But under weight prone-bowed that tender body a-bendingMakes she her root anon to touch her topmost of tendrils;Tends her never a hind nor tends her ever a herdsman:Yet if haply conjoined the same with elm as a husband,Tends her many a hind and tends her many a herdsman:Thus is the maid when whole, uncultured waxes she aged;But whenas union meet she wins her at ripest of seasons,More to her spouse she is dear and less she's irk to her parents.Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen here, O Hymenaeus!

Youths and DamselsBut do thou cease to resist (O Maid!) such bridegroom opposing,Right it is not to resist whereto consigned thee a father,Father and mother of thee unto whom obedience is owing.Not is that maidenhood all thine own, but partly thy parents!Owneth thy sire one third, one third is right of thy mother,Only the third is thine: stint thee to strive with the others,Who to the stranger son have yielded their dues with a dower!Hymen O Hymenaeus: Hymen here, O Hymenaeus!

THE ADVENTURES OF ATYSO'er high deep seas in speedy ship his voyage Atys spedUntil he trod the Phrygian grove with hurried eager treadAnd as the gloomy tree-shorn stead, the she-god's home, he soughtThere sorely stung with fiery ire and madman's vaguing thought,Share he with sharpened flint the freight wherewith his form was fraught.Then as the she-he sensed limbs were void of manly strainAnd sighted freshly shed a-ground spot of ensanguined stain,Snatched she the timbrel's legier load with hands as snowdrops white,Thy timbrel, Mother Cybele, the firstings of thy rite,And as her tender finger-tips on bull-back hollow rangShe rose a-grieving and her song to listening comrades sang."Up Gallae, hie together, haste for Cybele's deep grove,Hie to the Dindymnean dame, ye flocks that love to rove;The which affecting stranger steads as bound in exile's bruntMy sect pursuing led by me have nerved you to confrontThe raging surge of salty sea and ocean's tyrant handAs your hate of Venus' hest your manly forms unmann'd,Gladden your souls, ye mistresses, with sense of error bann'd.Drive from your spirits dull delay, together follow yeTo hold of Phrygian goddess, home of Phrygian Cybebe,Where loud the cymbal's voice resounds with timbrel-echoes blending,And where the Phrygian piper drones grave bass from reed a-bending,Where toss their ivy-circled heads with might the MaenadesWhere ply mid shrilly lullilooes the holiest mysteries,