All hail, O Thebes, thou nurse of Semelê!
  With Semelê's wild ivy crown thy towers;
Oh, burst in bloom of wreathing bryony,
      Berries and leaves and flowers;
    Uplift the dark divine wand,
    The oak-wand and the pine-wand,
And don thy fawn-skin, fringed in purity
      With fleecy white, like ours.

Oh, cleanse thee in the wands' waving pride!
  Yea, all men shall dance with us and pray,
When Bromios his companies shall guide
  Hillward, ever hillward, where they stay,
    The flock of the Believing,
    The maids from loom and weaving
  By the magic of his breath borne away.

Hail thou, O Nurse of Zeus, O Caverned Haunt
  Where fierce arms clanged to guard God's cradle rare,
For thee of old some crested Corybant
        First woke in Cretan air
      The wild orb of our orgies,
      Our Timbrel; and thy gorges
Rang with this strain; and blended Phrygian chant
        And sweet keen pipes were there.

  But the Timbrel, the Timbrel was another's,
    And away to Mother Rhea it must wend;
  And to our holy singing from the Mother's
    The mad Satyrs carried it, to blend
        In the dancing and the cheer
        Of our third and perfect Year;
    And it serves Dionysus in the end!

      O glad, glad on the mountains
        To swoon in the race outworn,
          When the holy fawn-skin clings,
            And all else sweeps away,
      To the joy of the red quick fountains,
        The blood of the hill-goat torn,
          The glory of wild-beast ravenings,
            Where the hill-tops catch the day;
      To the Phrygian, Lydian, mountains!
          'Tis Bromios leads the way.

    Then streams the earth with milk, yea, streams
    With wine and nectar of the bee,
    And through the air dim perfume steams
    Of Syrian frankincense; and He,
    Our leader, from his thyrsus spray
    A torchlight tosses high and higher,
    A torchlight like a beacon-fire,
    To waken all that faint and stray;
    And sets them leaping as he sings,
    His tresses rippling to the sky,
    And deep beneath the Maenad cry
        His proud voice rings:
          "Come, O ye Bacchae, come!"

  Hither, O fragrant of Tmolus the Golden,
    Come with the voice of timbrel and drum;
  Let the cry of your joyance uplift and embolden
    The God of the joy-cry; O Bacchanals, come!
  With pealing of pipes and with Phrygian clamour,
    On, where the vision of holiness thrills,
  And the music climbs and the maddening glamour,
    With the wild White Maids, to the hills, to the hills!
  Oh, then, like a colt as he runs by a river,
    A colt by his dam, when the heart of him sings,
  With the keen limbs drawn and the fleet foot a-quiver,
          Away the Bacchanal springs!