Metamorphoses

Of bodies changed to various forms I sing:
Ye gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with celestial heat,
Till I my long laborious work complete;
And add perpetual tenor to my rhymes,
Deduced from Nature’s birth to Caesar’s times.

Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven’s high canopy that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d and unframed,
Of jarring seeds, and justly Chaos named.
No sun was lighted up the world to view,
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew,
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky,
Nor poised, did on her own foundations lie,
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water’s dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was impress’d;
All were confused, and each disturb’d the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fix’d,
And soft with hard, and light with heavy, mix’d.

But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end.
Then earth from air, and seas from earth, were driven,
And grosser air sunk from ethereal heaven.
Thus disembroil’d, they take their proper place;
The next of kin contiguously embrace;
And foes are sunder’d by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire,
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire;
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a numerous throng
Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy, seeds along.
About her coasts unruly waters roar,
And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the god, whatever god was he,
Had form’d the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round:
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part, in earth are swallow’d up, the most
In ample oceans disembogued, are lost.
He shades the woods, the valleys he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.

And as five zones the ethereal regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to earth assign’d:
The sun, with rays directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone;
The two beneath the distant poles complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
Betwixt the extremes, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot and cold.
The fields of liquid air, enclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
The lighter parts lie next the fires above,
The grosser near the watery surface move:
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder’s voice, which wretched mortals fear,
And winds, that on their wings cold winter bear.
Nor were those blust’ring brethren left at large,
On seas and shores their fury to discharge:
Bound as they are, and circumscribed in place,
They rend the world, resistless, where they pass,
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
(The regions of the balmy continent),
And eastern realms, where, early, Persians run
To greet the bless’d appearance of the sun.
Westward, the wanton zephyr wings his flight,
Pleased with the remnants of departing light.
Fierce Boreas, with his offspring issues forth
To invade the frozen wagon of the north;
While frowning Auster seeks the southern sphere,
And rots, with endless rain, the unwholesome year.

High o’er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The god a clearer space for heaven design’d;
Where fields of light, and liquid ether flow,
Purged from the ponderous dregs of earth below.

Scarce had the power distinguish’d these, when straight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads from underneath the mass,
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
And with diffusive light adorn their heavenly place.
Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods he fills the vacant sky;
New herds of beasts he sends the plains to share;
New colonies of birds to people air;
And to their oozy beds the finny fish repair.

A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was man design’d;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form’d, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his soul inspire,
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant, still retained the ethereal energy,
Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,
And, mix’d with living streams, the godlike image cast.
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
From such rude principles our form began,
And earth was metamorphosed into man.

The golden age was first, when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law where none oppress’d;
The law of man was written in his breast:
No suppliant crowds before the judge appear’d,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard,
But all was safe; for conscience was their guard.
The mountain trees in distant prospect please,
Ere yet the pine descended to the seas;
Ere sails were spread new oceans to explore,
And happy mortals, unconcern’d for more,
Confined their wishes to their native shore.
No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet’s angry sound,
Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow:
Content with food which Nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;
Cornels and brambleberries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnish’d out a feast.
The flowers unsown, in fields and meadows reign’d;
And western winds immortal spring maintain’d.
In following years the bearded corn ensued
From earth unask’d, nor was that earth renew’d.
From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke,
And honey sweating through the pores of oak.

But when good Saturn, banish’d from above,
Was driven to hell, the world was under Jove.
Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell’d by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter, did appear,
And spring was but a season of the year;
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarged the bad.
Then air with sultry heats began to glow,
The wings of winds were clogg’d with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driven,
Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.
Those houses, then, were caves or homely sheds,
With twining osiers fenced, and moss their beds.
Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labour’d first beneath the yoke.

To this came next in course the brazen age;
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet.

Hard steel succeeded then,
And stubborn as the metal were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook;
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.
Then sails were spread to every wind that blew,
Raw were the sailors and the depths were new;
Trees, rudely hollow’d did the waves sustain,
Ere ships in triumph plough’d the watery plain.

Then landmarks limited to each his right;
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone required to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share,
But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digg’d from her entrails first the precious ore
(Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid),
And that alluring ill to sight display’d.
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold;
And double death did wretched man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betray’d.
Now (brandish’d weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands;
No rights of hospitality remain;
The guest, by him who harbour’d him, is slain;
The son-in-law pursues the father’s life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife;
The stepdame poison for the son prepares;
The son inquires into his father’s years;
Faith flies, and piety in exile mourns;
And justice, here oppress’d, to heaven returns.

Nor were the gods themselves more safe above,
Against beleaguer’d heaven the giants move,
Hills piled on hills, on mountains mountains lie,
To make their mad approaches to the sky;
Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time
To avenge with thunder their audacious crime.
Red lightning play’d along the firmament,
And their demolish’d works to pieces rent.
Singed with the flames, and with the bolts transfix’d.
With native earth their blood the monsters mix’d.
The blood, indued with animating heat,
Did, in the impregnant earth, new sons beget.
They, like the seed from which they sprung, accursed,
Against the gods immortal hatred nursed;
An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood,
Expressing their original from blood.

Which, when the king of gods beheld from high
(Withal revolving in his memory
What he himself had found on earth of late,
Lycaon’s guilt, and his inhuman treat),
He sigh’d, nor longer with his pity strove,
But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove.

