But Pentheus, grown more furious than before,
Resolved to send his messengers no more,
But went himself to the distracted throng,
Where high Cithaeron echo’d with their song.
And as the fiery warhorse paws the ground,
And snorts and trembles at the trumpet’s sound,
Transported thus he heard the frantic rout,
And raved and madden’d at the distant shout.
A spacious circuit on the hill there stood,
Level and wide, and skirted round with wood;
Here the rash Pentheus, with unhallow’d eyes,
The howling dames and mystic orgies spies.
His mother sternly view’d him where he stood,
And kindled into madness as she view’d:
Her leafy javelin at her son she cast,
And cries, “The boar that lays our country waste!
The boar, my sisters! Aim the fatal dart,
And strike the brindled monster to the heart.”
Pentheus astonish’d heard the dismal sound,
And sees the yelling matrons gathering round;
He sees, and weeps at his approaching fate,
And begs for mercy, and repents too late.
“Help! help! my aunt Autonoe,” he cried,
“Remember how your own Actaeon died.”
Deaf to his cries, the frantic matron crops
One stretch’d-out arm, the other Ino lops.
In vain does Pentheus to his mother sue,
And the raw bleeding stumps present to view.
His mother howl’d, and, heedless of his prayer,
Her trembling hand she twisted in his hair,
“And this,” she cried, “shall be Agave’s share;”
When from his neck his struggling head she tore,
And in her hands the ghastly visage bore.
With pleasure all the hideous trunk survey,
Then pull’d and tore the mangled limbs away,
As starting in the pangs of death it lay.
Soon as the wood its leafy honours casts,
Blown off and scatter’d by autumnal blasts,
With such a sudden death lay Pentheus slain,
And in a thousand pieces strow’d the plain.
By so distinguishing a judgment awed,
The Thebans tremble and confess the god.