O BACCHUS, what a world of toil, both now
And ere these limbs were overworn with age,
Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled’st
The mountain nymphs who nurst thee, driven afar
By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee;
Then in the battle of the sons of Earth,
When I stood foot by foot close to thy side,
No unpropitious fellow combatant,
And, driving through his shield my winged spear,
Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now,
Is it a dream of which I speak to thee?
By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies !
And now I suffer more than all before.
For, when I heard that Juno had devised
A tedious
voyage for

you, I put to sea
With all my children quaint in search of you,
And I myself stood on the beaked prow
And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys,
Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain

Made white with foam the green and purple

sea, And so we sought you, king. We were sailing Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose, And drove us to this wild Ætnean rock ; The one-eyed children of the Ocean God, The man-destroying Cyclopses inhabit, On this wild shore, their solitary caves ; And one of these, named Polypheme, bas

caught us To be his slaves; and so, for all delight Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody, We keep this lawless giant's wandering flocks. My sons indeed, on far declivities, Young things themselves, tend on the youngling

sheep, But I remain to fill the water casks, Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering Some impious and abominable meal To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it ! And now I must scrape up the littered floor With this great iron rake, so to receive My absent master and his evening sheep In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see My children tending the flocks hitherward. Ha! what is this ? are your Sicinnian measures Even now the same as when with dance and

song You brought young Bacchus to Athæa's balls ?

*

CHORUS OF SATYRS.

STROPHE.

Where has he of race divine
Wandered in the winding rocks?
Here the air is calm and fine
For the father of the flocks;-
Here the

grass

is soft and sweet, And the river-eddies meet In the trough beside the cave, Bright as in their fountain wave.Neither here, nor on the dew Of the lawny uplands feeding ? Oh, you come !a stone at you Will I throw to mend your breeding ;Get along, you horned thing, Wild, seditious, rambling !

EPODE.*
An Iacchic melody
To the golden Aphrodite
Will I lift, as erst did I
Seeking her and her delight
With the Mænads, whose white feet
To the music glance and fleet.
Bacchus, O beloved, where,
Shaking wide thy yellow hair,
Wanderest thou alone, afar ?
To the one-eyed Cyclops, we,

Who by right thy servants are,
Minister in misery,
In these wretched goat-skins clad,
Far from thy delights and thee.

SILENUS.

Be silent, sons ; command the slaves to drive
The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave.

CHORUS

Go! But what needs this serious haste, O father ?

SILENUS.

I see a Grecian vessel on the coast,
And thence the rowers, with some general,
Approaching to this cave. About their necks
Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food,
And water-flasks.-0 miserable strangers !
Whence come they, that they know not what and

who
My master is, approaching in ill hour
The inhospitable roof of Polypheme,
And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying ?
Be silent, Satyrs, while I ask and hear,
Whence coming, they arrive the Ætnean hill.

ULYSSES.

Friends, can you show me some clear water spring,
The remedy of our thirst? Will any one
Furnish with food seamen in want of it ?

Ha ! what is this? We seein to be arrived
At the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe
This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves.
First let me greet the elder.Hail !

SILENUS.

Hail thou, O Stranger! Tell thy country and thy race.

ULYSSES.

The Ithacan Ulysses and the king
Of Cephalonia.

SILENUS.

Oh! I know the man, Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus.

ULYSSES.

I am the same, but do not rail upon me.

SILENUS.

Whence sailing do you come to Sicily?

ULYSSES.

From Ilion, and from the Trojan toils.

SILENUS.

How touched you not at your paternal shore ?

ULYSSES.

The strength of tempests bore me here by force.