chariot-builder bends
    With practised skill his shafts of splintered fig,
    Hot from the fire, to be his axle-wheels;
    Flies the tough-rinded sapling from the hands
    That shape it, at a bound recoiling far: 
    So from far-off the dread beast, all of a heap,
    Sprang on me, hungering for my life-blood.  I
    Thrust with one hand my arrows in his face
    And my doffed doublet, while the other raised
    My seasoned cudgel o’er his crest, and drave
    Full at his temples, breaking clean in twain
    On the fourfooted warrior’s airy scalp
    My club; and ere he reached me, down he fell. 
    Headlong he fell, and poised on tremulous feet
    Stood, his head wagging, and his eyes grown dim;
    For the shrewd stroke had shattered brain and bone. 
    I, marking him beside himself with pain. 
    Fell, ere recovering he should breathe again,
    At vantage on his solid sinewy neck,
    My bow and woven quiver thrown aside. 
    With iron clasp I gripped him from the rear
    (His talons else had torn me) and, my foot
    Set on him, forced to earth by dint of heel
    His hinder parts, my flanks entrenched the while
    Behind his fore-arm; till his thews were stretched
    And strained, and on his haunches stark he stood
    And lifeless; hell received his monstrous ghost. 
    Then with myself I counselled how to strip
    From off the dead beast’s limbs his shaggy hide,
    A task full onerous, since I found it proof
    Against all blows of steel or stone or wood. 
    Some god at last inspired me with the thought,
    With his own claws to rend the lion’s skin. 
    With these I flayed him soon, and sheathed and armed
    My limbs against the shocks of murderous war. 
    Thus, sir, the Nemean lion met his end,
    Erewhile the constant curse of beast and man.”

IDYLL XXVI.

The Bacchanals.

      Agave of the vermeil-tinted cheek
        And Ino and Autonoae marshalled erst
      Three bands of revellers under one hill-peak. 
        They plucked the wild-oak’s matted foliage first,
      Lush ivy then, and creeping asphodel;
    And reared therewith twelve shrines amid the untrodden fell: 

      To Semele three, to Dionysus nine. 
        Next, from a vase drew offerings subtly wrought,
      And prayed and placed them on each fresh green shrine;
        So by the god, who loved such tribute, taught. 
      Perched on the sheer cliff, Pentheus could espy
    All, in a mastick hoar ensconced that grew thereby.

    Autonoae marked him, and with, frightful cries
        Flew to make havoc of those mysteries weird
      That must not be profaned by vulgar eyes. 
        Her frenzy frenzied all.  Then Pentheus feared
      And fled:  and in his wake those damsels three,
    Each with her trailing robe up-gathered to the knee.