To Bacchus holds the rites divine.

Haste then, ye Bacchæ, haste,

Attend your god, the son of heaven’s high king.

From Phrygia’s mountains wild and waste

To beauteous-structur’d Greece your Bacchus bring

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O ye Curetes, friendly band,

You, the blest natives of Crete’s sacred land,

Who tread those groves, which, dark’ning round,

O’er infant Jove their shelt’ring branches spread,