Then call’d a general council of the gods,
Who, summon’d, issue from their bless’d abodes,
And fill the assembly with a shining train.
A way there is in heaven’s expanded plain,
Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below,
And mortals by the name of milky know;
The groundwork is of stars; through which the road
Lies open to the Thunderer’s abode;
The gods of greater nations dwell around,
And, on the right and left, the palace bound;
The commons where they can; the nobler sort,
With winding doors wide open, front the court.
This place, as far as earth with heaven may vie,
I dare to call the Louvre of the sky.
When all were placed in seats distinctly known,
And he, their father, had assumed the throne,
Upon his ivory sceptre first he lean’d,
Then shook his head, that shook the firmament:
Air, earth, and seas, obey’d the almighty nod,
And, with a general fear, confess’d the god;
At length, with indignation, thus he broke
His awful silence, and the powers bespoke:

“I was not more concern’d in that debate
Of empire, when our universal state
Was put to hazard, and the giant race
Our captive skies were ready to embrace;
For though the foe was fierce, the seeds of all
Rebellion sprung from one original;
Now, wheresoever ambient waters glide,
All are corrupt, and all must be destroy’d.
Let me this holy protestation make;
By hell, and hell’s inviolable lake,
I tried whatever in the godhead lay;
But gangrened members must be lopp’d away,
Before the nobler parts are tainted to decay.
There dwells below a race of demi-gods,
Of nymphs in waters, and of fauns in woods,
Who though not worthy yet in heaven to live,
Let them, at least, enjoy that earth we give.
Can these be thought securely lodged below,
When I myself, who no superior know,
I, who have heaven and earth at my command,
Have been attempted by Lycaon’s hand?”

At this a murmur through the synod went,
And, with one voice, they vote his punishment.
Thus, when conspiring traitors dared to doom
The fall of Caesar, and in him of Rome,
The nations trembled with a pious fear,
Ail anxious for their earthly Thunderer;
Nor was their care, O Caesar, less esteem’d
By thee, than that of heaven for Jove was deem’d:
Who, with his hand and voice, did first restrain
Their murmurs, then resumed his speech again.
The gods to silence were composed, and sate
With reverence, due to his superior state.

“Cancel your pious cares; already he
Has paid his debt to justice and to me;
Yet what his crimes, and what my judgments were,
Remains for me thus briefly to declare.
The clamours of this vile degenerate age,
The cries of orphans, and the oppressor’s rage,
Had reach’d the stars: ‘I will descend,’ said I,
‘In hope to prove this loud complaint a lie.’
Disguised in human shape I travell’d round
The world, and more than what I heard I found.
O’er Maenalus I took my steepy way,
By caverns infamous for beasts of prey;
Then cross’d Syllene, and the piny shade
More infamous, by cursed Lycaon made:
Dark night had cover’d heaven and earth before
I enter’d his inhospitable door.
Just at my entrance, I display’d the sign
That somewhat was approaching of divine:
The prostrate people pray, the tyrant grins,
And adding profanation to his sins,
‘I’ll try,’ said he, ‘and if a god appear,
To prove his deity shall cost him dear.’
’Twas late, the graceless wretch my death prepares,
When I should soundly sleep, oppress’d with cares:
This dire experiment he chose to prove
If I were mortal, or undoubted Jove:
But first he had resolved to taste my power.
Not long before, but in a luckless hour,
Some legates, sent from the Molossian state,
Were on a peaceful errand come to treat;
Of these he murders one, he boils the flesh,
And lays the mangled morsels in a dish;
Some part he roasts, then serves it up, so dress’d,
And bids me welcome to this human feast.
Moved with disdain, the table I o’erturn’d,
And with avenging flames the palace burn’d.
The tyrant, in a fright, for shelter gains
The neighb’ring fields, and scours along the plains;
Howling he fled, and fain he would have spoke,
But human voice his brutal tongue forsook;
About his lips the gather’d foam he churns,
And, breathing slaughters, still with rage he burns,
But on the bleating flock his fury turns.
His mantle, now his hide, with rugged hairs
Cleaves to his back, a famish’d face he bears,
His arms descend, his shoulders sink away
To multiply his legs for chase of prey;
He grows a wolf, his hoariness remains,
And the same rage in other members reigns,
His eyes still sparkle in a narrower space,
His jaws retain the grin and violence of his face.

“This was a single ruin, but not one
Deserves so just a punishment alone.
Mankind’s a monster, and the ungodly times
Confederate into guilt are sworn to crimes;
All are alike involved in ill, and all
Must by the same relentless fury fall.”
Thus ended he; the greater gods assent,
By clamours urging his severe intent,
The less fill up the cry for punishment:
Yet still with pity they remember man,
And mourn as much as heavenly spirits can.
They ask, when those were lost of human birth,
What he would do with all this waste of earth;
If his dispeopled world he would resign
To beasts, a mute and more ignoble line;
Neglected altars must no longer smoke,
If none were left to worship and invoke.
To whom the father of the gods replied:
“Lay that unnecessary fear aside,
Mine be the care new people to provide;
A race unlike the first, and try my skill again.”

Already had he toss’d the flaming brand,
And roll’d the thunder in his spacious hand,
Preparing to discharge on seas and land;
But stopp’d, for fear, thus violently driven,
The sparks should catch his axletree of heaven;
Remembering in the Fates, a time when fire
Should to the battlements of heaven aspire,
And all his blazing worlds above should burn,
And all the inferior globe to cinders turn.
His dire artillery thus dismiss’d, he bent
His thoughts to some securer punishment;
Concludes to pour a watery deluge down,
And what he durst not burn, resolves to drown.

The northern breath, that freezes floods, he binds,
With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds;
The south he loosed, who night and horror brings,
And fogs are shaken from his flaggy wings;
From his divided heard two streams he pours,
His head and rheumy eyes distil in showers.
With rain his robe and heavy mantle flow,
And lazy mists are lowering on his brow;
Still as he swept along with his clench’d fist
He squeezed the clouds, the imprison’d clouds resisit;
The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound,
And showers enlarged, come pouring on the ground;
Then, clad in colours of a various dye,
Junonian Iris breeds a new supply
To feed the clouds; impetuous rain descends,
The bearded corn beneath the burden bends,
Defrauded clowns deplore their perish’d grain,
And the long labours of the year are vain.

Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down;
Aid from his brother of the seas he craves,
To help him with auxiliary waves.
The watery tyrant calls his brooks and floods,
Who roll from mossy caves, their moist abodes,
And with perpetual urns his palace fill,
To whom, in brief, he thus imparts his will:

“Small exhortation needs; your powers employ,
And this bad world, so Jove requires, destroy,
Let loose the reins to all your watery store,
Bear down the dams, and open every door.”

The floods, by nature enemies to land,
And proudly swelling with their new command,
Remove the living stones that stopp’d their way,
And, gushing from their source, augment the sea.
Then, with his mace, their monarch struck the ground,
With inward trembling earth received the wound,
And rising streams a ready passage found.
The expanded waters gather on the plain,
They float the fields, and overtop the grain;
Then rushing onwards, with a sweepy sway,
Bear flocks, and folds, and labouring hinds, away.
Nor safe their dwellings were, for, sapp’d by floods,
Their houses fell upon their household gods.
The solid piles, too strongly built to fall,
High o’er their heads behold a watery wall.
Now seas and earth were in confusion lost;
A world of waters, and without a coast.

One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is borne,
And ploughs above where late he sow’d his corn;
Others o’er chimney-tops and turrets row,
And drop their anchors on the meads below,
Or downward driven, they bruise the tender vine,
Or toss’d aloft, are knock’d against a pine.
And where, of late, the kids had cropp’d the grass,
The monsters of the deep now take their place;
Insulting Nereids on the cities ride,
And wondering dolphins o’er the palace glide;
On leaves and masts of mighty oaks they browse,
And their broad fins entangle in the boughs;
The frighted wolf now swims among the sheep;
The yellow lion wanders in the deep;
His rapid force no longer helps the boar;
The stag swims faster than he ran before;
The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,
Despair of land, and drop into the main;
Now hills and vales no more distinction know,
And levell’d nature lies oppress’d below;
The most of mortals perish in the flood,
The small remainder dies for want of food.

A mountain of stupendous height there stands
Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands,
The bound of fruitful fields, while fields they were,
But then a field of waters did appear,
Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise
Mounts through the clouds and mates the lofty skies;
High on the summit of this dubious cliff,
Deucalion wafting, moor’d his little skiff;
He with his wife were only left behind
Of perish’d man; they two were human kind.
The mountain nymphs and Themis they adore,
And from her oracles relief implore.
The most upright of mortal men was he;
The most sincere and holy woman, she.

When Jupiter, surveying earth from high,
Beheld it in a lake of water lie,
That where so many millions lately lived,
But two, the best of either sex, survived;
He loosed the northern wind, fierce Boreas flies,
To puff away the clouds and purge the skies;
Serenely while he blows, the vapours driven,
Discover heaven to earth, and earth to heaven.
The billows fall, while Neptune lays his mace
On the rough sea, and smooths its furrow’d face.
Already Triton, at his call, appears
Above the waves, a Tyrian robe he wears,
And in his hand a crooked trumpet bears.
The sovereign bids him peaceful sounds inspire
And give the waves the signal to retire.
His writhen shell he takes, whose narrow vent
Grows by degrees into a large extent,
Then gives it breath; the blast with doubling sound
Runs the wide circuit of the world around;
The sun first heard it, in his early east,
And met the rattling echoes in the west;
The waters, listening to the trumpet’s roar,
Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.

A thin circumference of land appears,
And earth, but not at once, her visage rears,
And peeps upon the seas from upper grounds;
The streams, but just contain’d within their bounds,
By slow degrees into their channels crawl,
And earth increases as the waters fall;
In longer time the tops of trees appear,
Which mud on their dishonour’d branches bear.

At length the world was all restored to view,
But desolate, and of a sickly hue;
Nature beheld herself, and stood aghast,
A dismal desert and a silent waste.

Which when Deucalion, with a piteous look,
Beheld, he wept, and thus to Pyrrha spoke:
“O wife! O sister! O of all thy kind
The best, and only creature left behind,
By kindred, love, and now by dangers join’d;
Of multitudes, who breathed the common air,
We two remain; a species in a pair:
The rest the seas have swallow’d; nor have we
Ev’n of this wretched life a certainty.
The clouds are still above; and while I speak,
A second deluge o’er our heads may break.
Should I be snatch’d from hence, and thou remain,
Without relief, or partner of thy pain,
How couldst thou such a wretched life sustain?
Should I be left, and thou be lost, the sea
That buried her I loved, should bury me.
O could our father his old arts inspire,
And make me heir of his informing fire,
That so I might abolish’d man retrieve,
And perish’d people in new souls might live!
But Heaven is pleased, nor ought we to complain,
That we, the examples of mankind, remain.”
He said: the careful couple join their tears,
And then invoke the gods, with pious prayers.
Thus, in devotion having eased their grief,
From sacred oracles they seek relief,
And to Cephisus’ brook their way pursue;
The stream was troubled, but the ford they knew:
With living waters, in the fountain bred,
They sprinkle first their garments and their head,
Then took the way which to the temple led.
The roofs were all defiled with moss and mire;
The desert altars void of solemn fire.
Before the gradual prostrate they adored;
The pavement kiss’d; and thus the saint implor’d:

