Along the moonlit river tame
A silent vessel glides
Where maiden voices grace the night
In silvered choral tides.

All robed in white, with flowered crowns,
They lift a vesper song.
The water listens, hushed and still,
And bears the prayer along.

The gentle hymn the moon receives
From hearts unsmirched by day.
It drifts like incense o’er the stream
And keeps the dark away.

Then sudden mirth the stillness cleft
With torch and timbrel wild.
Red smoke in wavering circles swept
Above the singers mild.

A throng of maenads stormed the shore,
In skins of dappled fire
And wreaths of shadowed, dusky green
O’er eyes of gleamed desire.

They reeled with cups of ruddy gold
And cried to gods unknown.
Their arms adorned with circling bands
Bright under torches shown.

Fulgent circlets adorned their hair,
While chains their bodies wound.
Gold pitchers rang from hand to hand,
And dark wine soaked the ground.

While maidens stood in silent white
And held the moon’s pale breath,
These laughed and clashed their golden bands
In wine and smoke and death.

Then cried they them from on the bank,
With wine in beck’ning hands.
The hymn upon the maidens’ lips
Fell mute at their commands.

Yet still they stood, nor turned nor fled,
Though breath itself seemed stayed.
But the river bore them, slow and soft,
To where the red lights played.

Then one arose, no sound she made
Beneath the moon’s white gaze.
As mist lifts slow from torpid streams,
She stood, and all were dazed.

Her sisters started, white as stone,
With widened, fearful eyes,
For softly, as the oarless tide,
She moved on toward their cries.

She crossed the boat’s low wooden edge,
Stepped to the muddied land.
The bacchantes closed with sudden speed
And swept her from the strand.

Then smoke and cloud and writhing throng
Now blotted moon and fire.
The red light bled to shapeless dark
That closed over the choir.

No sound among the girls was made
But whimpers, soft and low.
Upon the shore in trampled mud
Her wreath lay white as snow.

– Colin Punt

Author’s Note: “The Sacred and the Profane” was inspired by a poem idea Zinaida offers to one of her suitors in chapter 11 of Turgenev’s First Love. Zinaida calls the revelers “bacchantes,” but I went with “maenads,” as it is easier to work into a poetical meter.