He stay’d, as ’twere within two leagues of Earth,

And penetrated through the halo-girth

Intensely red and hot, to mark his love

For the fall’n god, the earthly friend of Jove!)

This[140] done, the gloomy host returned below

Unto the palace of the queen of woe;

Where preparations were going briskly on,

To bury Bacchus at to-morrow’s sun,—

The going-down thereof, she thought the proper course

For the interment of his giant corpse.