“O, righteous Themis, if the powers above
By prayers are bent to pity, and to love;
If human miseries can move their mind;
If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;
Tell how we may restore, by second birth,
Mankind, and people desolated earth.”
Then thus the gracious goddess, nodding, said:
“Depart, and with your vestments veil your head;
And stooping lowly down, with loosen’d zones,
Throw each behind your backs your mighty mother’s bones.”
Amazed the pair, and mute with wonder, stand,
Till Pyrrha first refused the dire command.
“Forbid it Heaven,” said she, “that I should tear
Those holy relics from the sepulchre!”
They ponder’d the mysterious words again,
For some new sense; and long they sought in vain:
At length Deucalion clear’d his cloudy brow,
And said, “the dark enigma will allow
A meaning, which, if well I understand,
From sacrilege will free the god’s command:
This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones
In her capacious body are her bones:
These we must cast behind.” With hope and fear
The woman did the new solution hear:
The man diffides in his own augury,
And doubts the gods; yet both resolve to try.
Descending from the mount, they first unbind
Their vests, and veil’d, they cast the stones behind:
The stones (a miracle to mortal view,
But long tradition makes it pass for true)
Did first the rigour of their kind expel,
And suppled into softness as they fell;
Then swell’d, and swelling by degrees, grew warm,
And took the rudiments of human form.
Imperfect shapes: in marble such are seen,
When the rude chisel does the man begin;
While yet the roughness of the stone remains,
Without the rising muscles and the veins.
The sappy parts, and next resembling juice,
Were turn’d to moisture, for the body’s use;
Supplying humours, blood, and nourishment;
The rest, too solid to receive a bent,
Converts to bones; and what was once a vein,
Its former name and nature did retain.
By help of power divine, in little space,
What the man threw assumed a manly face,
And what the wife, renew’d the female race.
Hence we derive our nature; born to bear
Laborious life, and harden’d into care.

The rest of animals, from teeming earth
Produced, in various forms received their birth.
The native moisture, in its close retreat,
Digested by the sun’s ethereal heat,
As in a kindly womb, began to breed,
Then swell’d, and quicken’d by the vital seed.
And some in less, and some in longer space,
Were ripen’d into form, and took a several face.
Thus when the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,
And seeks, with ebbing tides, his ancient bed,
The fat manure with heavenly fire is warm’d,
And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are form’d;
These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find;
Some rude, and yet unfinish’d in their kind;
Short of their limbs, a lame imperfect birth;
One half alive, and one of lifeless earth.

For heat and moisture, when in bodies join’d,
The temper that results from either kind
Conception makes, and fighting till they mix,
Their mingled atoms in each other fix.
Thus Nature’s hand the genial bed prepares,
With friendly discord and with fruitful wars.

From hence the surface of the ground, with mud
And slime besmear’d (the feces of the flood),
Received the rays of heaven, and sucking in
The seeds of heat, new creatures did begin:
Some were of several sorts produced before;
But of new monsters earth created more.
Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light
Thee, Python too, the wond’ring world to fright,
And the new nations, with so dire a sight:
So monstrous was his bulk, so large a space
Did his vast body and long train embrace;
Whom Phoebus, basking on a bank, espied:
Ere now the god his arrows had not tried,
But on the trembling deer, or mountain goat:
At this new quarry he prepares to shoot.
Though every shaft took place, he spent the store
Of his full quiver; and ’twas long before
The expiring serpent wallow’d in his gore.
Then, to preserve the fame of such a deed,
For Python slain, he Pythian games decreed;
Where noble youths for mastership should strive
To quoit, to run, and steeds and chariots drive.
The prize was fame: in witness of renown
An oaken garland did the victor crown.
The laurel was not yet for triumphs born,
But every green, alike by Phoebus worn,
Did, with promiscuous grace, his flowing locks adorn.

The first and fairest of his loves was she
Whom not blind Fortune, but the dire decree
Of angry Cupid forced him to desire:
Daphne her name, and Peneus was her sire.
Swell’d with the pride that new success attends,
He sees the stripling, while his bow he bends,
And thus insults him: “Thou lascivious boy,
Are arms like these for children to employ?
Know, such achievements are my proper claim,
Due to my vigour and unerring aim;
Resistless are my shafts, and Python late,
In such a feather’d death, has found his fate.
Take up thy torch (and lay my weapons by),
With that the feeble souls of lovers fry.”
To whom the son of Venus thus replied:
“Phoebus, thy shafts are sure on all beside;
But mine on Phoebus; mine the fame shall be
Of all thy conquests, when I conquer thee.”

He said, and soaring, swiftly wing’d his flight,
Nor stopp’d, but on Parnassus’ airy height.
Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;
One to repel desire, and one to cause.
One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,
To bribe the love, and make the lover bold:
One blunt, and tipp’d with lead, whose base allay
Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.
The blunted bolt against the nymph he dress’d,
But with the sharp transfix’d Apollo’s breast.

The enamour’d deity pursues the chase;
The scornful damsel shuns his loath’d embrace:
In hunting beasts of prey her youth employs,
And Phoebe rivals in her rural joys:
With naked neck she goes, and shoulders bare,
And with a fillet binds her flowing hair.
By many suitors sought, she mocks their pains,
And still her vow’d virginity maintains.
On wilds and woods she fixes her desire;
Nor knows what youth and kindly love inspire.
Her father chides her oft: “Thou owest,” says he,
“A husband to thyself, a son to me.”
She, like a crime, abhors the nuptial bed;
She glows with blushes, and she hangs her head:
Then, casting round his neck her tender arms,
Soothes him with blandishments and filial charms.
“Give me, my lord,” she said, “to live and die
A spotless maid, without the marriage tie;
’Tis but a small request; I beg no more
Than what Diana’s father gave before.”
The good old sire was soften’d to consent;
But said her wish would prove her punishment;
For so much youth and so much beauty join’d,
Opposed the state which her desires design’d.

