The Frogs | Page 6

feast, may we speak therein. And when we have bantered and laughed
our best, The victor's wreath be it ours to win.
Call we now the youthful god, call him hither without delay, Him who
travels amongst his chorus, dancing along on the Sacred Way.
(The processional hymn to Iacchus.)
O, come with the joy of thy festival song, O, come to the goddess, O,
mix with our throng Untired, though the journey be never so long. O
Lord of the frolic and dance, Iacchus, beside me advance! For fun, and
for cheapness, our dress thou hast rent, Through thee we may dance to
the top of our bent, Reviling, and jeering, and none will resent. O Lord
of the frolic and dance, Iacchus, beside me advance! A sweet pretty girl
I observed in the show, Her robe had been torn in the scuffle, and lo,
There peeped through the tatters a bosom of snow. O Lord of the frolic
and dance, Iacchus, beside me advance!
DIO. Wouldn't I like to follow on, and try A little sport and dancing?
XAN. Wouldn't I?
(The banter at the bridge of Cephisus.)
CHOR. Shall we all a merry joke At Archedemus poke, Who has not
cut his guildsmen yet, though seven years old; Yet up among the dead
He is demagogue and head, And contrives the topmost place of the
rascaldom to hold? And Cleisthenes, they say, Is among the tombs all
day, Bewailing for his lover with a lamentable whine. And Callias, I'm

told, Has become a sailor bold, And casts a lion's hide o'er his members
feminine.
DIO. Can any of you tell Where Pluto here may dwell, For we, sirs, are
two strangers who were never here before?
CHOR. O, then no further stray, Nor again enquire the way, For know
that ye have journeyed to his very entrance-door
DIO. Take up the wraps, my lad.
XAN. Now is not this too bad? Like "Zeus's Corinth," he "the wraps"
keeps saying o'er and o'er.
CHOR. Now wheel your sacred dances through the glade with flowers
bedight, All ye who are partakers of the holy festal rite; And I will with
the women and the holy maidens go Where they keep the nightly vigil,
an auspicious light to show.
(The departure for the Thriasian Plain)
Now haste we to the roses, And the meadows full of posies, Now haste
we to the meadows In our own old way, In choral dances blending, In
dances never ending, Which only for the holy The Destinies array. O
happy mystic chorus, The blessed sunshine o'er us On us alone is
smiling, In its soft sweet light: On us who strove for ever With holy,
pure endeavour, Alike by friend and stranger To guide our steps aright.
DIO. What's the right way to knock? I wonder how The natives here
are wont to knock at doors.
XAN. No dawdling: taste the door. You've got, remember, The
lion-hide and pride of Heracles.
DIO. Boy! boy!
AEACUS. Who's there?
DIO. I, Heracles the strong!

AEAC. O, you most shameless desperate ruffian, you! O, villain,
villain, arrant vilest villain! Who seized our Cerberus by the throat, and
fled, And ran, and rushed, and bolted, haling off The dog, my charge!
But now I've got thee fast. So close the Styx's inky-hearted rock, The
blood-bedabbled peak of Acheron Shall hem thee in: the hell-hounds of
Cocytus Prowl round thee; whilst the hundred-headed Asp Shall rive
thy heart-strings: the Tartesian Lamprey, Prey on thy lungs: and those
Tithrasian Gorgons Mangle and tear thy kidneys, mauling them,
Entrails and all, into one bloody mash. I'll speed a running foot to fetch
them hither.
XAN. Hallo! what now?
DIO. I've done it: call the god.
XAN. Get up, you laughing-stock; get up directly, Before you're seen.
DIO. What, I get up? I'm fainting. Please dab a sponge of water on my
heart.
XAN. Here!
DIO. Dab it, you.
XAN. Where? O, ye golden gods, Lies your heart THERE?
DIO. It got so terrified It fluttered down into my stomach's pit.
XAN. Cowardliest of gods and men!
DIO. The cowardliest? I? What I, who asked you for a sponge, a thing
A coward never would have done!
XAN. What then?
DIO. A coward would have lain there wallowing; But I stood up, and
wiped myself withal.
XAN. Poseidon! quite heroic.

DIO. 'Deed I think so. But weren't you frightened at those dreadful
threats And shoutings?
XAN, Frightened? Not a bit. I cared not.
DIO. Come then, if you're so very brave a man, Will you be I, and take
the hero's club And lion's skin, since you're so monstrous plucky? And
I'll be now the slave, and bear the luggage.
XAN. Hand them across. I cannot choose but take them. And now
observe the Xanthio-heracles