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From the Greek by Henry Hart Milman From “ The Bacchæ”
ON the mountains wild ’t is sweet, | |
| When faint with rapid dance our feet, | |
| Our limbs on earth all careless thrown | |
| With the sacred fawn-skins strown, | |
| To quaff the goat’s delicious blood, | 5 |
| A strange, a rich, a savage food. | |
| Then off again the revel goes | |
| O’er Phrygian, Lydian mountain brows; | |
| Evoë! Evoë! leads the road, | |
| Bacchus’s self the maddening god! | 10 |
| And flows with milk the plain, and flows with wine, | |
| Flows with the wild bees’ nectar-dews divine; | |
| And soars, like smoke, the Syrian incense pale— | |
| The while the frantic Bacchanal | |
| The beaconing pine torch on her wand | 15 |
| Whirls around with rapid hand, | |
| And drives the wandering dance about, | |
| Beating time with joyous shout, | |
| And casts upon the breezy air | |
| All her rich luxuriant hair; | 20 |
| Ever the burthen of her song:— | |
| “Raging, maddening, haste along, | |
| Bacchus’s daughters, ye the pride | |
| Of golden Tmolus’s fabled side; | |
| While your heavy cymbals ring, | 25 |
| Still your ’Evoë! Evoë!’ sing!” | |
| Evoë! the Evian god rejoices | |
| In Phrygian tones and Phrygian voices, | |
| When the soft holy pipe is breathing sweet, | |
| In notes harmonious to her feet, | 30 |
| Who to the mountain, to the mountain speeds; | |
| Like some young colt that by its mother feeds, | |
| Gladsome with many a frisking bound, | |
| The Bacchanal goes forth and treads the echoing ground. | |
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