With Thy wine-cup waving high, With Thy maddening revelry, To Eleusis' flowery vale, Comest
Thou--Bacchus, Paean, hail!
In the Bacchae of Euripides, the chorus of Maenads displays a combination of poetry and
savagery which is the very reverse of serene. They celebrate the delight in tearing a wild animal
limb from limb, and eating it raw then and there:
O glad, glad on the Mountains To swoon in the race outworn, When the holy fawn-skin clings
And all else sweeps away,
To the joy of the quick red fountains, The blood of the hill-goat torn, The glory of wild-beast
ravenings Where the hill-top catches the day,
To the Phrygian, Lydian mountains 'Tis Bromios leads the way.
( Bromios was another of the many names of Bacchus.) The dance of the Maenads on the
mountain side was not only fierce; it was an escape from the burdens and cares of civilization into
the world of nonhuman beauty and the freedom of wind and stars. In a less frenzied mood they
sing:
Will they ever come to me, ever again, The long, long dances, On through the dark till the dim
stars wane? Shall I feel the dew on my throat and the stream Of wind in my hair? Shall our white
feet gleam In the dim expanses? O feet of the fawn to the greenwood fled, Alone in the grass and
the loveliness; Leap of the hunted, no more in dread, Beyond the snares and the deadly press. Yet
a voice still in the distance sounds, A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds, O wildly labouring,
fiercely fleet, Onward yet by river and lien--