The Story of Bacchus

What boy with his face to the Ægean SeaWent threading his way over mountain and plain,With a spirit as glad as a blossoming tree?It was Bacchus, now pure as the wild white rain,But soon to be worshiped by mortals, with passion and sorrow and pain.

He had found a vine on the forest ways,And a skeleton bird in a rocky passTo shelter the leaf from the sunny rays;But it grew till he sheltered them both, alas,In the hollow skull of a lion, and then in the skull of an ass!

As he lay at noon in a mossy rest,The vine had shot up all a-tremble with light.Now he bears it home—(O the doom unguessed!)

On, on, while the hills swing away out of sight—Till the misty far mountains rise dimly, and pass in a silent flight.

At last when his garden was furrowed, he foundThat the bones were all twined by the lusty root;So he planted the whole in the deep-stirred ground,And lightly danced to his Lydian flute,While the leafy depths of the eerie vine purpled with clustering fruit.

Then he made him wine—for it was the grape—And darkened its depths with a perilous spell,And gave it to man with the angel shape,When lo! a wonder and terror befell—Was it a wonder from Heaven—was it a terror from Hell?

For he drinks—and he carols and sings like a bird!And drinking again of the magical glass,He is proud as a lion when passion-stirred!But drinking once more of the liquor, alas,He loses the shape of the angel, and takes on the shape of an ass!