The god of light, aspiring to her bed,
Hopes what he seeks, with flattering fancies fed,
And is, by his own oracles, misled.
And as in empty fields the stubble burns,
Or nightly travellers, when day returns,
Their useless torches on dry hedges throw,
That catch the flames, and kindle all the row;
So burns the god, consuming in desire,
And feeding in his breast a fruitless fire:
Her well-turn’d neck he view’d (her neck was bare),
And on her shoulders her dishevell’d hair:
“O were it comb’d,” said he, “with what a gace
Would every waving curl become her face!”
He view’d her eyes, like heavenly lamps that shone.
He view’d her lips, too sweet to view alone.
Swift as the wind the damsel fled away,
Nor did for these alluring speeches stay.
“Stay, nymph,” he cried, “I follow, not a foe.
Thus from the lion trips the trembling doe;
Thus from the wolf the frighten’d lamb removes,
And from pursuing falcons fearful doves:
Thou shunn’st a god, and shunn’st a god that loves.
Ah, lest some thorn should pierce thy tender foot,
Or thou shouldst fall in flying my pursuit!
To sharp uneven ways thy steps decline;
Abate thy speed, and I will hate of mine.
Yet think from whom thou dost so rashly fly;
Nor basely born, nor shepherd’s swain am I.
Perhaps thou know’st not my superior state;
And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.
Me Claros, Delphos, Tenedos, obey;
These hands the Patareian sceptre sway:
The king of gods begot me: what shall be,
Or is, or ever was, in fate, I see:
Mine is the invention of the charming lyre:
Sweet notes, and heavenly numbers, I inspire:
Sure is my bow, unerring is my dart;
But ah! more deadly his who pierced my heart.
Med’cine is mine; what herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their powers I know,
And am the great physician call’d below.
Alas! that fields and forests can afford
No remedies to heal their lovesick lord:
To cure the pains of love no plant avails;
And his own physic the physician fails.”

She heard not half, so furiously she flies;
And on her ear the imperfect accent dies.
Fear gave her wings; and, as she fled, the wind
Increasing, spread her flowing hair behind.

As when the impatient greyhound, slipp’d from far,
Bounds o’er the glebe, to course the fearful hare,
She in her speed does all her safety lay;
And he with double speed pursues the prey;
O’erruns her at the sitting turn, and licks
His chaps in vain, and blows upon the flix:
She scapes, and for the neighb’ring covert strives,
And, gaining shelter, doubts if yet she lives.
If little things with great we may compare,
Such was the god, and such the flying fair;
She, urged by fear, her feet did swiftly move,
But he more swiftly, who was urged by love.
He gathers ground upon her in the chase;
Now breathes upon her hair, with nearer pace;
And just is fastening on the wish’d embrace.
The nymph grew pale, and, in a mortal fright,
Spent with the labour of so long a flight,
And now despairing, cast a mournful look
Upon the streams of her paternal brook:
“O help,” she cried, “in this extremest need!
If water-gods are deities indeed;
Gape earth, and this unhappy wretch entomb;
Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come.”
Scarce had she finish’d, when her feet she found
Benumb’d with cold, and fasten’d to the ground;
A filmy rind about her body grows;
Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs:
The nymph is all into a laurel gone;
The smoothness of her skin remains alone.
Yet Phoebus loves her still, and casting round
Her bole his arms, some little warmth he found.
The tree still panted in the unfinish’d part,
Not wholly vegetive, and heaved her heart.
He fix’d his lips upon the trembling rind;
It swerved aside, and his embrace declined:
To whom the god, “Because thou canst not be
My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree:
Be thou the prize of honour and renown;
The deathless poet, and the poem, crown:
Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,
And, after poets, be by victors worn:
Thou shalt returning Caesar’s triumph grace,
When pomps shall in a long procession pass;
Wreath’d on the post before his palace wait,
And be the sacred guardian of the gate:
Secure from thunder, and unharm’d by Jove;
Unfading as the immortal powers above:
And as the locks of Phoebus are unshorn,
So shall perpetual green thy boughs adorn.”
The grateful tree was pleased with what he said,
And shook the shady honours of her head.

An ancient forest in Thessalia grows,
Which Tempe’s pleasing valley does enclose:
Through this the rapid Peneus takes his course,
From Pindus rolling with impetuous force:
Mists from the river’s mighty fall arise,
And deadly damps enclose the cloudy skies;
Perpetual fogs are hanging o’er the wood;
And sounds of waters deaf the neighbourhood.
Deep in a rocky cave he makes abode
(A mansion proper for a mourning god).
Here he gives audience; issuing out decrees
To rivers, his dependant deities.
On this occasion hither they resort,
To pay their homage, and to make their court;
All doubtful whether to congratulate
His daughter’s honour, or lament her fate.
Sperchaeus, crown’d with poplar, first appears;
Then old Apidanus came crown’d with years:
Enipeus turbulent; Amphrysos tame;
And Aeas last, with lagging waters came;
Then of his kindred brooks a numerous throng
Condole his loss, and bring their urns along:
Not one was wanting of the watery train
That fill’d his flood, or mingled with the main,
But, Inachus, who, in his cave alone,
Wept not another’s losses, but his own;
For his dear Io, whether stray’d or dead
To him uncertain, doubtful tears he shed.
He sought her through the world, but sought in vain,
And nowhere finding, rather fear’d her slain.

