FROGS.
FROM THE GREEK OF ARISTOPHANES.
Bacchus. * * * * * *
Hold your tongues, you tuneful creatures
Frogs. Cease with your profane entreaties,
All in vain forever stirring;
Silence is against our natures.
With the vernal heat reviving,
Our aquatic crew repair
From their periodic sleep,
In the dark and chilly deep,
To the cheerful upper air;
Then we frolic here and there,
All amid the meadows fair;
Shady plants of asphodel,
Are the lodges where we dwell,
Chanting in the leafy bowers,
All the livelong summer hours,
Till the sudden, gusty showers
Send us headlong, helter-skelter,
To the pool to seek for shelter;
Meager, eager, leaping, lunging,
From the sedgy wharfage plunging
To the tranquil depth below,
Then we muster all a-row,
Where, secure from toil and trouble,
With a tuneful bubble-bubble,
Our symphonious accents flow.
Brikake-kesh, koàsh, koàsh.
* * * * *
Translation of J. H. Frere.