forget his ghosts to lead To Hell's profoundness?—He, who stayed to sip One winking bubble from the wine-god's cup, And, captive ever after, joined thy train?— What made Osiris, 'mid the palms of Nile, Leave Isis dreaming, and the frolic Pan's Wild trebles follow as a roaring bull, Far as the fanes of Indra; he who long Was mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests?— Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io! The brimming purple of thy hollow gold They tasted and, 'though gods, they worship'd too! "Sad Echo sat once in a spiral cave; She, from its sea-dyed labyrinth of rock, Saw the long pageant dancing on the strand, Where Nereus slept upon an isle of crags, And o'er the slope of his far-foaming head The strangeness of the orgies wildly cried, Till the gray god awoke, at first in rage; Serened his face then; stretched a welcoming hand With civil utterance for the Bacchus horn. But Echo followed not; instead, she sits Among her crags remembering that wild cry, That nomad sound still haunting all her dreams, Confusing all her speech, that naught can say Save warring words bewildering her ears Like waves reverberant in a deep sea-cave. "Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io! See, the white stars, O Dionysos! see, Have spilled their glittering globules, one by one,— Like bubbles winking in the cup of night,— Down the dark west behind the mountain chain. Ægeus sleeps, lulled by my murmuring harp; And I have sung thy triumph. Let me die!" |
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