All have had a belly-full
Of breakfast brave and plentiful;
Therefore
Evermore
With your voices and your bodies
Serve the goddess,
And raise
Songs of praise;
She shall save the country still,
And save it against the traitor’s will;
So she says.

SEMI-CHORUS

Now let us raise in a different strain
The praise of the goddess, the giver of grain;
Imploring her favor
With other behavior,
In measures more sober, submissive, and graver.

SEMI-CHORUS

Ceres, holy patroness,
Condescend to mark and bless,
With benevolent regard,
Both the Chorus and the Bard;
Grant them for the present day
Many things to sing and say,
Follies intermixed with sense;
Folly, but without offense. 
Grant them with the present play
To bear the prize of verse away.

SEMI-CHORUS

Now call again, and with a different measure,
The power of mirth and pleasure;
The florid, active Bacchus, bright and gay,
To journey forth and join us on the way.

SEMI-CHORUS

O Bacchus, attend! the customary patron of every lively lay;
Go forth without delay
Thy wonted annual way,
To meet the ceremonious holy matron: 
Her grave procession gracing,
Thine airy footsteps tracing
With unlaborious, light, celestial motion;
And here at thy devotion
Behold thy faithful choir
In pitiful attire: 
All overworn and ragged,
This jerkin old and jagged,
These buskins torn and burst,
Though sufferers in the fray,
May serve us at the worst
To sport throughout the day;
And then within the shades
I spy some lovely maids
With whom we romped and reveled,
Dismantled and disheveled,
With their bosoms open,—­
With whom we might be coping.
Xan.—­Well, I was always hearty,
Disposed to mirth and ease: 
I’m ready to join the party.
Bac.—­And I will if you please.

A PARODY OF EURIPIDES’S LYRIC VERSE

From ‘The Frogs’

Halcyons ye by the flowing sea
Waves that warble twitteringly,
Circling over the tumbling blue,
Dipping your down in its briny dew,
Spi-i-iders in corners dim
Spi-spi-spinning your fairy film,
Shuttles echoing round the room
Silver notes of the whistling loom,
Where the light-footed dolphin skips
Down the wake of the dark-prowed ships,
Over the course of the racing steed
Where the clustering tendrils breed
Grapes to drown dull care in delight,
Oh! mother make me a child again just for to-night! 
I don’t exactly see how that last line is to scan,
But that’s a consideration I leave to our musical man.

     THE PROLOGUES OF EURIPIDES

From ‘The Frogs’