Her, just returning from her father’s brook,
Jove had beheld, with a desiring look:
“And, O fair daughter of the flood,” he said,
“Worthy alone of Jove’s imperial bed;
Happy whoever shall those charms possess;
The king of gods (nor is thy lover less)
Invites thee to yon cooler shades, to shun
The scorching rays of the meridian sun:
Nor shalt thou tempt the dangers of the grove
Alone, without a guide; thy guide is Jove:
No puny power, but he whose high command
Is unconfined, who rules the seas and land,
And tempers thunder in his awful hand.
O fly not:” for she fled from his embrace,
O’er Lerna’s pastures: he pursued the chase
Along the shades of the Lyrcaean plain.
At length the god, who never asks in vain,
Involved with vapours, imitating night,
Both air and earth; and then suppress’d her flight.
Meantime the jealous Juno, from on high,
Survey’d the fruitful fields of Arcady,
And wonder’d that the mist should overrun
The face of daylight, and obscure the sun.
No natural cause she found, from brooks, or bogs,
Or marshy lowlands, to produce the fogs:
Then round the skies she sought for Jupiter,
Her faithless husband; but no Jove was there.
Suspecting now the worst: “Or I,” she said,
“Am much mistaken, or am much betray’d.”
With fury she precipitates her flight;
Dispels the shadows of dissembled night,
And to the day restores his native light.
The almighty culprit, careful to prevent
The consequence, foreseeing her descent,
Transforms his mistress in a trice; and now
In Io’s place appears a lovely cow.
So sleek her skin, so faultless was her make,
Ev’n Juno did unwilling pleasure take
To see so fair a rival of her love;
And what she was, and whence, inquired of Jove;
Of what fair herd, and from what pedigree?
The god, half caught, was forced upon a lie,
And said she sprung from earth. She took the word,
And begg’d the beauteous heifer of her lord.
What should he do? ’twas equal shame to Jove
Or to relinquish or betray his love;
Yet to refuse so slight a gift would be
But more to increase his consort’s jealousy:
Thus fear and love, by turns, his heart assail’d;
And stronger love had sure, at length, prevail’d:
But some faint hope remain’d, his jealous queen
Had not the mistress through the heifer seen.
The cautious goddess, of her gift possess’d,
Yet harbour’d anxious thoughts within her breast;
As she who knew the falsehood of her Jove,
And justly fear’d some new relapse of love;
Which to prevent, and to secure her care,
To trusty Argus she commits the fair.

The head of Argus (as with stars the skies)
Was compass’d round, and wore a hundred eyes:
But two by turns their lids in slumber steep;
The rest on duty still their station keep;
Nor could the total constellation sleep.
Thus, ever present to his eyes and mind,
His charge was still before him, though behind.
In fields he suffer’d her to feed by day;
But when the setting sun to night gave way,
The captive cow he summon’d with a call,
And drove her back, and tied her to the stall.
On leaves of trees and bitter herbs she fed:
Heaven was her canopy; bare earth her bed:
So hardly lodged:⁠—and to digest her food,
She drank from troubled streams, defiled with mud.
Her woeful story fain she would have told,
With hands upheld; but had no hands to hold.
Her head to her ungentle keeper bow’d,
She strove to speak; she spoke not, but she low’d;
Affrighted with the noise, she look’d around,
And seem’d to inquire the author of the sound.

Once on the banks where often she had play’d
(Her father’s banks) she came, and there survey’d
Her alter’d visage, and her branching head;
And, starting, from herself she would have fled.
Her fellow nymphs, familiar to her eyes,
Beheld, but knew her not in this disguise;
Ev’n Inachus himself was ignorant,
And in his daughter did his daughter want.
She follow’d where her fellows went, as she
Were still a partner of the company:
They stroke her neck; the gentle heifer stands,
And her neck offers to their stroking hands.
Her father gave her grass; the grass she took,
And lick’d his palms, and cast a piteous look,
And in the language of her eyes she spoke.
She would have told her name, and ask’d relief,
But wanting words, in tears she tells her grief;
Which, with her foot she makes him understand,
And prints the name of Io in the sand.

“Ah wretched me!” her mournful father cried;
“She with a sigh to wretched me replied.”
About her milk-white neck his arms he threw,
And wept; and then these tender words ensue;
“And art thou she whom I have sought around
The world, and have at length so sadly found?
So found, is worse than lost: with mutual words
Thou answerest not; no voice thy tongue affords;
But sighs are deeply drawn from out thy breast;
And speech denied by lowing is express’d.
Unknowing, I prepared thy bridal bed,
With empty hopes of happy issue fed:
But now the husband of a herd must be
Thy mate, and bellowing sons thy progeny.
O, were I mortal, death might bring relief;
But now my godhead but extends my grief;
Prolongs my woes, of which no end I see,
And makes me curse my immortality!”
More had he said, but fearful of her stay,
The starry guardian drove his charge away
To some fresh pasture; on a hilly height
He sat himself, and kept her still in sight.

Now Jove no longer could her sufferings bear,
But call’d in haste his airy messenger,
The son of Maia, with severe decree,
To kill the keeper, and to set her free.
With all his harness soon the god was sped,
His flying hat was fasten’d on his head;
Wings on his heels were hung, and in his hand
He holds the virtue of the snaky wand.
The liquid air his moving pinions wound,
And, in the moment, shoot him on the ground.
Before he came in sight, the crafty god
His wings dismiss’d, but still retain’d his rod.
That sleep-procuring wand wise Hermes took,
But made it seem to sight a shepherd’s hook:
With this he did a herd of goats control,
Which by the way he met, and slyly stole:
Clad like a country swain, he piped and sung,
And, playing, drove his jolly troop along.

With pleasure Argus the musician heeds,
But wonders much at those new vocal reeds.
“And whosoe’er thou art, my friend,” said he,
“Up hither drive thy goats, and play by me;
This hill has browse for them and shade for thee.”
The god, who was with ease induced to climb,
Began discourse to pass away the time;
And still, betwixt, his tuneful pipe he plies,
And watch’d his hour, to close the keeper’s eyes.
With much ado, he partly kept awake,
Not suffering all his eyes repose to take;
And ask’d the stranger who did reeds invent;
And whence began so rare an instrument?

