ZOPYRION.
Oh, he’s gone!
To him I dare not speak, nor yet to Lacon;
No human ears may hear what must be told.
I cannot keep it in, assuredly;
I shall some night discuss it in my sleep.
It will not keep! Oh! greenest reeds that sway
And nod your feathered heads beneath the sun,
Be you depositaries of my soul,
Be you my friends in this extremity[:]
I shall not risk my head when I tell you
The fatal truth, the heart oppressing fact,
(stooping down & whispering)
That royal Midas has got asses’ ears.
Oh! how my soul’s relieved! I feel so light!
Although you cannot thank me for my trust,
Dear, faithful reeds, I love you tenderly;
Mute friends, ye helped me in my greatest need.
Farewel! I know ye will be still as death;
Nor tell the passing winds or running waves
(stoops and whispers)
That royal Midas has got asses’ ears.
(sees Bacchus, starts up in fear, & stands behind watching.)
Enter Bacchus.
BACCHUS.
I have wandered many hours through the paths
And wildernesses of that ilex wood,
Tracing where’er I went my tipsey friend
By the red juice of grapes that stained the ground,
And by the curling branches of the vines
That, springing where he trod, have curled around
The knotty trunks of those eternal trees.
I too have lost my way; nor can I tell
To what barbarian land the wanderer’s come.
I hope no power contemptuous of mine
Has hurt my foster-father;—Who comes here?
’Tis he surrounded by a jocund throng
Of priests and bacchant women, bearing spears
Blunted with pine cones & with ivy wreathed,
And here and there they cry, “Bacchus! Evoe!”
As if the Nysian impulse just began.
And who is he who with a stately crown
Outshines the rest? He seems to be a king;
But were he even an ass on his hind legs
He shall have rich reward if he have saved
And welcomed with due honour my old faun.
(Enter Midas, Silenus & others, who fall back during the scene; Midas is always anxious about his crown, & Zopyrion gets behind him & tries to smother his laughter.)
SILENUS.
(very drunk) Again I find you, Bacchus, runaway!
Welcome, my glorious boy! Another time
Stray not; or leave your poor old foster-father
In the wild mazes of a wood, in which
I might have wandered many hundred years,
Had not some merry fellows helped me out,
And had not this king kindly welcomed me,
I might have fared more ill than you erewhile
In Pentheus’ prisons, that death fated rogue.