"Oh thou, whom earth by many a title hails, Son of the thunder-god, and wild delight Of the wild Theban maid! Whether on far Italia's shores obey'd, Or where Eleusis joins thy solemn rites With the great mother's [357], in mysterious vales-- Bacchus in Bacchic Thebes best known, Thy Thebes, who claims the Thyads as her daughters; Fast by the fields with warriors dragon-sown, And where Ismenus rolls his rapid waters. It saw thee, the smoke, On the horned height--[358] It saw thee, and broke With a leap into light; Where roam Corycian nymphs the glorious mountain, And all melodious flows the old Castalian fountain Vocal with echoes wildly glad, The Nysian steeps with ivy clad, And shores with vineyards greenly blooming, Proclaiming, steep to shore, That Bacchus evermore Is guardian of the race, Where he holds his dwelling-place With her [359], beneath the breath Of the thunder's glowing death, In the glare of her glory consuming. Oh now with healing steps along the slope Of loved Parnassus, or in gliding motion, O'er the far-sounding deep Euboean ocean-- Come! for we perish--come!--our Lord and hope! Leader of the stately choir Of the great stars, whose very breath is light, Who dost with hymns inspire Voices, oh youngest god, that sound by night; Come, with thy Maenad throng, Come with the maidens of thy Naxian isle, Who chant their Lord Bacchus--all the while Maddening, with mystic dance, the solemn midnight long!" At the close of the chorus the Nuntius enters to announce the catastrophe, and Eurydice, the wife of Creon, disturbed by rumours within her palace, is made an auditor of the narration. Creon and his train, after burying Polynices, repair to the cavern in which Antigone had been immured. They hear loud wailings within "that unconsecrated chamber"--it is the voice of Haemon. Creon recoils--the attendants enter--within the cavern they behold Antigone, who, in the horror of that deathlike solitude, had strangled herself with the zone of her robe; and there was her lover lying beside, his arms clasped around her waist. Creon at length advances, perceives his son, and conjures him to come forth.