Then Hermes thus: “A nymph of late there was,
Whose heavenly form her fellows did surpass;
The pride and joy of fair Arcadia’s plains;
Beloved by deities, adored by swains;
Syrinx her name; by sylvans oft pursued,
As oft she did the lustful gods delude;
The rural and the woodland powers disdain’d;
With Cynthia hunted, and her rites maintain’d;
Like Phoebe clad, even Phoebe’s self she seems,
So tall, so straight, such well-proportion’d limbs:
The nicest eye did no distinction know,
But that the goddess bore a golden bow:
Distinguish’d thus, the sight she cheated too.
Descending from Lycaeus, Pan admires
The matchless nymph, and burns with new desires.
A crown of pine upon his head he wore;
And thus began her pity to implore:⁠—
But ere he thus began, she took her flight,
So swift, she was already out of sight;
Nor stay’d to hear the courtship of the god;
But bent her course to Ladon’s gentle flood;
There by the river stopp’d, and, tired before,
Relief from water-nymphs her prayers implore.

“Now while the amorous god, with speedy pace,
Just thought to strain her in a strict embrace,
He fills his arms with reeds, new rising on the place:
And while he sighs, his ill success to find,
The tender canes were shaken by the wind,
And breathed a mournful air, unheard before,
That, much surprising Pan, yet pleased him more.
Admiring this new music⁠—‘Thou,’ he said,
‘Who canst not be the partner of my bed,
At least shall be the consort of my mind,
And often, often to my lips be join’d.’
He form’d the reeds, proportion’d as they are,
Unequal in their length, and wax’d with care:
They still retain the name of his ungrateful fair.”

While Hermes piped, and sung, and told his tale,
The keeper’s winking eyes began to fail,
And drowsy slumber on the lids to creep,
Till all the watchman was at length asleep.
Then soon the god his voice and song suppress’d,
And with his powerful rod confirm’d his rest;
Without delay his crooked falchion drew,
And at one fatal stroke the keeper slew.
Down from the rock fell the dissever’d head,
Opening its eyes in death, and falling, bled,
And mark’d the passage with a crimson trail:
Thus Argus lies in pieces, cold and pale,
And all his hundred eyes, with all their light,
Are closed at once in one perpetual night.
These Juno takes, that they no more way fail,
And spreads them in her peacock’s gaudy tail.

Impatient to revenge her injured bed,
She wreaks her anger on her rival’s head;
With furies frights her from her native home,
And drives her, gadding, round the world to roam;
Nor ceased her madness, and her flight, before
She touch’d the limits of the Pharian shore.
At length, arriving on the banks of Nile,
Wearied with length of ways, and worn with toil,
She laid her down, and, leaning on her knees,
Invoked the cause of all her miseries,
And cast her languishing regards above,
For help from Heaven and her ungrateful Jove.
She sigh’d, she wept, she low’d; ’twas all she could;
And with unkindness seem’d to tax the god:
Last, with an humble prayer, she begg’d repose,
Or death, at least, to finish all her woes.
Jove heard her vows, and, with a flattering look,
In her behalf to jealous Juno spoke.
He cast his arms about her neck, and said,
“Dame, rest secure; no more thy nuptial bed
This nymph shall violate; by Styx I swear,
And every oath that binds the Thunderer.”
The goddess was appeased; and at the word
Was Io to her former shape restored:
The rugged hair began to fall away;
The sweetness of her eyes did only stay;
Though not so large: her crooked horns decrease;
The wideness of her jaws and nostrils cease;
Her hoofs to hands return, in little space;
The five long taper fingers take their place;
And nothing of the heifer now is seen,
Beside the native whiteness of the skin.
Erected on her feet she walks again;
And two the duty of the four sustain.
She tries her tongue; her silence softly breaks,
And fears her former lowings when she speaks:
A goddess now, through all the Egyptian state,
And served by priests, who in white linen wait.

Her son was Epaphus, at length believed
The son of Jove, and as a god received;
With sacrifice adored, and public prayers,
He common temples with his mother shares.
Equal in years, and rival in renown,
With Epaphus, the youthful Phaeton
Like honour claims, and boasts his sire the sun.
His haughty looks, and his assuming air,
The son of Isis could no longer bear.
“Thou takest thy mother’s word too far,” said he,
“And hast usurp’d thy boasted pedigree:
Go, base pretender to a borrow’d name.”
Thus tax’d, he blush’d with anger and with shame:
But shame repressed his rage: the daunted youth
Soon seeks his mother, and inquires the truth.
“Mother,” said he, “this infamy was thrown
By Epaphus on you, and me your son.
He spoke in public, told it to my face,
Nor durst I vindicate the dire disgrace:
Even I, the bold, the sensible of wrong,
Restrain’d by shame, was forced to hold my tongue.
To hear an open slander is a curse;
But not to find an answer is a worse.
If I am heaven-begot, assert your son,
By some sure sign, and make my father known,
To right my honour, and redeem your own.”
He said, and saying, cast his arms about
Her neck, and begg’d her to resolve the doubt.

’Tis hard to judge if Clymene were moved
More by his prayer, whom she so dearly loved,
Or more with fury fired, to find her name
Traduced, and made the sport of common fame.
She stretch’d her arms to heaven, and fix’d her eyes
On that fair planet that adorns the skies.
“Now by those beams,” said she, “whose holy fires
Consume my breast, and kindle my desires;
By him who sees us both, and cheers our sight,
By him, the public minister of light,
I swear that sun begot thee; if I lie,
Let him his cheerful influence deny;
Let him no more this perjured creature see,
And shine on all the world but only me.
If still you doubt your mother’s innocence,
His eastern mansion is not far from hence;
With little pains you to his levee go,
And from himself your parentage may know.”
With joy the ambitious youth his mother heard,
And, eager for his journey, soon prepared.
He longs the world beneath him to survey,
To guide the chariot, and to give the day.
From Meroe’s burning sands he bends his course,
Nor less in India feels his father’s force;
His travel urging, till he came in sight,
And saw the palace by the purple light.

