The Frogs

 

CHARON. Now stretch your arms full length before you.  

DIONYSUS. So? 

CHAR.  Come, don’t keep fooling; plant your feet, and now 

Pull with a will.  

DIO. Why, how am I to pull? I’m not an oarsman, seaman, 

Salaminian. I can’t!  

CHAR. You can. Just dip your oar in once, You’ll hear the loveliest timing songs.  

DIO. What from? 

CHAR.  Frog-swans, most wonderful.  

DIO. Then give the word. 

CHAR.  Heave ahoy! heave ahoy! 

FROGS.  Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax! Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax! 

We children of the fountain and the lake, 

Let us wake 

Our full choir-shout, as the flutes are ringing out, 

Our symphony of clear-voiced song. 

The song we used to love, in the 

Marshland up above, In praise of 

Dionysus to produce, 

Of Nysaean Dionysus, son of Zeus, 

When the revel-tipsy throng, all crapulous and gay, 

To our precinct reeled along on the holy Pitcher day. 

Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax. 

DIO.  O, dear! O, dear! now I declare I’ve got a bump upon my rump. 

FR.  Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax.

— Aristophanes (c.448 B.C.–c.388 B.C.).  “The Frogs” in The Harvard Classics