Other Maidens.
Tyrannously hath he trod; Marched him, in Law's despite, Against thy Light, O God, Yea, and thy Mother's Light; Girded him, falsely bold, Blinded in craft, to quell And by man's violence hold Things unconquerable.
A Bacchanal.
A strait pitiless mind Is death unto godliness; And to feel in human kind Life, and a pain the less. Knowledge, we are not foes! I seek thee diligently; But the world with a great wind blows, Shining, and not from thee; Blowing to beautiful things, On, amid dark and light, Till Life, through the trammellings Of Laws that are not the Right, Breaks, clean and pure, and sings Glorying to God in the height!
All the Chorus.
Hither for doom and deed! Hither with lifted sword, Justice, Wrath of the Lord, Come in our visible need! Smite till the throat shall bleed, Smite till the heart shall bleed, Him the tyrannous, lawless, Godless, Echion's earth-born seed!
LEADER.
Appear, appear, whatso thy shape or name O Mountain Bull, Snake of the Hundred Heads, Lion of Burning Flame! O God, Beast, Mystery, come! Thy mystic maids Are hunted!--Blast their hunter with thy breath, Cast o'er his head thy snare; And laugh aloud and drag him to his death, Who stalks thy herded madness in its lair!
Enter hastily a MESSENGER from the Mountain, pale and distraught.
MESSENGER.
Woe to the house once blest in Hellas! Woe To thee, old King Sidonian, who didst sow The dragon-seed on Ares' bloody lea! Alas, even thy slaves must weep for thee!
LEADER.
News from the mountain?--Speak! How hath it sped?
MESSENGER.
Pentheus, my king, Echion's son, is dead!
LEADER.
All hail, God of the Voice, Manifest ever more!
MESSENGER.
What say'st thou?--And how strange thy tone, as though In joy at this my master's overthrow!
LEADER.
With fierce joy I rejoice, Child of a savage shore; For the chains of my prison are broken, and the dread where I cowered of yore!
MESSENGER.
And deem'st thou Thebes so beggared, so forlorn Of manhood, as to sit beneath thy scorn?
LEADER.
Thebes hath o'er me no sway! None save Him I obey, Dionysus, Child of the Highest, Him I obey and adore!