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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from Rhododaphne: The Vengeance of Bacchus

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)

Extracts from Rhododaphne: The Vengeance of Bacchus

BACCHUS by the lonely ocean

Stood in youthful semblance fair:

Summer winds, with gentle motion,

Waved his black and curling hair.

Streaming from his manly shoulders

Robes of gold and purple dye

Told of spoil to fierce beholders

In their black ship sailing by.

On the vessel’s deck they placed him

Strongly bound in triple bands;

But the iron rings that braced him

Melted, wax-like from his hands.

Then the pilot spake in terror:

‘’Tis a god in mortal form!

Seek the land; repair your error

Ere his wrath invoke the storm.’

‘Silence!’ cried the frowning master,

‘Mind the helm, the breeze is fair:

Coward! cease to bode disaster:

Leave to men the captive’s care.’

While he speaks, and fiercely tightens

In the full free breeze the sail,

From the deck wine bubbling lightens,

Winy fragrance fills the gale.

Gurgling in ambrosial lustre

Flows the purple-eddying wine:

O’er the yard-arms trail and cluster

Tendrils of the mantling vine:

Grapes, beneath the broad leaves springing,

Blushing as in vintage-hours,

Droop, while round the tall mast clinging

Ivy twines its buds and flowers,

Fast with graceful berries blackening:—

Garlands hang on every oar:

Then in fear the cordage slackening,

One and all, they cry, ‘To shore!’

Bacchus changed his shape, and glaring

With a lion’s eye-balls wide,

Roared: the pirate-crew, despairing,

Plunged amid the foaming tide.

Through the azure depths they flitted

Dolphins by transforming fate:

But the god the pilot pitied,

Saved, and made him rich and great.