Bestowing here our voice, and there our ear.
Well studied work to victory is dear-
Pains undivided, toil that will not tire;
Then kindle to your task with answering fire!
Anon they will begin; we must reply.
Oh Hymen Hymenæus, be thou nigh!

MAIDENS.

Say, Hesper, say, what fire of all that shine

In Heaven's great vault more cruel is than thine?
Who from the mother's arms her child can tear-

The child that clasps her mother in despair;
And to the youth, whose blood is all aflame,
Consigns the virgin sinking in her shame ?
When towns are sack'd, what cruelty more drear?
Oh Hymen Hymenæus, Hymen, hear!

YOUTHS.

Say, Hesper, say, what fire of all that shine

In Heaven's great vault more jocund is than thine?
Who with thy flame dost ratify the bond

Of wedlock-troth first vow'd by lovers fond,
By parents vow'd, but consummated ne'er,

Until thy star hath risen upon the air?

What choicer hour sends heaven our life to cheer? Oh Hymen Hymenæus, Hymen, hear!

MAIDENS.

Woe, my companions, woe, that Hesper thus
Hath reft the fairest of our mates from us?
Why were we heedless of thy coming-why?
For most it fits to watch, when thou art nigh.

To stolen delights by night the lover hies,
And him wilt thou, oh Hesper, oft surprise,
When thou in other name dost reappear.
Oh Hymen Hymenæus, Hymen, hear!

YOUTHS.

Heed not the railing of the virgin choir!
They joy to chide thee with fictitious ire.
How, if within their secret soul they long
For what they so vituperate in song?
Then to their chiding turn a heedless ear.
Oh Hymen Hymenæus, draw thou near!

MAIDENS.

As in a garden grows some floweret fair,

Safe from the flocks, safe from the ploughman's share,
Nursed by the sun, by gentle breezes fann'd,
Fed by the showers, admired on every hand,
There as it coyly blossoms in the shade,
Desired by many a youth, by many a maid;
But pluck that flower, its witchery is o'er,
And neither youth nor maid desires it more.
So is the virgin prized, endeared as much,
Whilst yet unsullied by a lover's touch;
But if she lose her chaste and virgin flower,
Her beauty's bloom is blighted in an hour:
To youths no more, no more to maidens dear.
Oh Hymen Hymenæus, be thou near!

YOUTHS.

As grows a widow'd vine in open fields,
It hangs its head, no mellow clusters yields;

So droops the fragile stem, its topmost shoot
With nerveless tendril hangs about its root;
That vine no husbandman nor rustic swain
Hath cared to tend or cultivate or train;
But if by happier chance that selfsame vine
Around a husband elm its tendrils twine,
Then many a husbandman and rustic swain
Its shoots will tend and cultivate and train.
Even such the virgin, and unprized as much,
That fades, untended by a lover's touch,
But when, in fulness of her maiden pride,
Some fitting mate has won her for his bride,
She's loved as never she was loved before,
And parents bless her, and are stern no more.

YOUTHS AND MAIDENS.

Then spurn not, oh ye virgins, such a groom!
Unmeet it is to spurn the man to whom
Thy father gave thee, and thy mother too;
For unto them is thy obedience due.
Not wholly thine is thy virginity.

Thy parents own some part of it in thee.
One third thy father's is by right divine,
One third thy mother's; one alone is thine.

Then war not with these twain, who with thy dower
Have given their son-in-law their rights and power.
Come to the bridal-chamber hence-away!

Oh Hymen Hymenæus, bless our rites to-day!

1

ATY S.

63

S

WIFTLY, swiftly, o'er the ocean Atys urged his flying bark,

Swiftly leapt to land, and plunged into the Phrygian

forest dark,

Where the mighty goddess dwells, and, by a zealot frenzy

stung,

Shore with a flint his sex away, which madly on the ground he flung.

And when he felt his manhood gone, and saw the gorebedabbled grass,

Up in his snowy hands he caught the timbrel light, that with the brass

Of clanging trumpets swells thy rites, great mother Cybele, and smote

The sounding hide, and to his mates thus shrilly sang with quivering note.

Away, away, ye sexless ones, to Cybele's high groves," he said.

"Away, ye truant herd, and hail our mistress, Dindymene dread!

Ye, who with me braved surge and storm, and, exiles in a barbarous land,

With me, in measureless disdain of Venus, have yourselves unmann'd!

"Rejoice, rejoice, what revelries our mistress has in store for us!

No laggard fears retard ye now! On to the steep of Dindymus! Hence to her Phrygian shrine with me! On to her Phrygian forests speed!

Where drums and echoing cymbals crash, and drones the curvèd Phrygian reed.

"Where raving Mænads wildly toss their ivy-circled brows about,

Where they affright the haunts divine with wailing shrill and piercing shout,

Where to and fro and up and down, unresting evermore they stray,

There must we pay our vows, and join the mystic dance— away, away!"

He ceased, and his companions all with eldritch howl repeat the strain,

The timbrel light, the cymbal's clash, reverberate along the

plain;

Then to green Ida's dusky groves they rush, with Atys at their head,

Who, like a steer that spurns the yoke, crazed, furious, panting, onward sped.