His spine was arched: as when one, who doth know Chariots to build, excelling in his art,

Having first heated in a fire-heat slow

Bends for his wheel a fig-branch; with a start The fissile wild-fig flies far from his hands apart.

Collected for the spring, and mad to rend me,
So leapt the lion from afar: I strove
With skin-cloak, bow and quiver to defend me
With one hand; with the other I up-hove
My weighty club, and on his temple drove,
But broke in pieces the rough olive wood

On his hard shaggy head: he from above

Fell ere he reached me, by the stroke subdued, And nodding with his head on trembling feet he stood.

Darkness came over both his eyes: his brain
Was skaken in the bone; but when I spied
The monster stunned and reeling from his pain,

I cast my quiver and my bow aside,

And to his neck my throttling hands applied,
Before he could recover. I did bear me

With vigour in the death-clutch, and astride

His body from behind from scath did clear me, So that he could not or with jaw or talons tear me.

His hind feet with my heels I pressed aground;
Of his pernicious throat my hands took care;
His sides were for my thighs a safe-guard found
From his fore-feet: till breathless high in air
I lifted him new sped to hell's dark lair.

Then many projects did my thoughts divide, How best I might the monster's carcass bare, And from his dead limbs strip the shaggy hide: Hard task it was indeed, and much my patience tried.

I tried and failed with iron, wood, and flint;
For none of these his skin could penetrate;
Then some immortal gave to me a hint
With his own talons I might separate

The carcass and the hide: success did wait
The trial of this thought; he soon was flayed.

I wear his hide, that serves me to rebate

Sharp-cutting war. The Nemean beast was laid

Thus low, which had of men and flocks much havoc made.

IDYL XXVI.

THE BACCHE.

ARGUMENT.

Pentheus, who was an unbeliever in the divinity of Dionysus, from curiosity became a spectator of the orgies of the women who were possessed with frenzy by the influence of that god. The women, and among them his own mother and aunts, on discovering hunted him as huntsmen the hare, and mercilessly tore him in pieces. This is the subject of one of the finest plays of Euripides.

IDYL XXVI.

THE BACCHE.

THREE troops three sisters to the mountain led;
Agavé with her cheeks that blossomed red
The bloom of apple; and in wildest mood
Autonöa and Ino. From the wood

They stript oak-leaves and ivy green as well,
And from the ground the lowly asphodel;

In a pure lawn with these twelve altars placed;
Nine Dionysus, three his mother graced ;
Then from the chest the sacred symbols moved,

And, as their god had taught them and approved,
Upon the leafy altars reverent laid.

Hid in a native mastic's sheltering shade,

Them from a steep rock Pentheus then surveyed.