The agonists Author:Maurice Henry Hewlett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ARIADNE IN NAXOS At the opening of the scene the stage is empty, and so remains for a while. Then there is a flash of lightning out of the clear sky, and imme... more »diately a thunder-clap, which, after, rolls among the unseen hills. Three figures are now before the scene, as if proceeding from the altar-grove to a thicket on the left. The first is a Maenad in short, looped-up tunic, and with streaming hair. Her head is thrown back. She carries a thyrsus in one hand, a dead kid in the other. The central figure is Dionysus, crowned with ivy, wearing his leopard-skin. He has the semblance of a smoothfaced, ruddy young man of great stature. Behind him is a Faun, naked to the waist, goat-legged and footed. He has a pan-pipe in his hand. The Maenad Bacchus is lord of the length and breadth of the earth, Red as wine, brighter than honey, ruthless as rain, lo! Zagreus! Regent of storm and pain! [She stands rigid, as in ecstasy. Dionysus From my still haunts of brooding and dreams, In mortal cerements, I come forth To light on men, and shed over earth With sleepy spell my will inscrutable, To this my island, fear-haunted, Where priests with pious hands and orgy Call up the dance through wintry nights And shake the dawn with fire more fierce than the sun's, Fire in the heart! Here as a mist Desire-laden, sick with torments For unused folk, I lie in wait Glamour to cast through all quiet ways, Through tangle of briar, thro' drencht herbage, On sundew thick, on restless floods, On scarred mountain-flanks, on the crannies in them, Peering for me like eyes. O'er the mad earth then, through leagues of air, I pass to men's dwellings and steep their blood With hinted joy and bliss surmised, Seasonal raptures, such wild love As only in dreams men kn...« less