* * * * *

As now when Bassareus, with derision, smiled,

And grew, dissemblingly, more reconciled,

He clench’d his hands and ’rose a cubit higher

(Red as the elements that raged with fire),

And turned his sweating face towards the sky:

Unheeding the vast crowd’s tumultuous cry,

His lips, with much emotion, seemed to move:

At last he thunder’d out this prayer to Jove,—

“O Sovereign Jove! lord, god of air and earth,—