In the sixteenth, I sing Nicaia the bride, in her sleep the bedfellow of unresting Dionysos.
The death of the plaintive shepherd was not unavenged ; but valiant Eros caught up his bow and drew a shaft of desire, arming unseen himself against Dionysos as he sat by the bank of the pebbly stream.
Fleet Nicaia had finished her wonted hunt for game; sweating and tired by hard work in her beloved highlands, she was bathing her bare body in a mountain cascade. Now longshot Eros made no delay. He set the endshining beard of a winged arrow to the string, and rounded his bow, and buried the whole shot in the heart of love-maddened Lyaios. Then Dionysos saw the girl swimming in the water bareskin, and his mind was shaken with sweet madness by the fiery shaft. This way and that he went, wherever the maiden harehuntress went : now eyeing the clustering curls of her hair, shaken by the circling breezes as she hurried on her course ; spying her bright neck, when the tresses moved aside and bared it till it gleamed like the moon. He cared not for Satyrs now, he had no pleasure in Bacchants ; but gazing at Olympos, he cried in a love-compelling voice :
“I will be there, where the dewy chase goes on, where the quiver is, where the bolt and the precious bow, where the very groundpallet is perfumed from the unwedded maiden ; I will handle her stakes, and stretch her nets with my own hands: I also will go a-hunting, and kill a fawn like her. And if she scolds me, like some heavytempered Amazon, disgorging womanlike her load of honeysweet threatenings, I will lay my hand on the knees of the angry girl, and touch of her lovely skin like a suppliant ; but I will carry aloft no spray of olive, because that is the tree of Athena, the maiden unwedded and unsoftened ; instead of that bitter oily branch, I will lift to my honeysweet nymph a suppliant cluster of grapes, which contains the purple fruit of honeydropping vintage.
“If the crookbow virgin is vexed, let her not pierce my flesh with a lance, nor draw her murderous shot, let her be merciful and tap my body with the tip of her sweet bow: I do not mind a blow that soothes the heart! If it please her, let her hold the shag fast and pull my hair with her precious hands, she may tear out some of the braids and welcome ! I will never fend off the maiden ; but I will pretend to be cross, and squeeze with unsparing hand the right hand which holds me fast. I will hold the pink fingers imprisoned in my hooked talons, to soothe my love-longing. For the maiden has made prey of all the Olympian beauty.
“Forgive me, Cerne: the Astacid has budded as a new rosyfinger Dawn, a new lightbringer has risen: Nicaia is a younger Selene, who keeps her aspect unchanged. In my desire, I should be glad to take on a world of strange aspects, if respect and veneration for my father did not hold me back. I would go through the waters of Tyre a seafaring bull, and swim along carrying my Nicaia unsprinkled by the deep, like Europa’s bridegroom ; and I would shake my back as if by accident, that the girl might take fright, and her allwhite right hand might pull at my horn. I would be a winged husband, to dance carrying lightly a wife on my back unshaken, as Cronides did with Aigina ; that mated with her I might beget a new eagle, another birdstar to attend on weddings for the However, I will not strike with a thunderbolt my bedfellow’s begetter, and present a father’s death as an impious brideprice, that I may not vex sweet Nicaia for his taking off. Would I were a bastard bird well fledged, because my virgin herself loves winged arrows! I would rather be the flowing form of Danaé’s loves, a golden shower to lie by her side, myself the marriage gift, myself husband, that I might circle round her and pour forth love’s shower of generous dew ; for it would suit well my girl Nicaia with her beautiful eyes, and her golden beauty, to have a golden bedmate.”
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