Through the summer day, through the weary day, We have glided long; Ere we speed to the night through her portals gray, Hail us with song! With song, with song, With a bright and joyous song, Such as the Cretan maid, While the twilight made her bolder, Woke, high through the ivy shade, When the wine-god first consoled her. From the hush'd low-breathing skies, Half-shut, look'd their starry eyes, And all around, With a loving sound, The Ægean waves were creeping; On her lap lay the lynx's head; Wild thyme was her bridal bed; And aye through each tiny space, In the green vine's green embrace, The fauns were slyly peeping;-- The fauns, the prying fauns-- The arch, the laughing fauns-- The fauns were slyly peeping! II. Flagging and faint are we With our ceaseless flight, And dull shall our journey be Through the realm of night. Bathe us, O bathe our weary wings, In the purple wave, as it freshly springs To your cups from the fount of light-- From the fount of light--from the fount of light: For there, when the sun has gone down in night, There in the bowl we find him. The grape is the well of that summer sun, Or rather the stream that he gazed upon, Till he left in truth, like the Thespian youth,[7] His soul, as he gazed, behind him. III. A cup to Jove, and a cup to Love, And a cup to the son of Maia, And honor with three, the band zone-free, The band of the bright Agiaia. But since every bud in the wreath of pleasure Ye owe to the sister Hours, No stinted cups, in a formal measure, The Bromian law make ours. He honors us most who gives us most, And boasts with a Bacchanal's honest boast He never will _count_ the treasure. Fastly we fleet, then seize our wings, And plunge us deep in the sparkling springs; And aye, as we rise with a dripping plume, We'll scatter the spray round the garland's bloom. We glow--we glow. Behold, as the girls of the Eastern wave Bore once with a shout to their crystal cave The prize of the Mysian Hylas, Even so--even so, We have caught the young god in our warm embrace, We hurry him on in our laughing race; We hurry him on, with a whoop and song, The cloudy rivers of Night along-- Ho, ho!--we have caught thee, Pallas! [Footnote 7: Narcissus.] The guests applauded loudly: when the poet is your host, his verses are sure to charm. "Thoroughly Greek," said Lepidus: "the wildness, force, and energy of that tongue it is impossible to imitate in the Roman poetry."