Collected Works (Vol. III)

LIBER QUARTUS VEL MORTIS 205 AUTONOE. Fall soft and sweet ! AGAVE, Moaning for love the woods lie. AUTONOE. Sad the land Lies thirsty for our kisses. MANADS, All wild things Yearn towards the kiss that ends in blood. AGAVE. Blood! Blood! Bromius, Bromius! Ha! Bring wine ! MAENADS. Come, sweet God, Come forth and lie with us ! AUTONOE. Us, maidens now And then and ever afterwards ! AGAVE, Chaste, chaste ! Our madness hath no touch of bitterness, No taste of foulness in the morning mouth. AUTONOE, O mouth of ripe red sunny grapes! God! God ! Evoe! Dwell! Abide! AGAVE. I feel the wings Of love, of mystery ; they waft soft streams Of night air to my heated breast and brow. MANADS. He comes! Iie comes! AGAVE, Silence, O girls, and peace ! The God’s most holy presence asks the hymn The solemn hymn, the hymn of agony, Lest in the air of glory that surrounds The child of Semelé we lose the earth And corporal presence of the Zeus-begot. AUTONOR, Yea, sisters, raise the chant of riot! Lift Your wine-sweet voices, move your wine- stained limbs In joyful invocation ! M-ENADS. Ay, we sing. Hail, child of Semelé ! To her as unto thee Be reverence, be deity, be immortality ! Shame ! treachery of the spouse Of the Olympian house, Hlera! thy grim device against the sweet carouse ! Lo! in red roar and flame Did Zeus descend! What claim To feel the immortal fire had then the -Theban dame ! Caught in that fiery wave Her love and life she gave With one last kissing cry the unborn child to save. And thou, O Zeus, the sire Of Bromius—hunter dire !— Didst snatch the unborn babe from Olympian fire : that In thine own thigh most holy That ofispring melancholy Didst hide, didst feed, on light, ambrosia, and moly.