The sun’s bright palace, on high columns raised,
With burnish’d gold and flaming jewels blazed;
The folding gates diffused a silver light,
And with a milder gleam refresh’d the sight;
Of polish’d ivory was the covering wrought;
The matter vied not with the sculptor’s thought;
For in the portal was display’d on high
(The work of Vulcan) a fictitious sky;
À waving sea the inferior earth embraced,
And gods and goddesses the waters graced.
Aegeon here a mighty whale bestrode;
Triton, and Proteus (the deceiving god),
With Doris here were carved, and all her train:
Some loosely swimming in the figured main,
While some on rocks their dropping hair divide,
And some on fishes through the waters glide:
Though various features did the sisters grace,
A sister’s likeness was in every face.
On earth a different landscape courts the eyes:
Men, towns, and beasts, in distant prospects rise,
And nymphs, and streams, and woods, and rural deities.
O’er all, the heaven’s refulgent image shines:
On either gate were six engraven signs.

Here Phaeton, still gaining on the ascent,
To his suspected father’s palace went,
Till, pressing forward through the bright abode,
He saw at distance the illustrious god:
He saw at distance, or the dazzling light
Had flash’d too strongly on his aching sight.

The god sits high, exalted on a throne
Of blazing gems, with purple garments on:
The Hours in order ranged on either hand,
And Days, and Months, and Years, and Ages, stand.
Here Spring appears, with flowery chaplets bound;
Here Summer, in her wheaten garland crown’d;
Here Autumn the rich trodden grapes besmear,
And hoary Winter shivers in the rear.

Phoebus beheld the youth from off his throne;
That eye which looks on all was fixed on one:
He saw the boy’s confusion in his face,
Surprised at all the wonders of the place,
And cries aloud, “What wants my son? for know
My son thou art, and I must call thee so.”

“Light of the world,” the trembling youth replies,
“Illustrious parent! since you don’t despise
The parent’s name, some certain token give,
That I may Clymene’s proud boast believe,
Nor longer under false reproaches grieve.”

The tender sire was touch’d with what he said,
And flung the blaze of glories from his head,
And bade the youth advance. “My son,” said he,
“Come to thy father’s arms! for Clymene
Has told thee true: a parent’s name I own,
And deem thee worthy to be call’d my son.
As a sure proof, make some request, and I,
Whate’er it be, with that request comply:
By Styx I swear, whose waves are hid in night,
And roll impervious to my piercing sight.”

The youth, transported, asks, without delay,
To guide the sun’s bright chariot for a day.

The god repented of the oath he took;
For anguish thrice lis radiant head he shook.
“My son,” said he, “some other proof require;
Rash was my promise, rash is thy desire.
I’d fain deny this wish which thou hast made,
Or, what I can’t deny, would fain dissuade.
Too vast and hazardous the task appears,
Nor suited to thy strength, nor to thy years.
Thy lot is mortal, but thy wishes fly
Beyond the province of mortality.
There is not one of all the gods that dares
(However skill’d in other great affairs)
To mount the burning axletree but I;
Not Jove himself, the ruler of the sky,
That hurls the three-fork’d thunder from above,
Dares try his strength: yet who so strong as Jove?
The steeds climb up the first ascent with pain,
And when the middle firmament they gain,
If downwards from the heavens my head I bow,
And see the earth and ocean hang below,
Ev’n I am seized with horror and affright,
And my own heart misgives me at the sight.
A mighty downfall steeps the evening stage;
And steady reins must curb the horses’ rage:
Tethys herself has fear’d to see me driven
Down headlong from the precipice of heaven.
Besides, consider what impetuous force
Turns stars and planets in a different course:
I steer against their motions; nor am I
Borne back by all the current of the sky.
But how could you resist the orbs that roll
In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole?
But you, perhaps, may hope for pleasing woods,
And stately domes, and cities fill’d with gods;
While through a thousand snares your progress lies,
Where forms of starry monsters stock the skies:
For, should you hit the doubtful way aright,
The bull, with stooping horns, stands opposite;
Next him, the bright Haemonian bow is strung;
And next, the lion’s grinning visage hung:
The scorpion’s claws here clasp a wide extent;
And here the crab’s in lesser clasps are bent.
Nor would you find it easy to compose
The mettled steeds, when from their nostrils flows
The scorching fire that in their entrails glows.
Ev’n I their headstrong fury scarce restrain,
When they grow warm and restiff to the rein.
Let not my son a fatal gift require;
But, O! in time, recall your rash desire:
You ask a gift that may your parent tell;
Let these my fears your parentage reveal,
And learn a father from a father’s care:
Look on my face; or if my heart lay bare,
Could you but look, you’d read the father there.
Choose out a gift, from seas, or earth, or skies;
For open to your wish all nature lies;
Only decline this one unequal task,
For ’tis a mischief, not a gift, you ask.
You ask a real mischief, Phaeton:
Nay, hang not thus about my neck, my son.
I grant your wish, and Styx has heard my voice;
Choose what you will, but make a wiser choice.”

Thus did the god the unwary youth advise;
But he still longs to travel through the skies;
When the fond father (for in vain he pleads)
At length to the Vulcanian chariot leads.
A golden axle did the work uphold,
Gold was the beam, the wheels were orb’d with gold;
The spokes in rows of silver pleased the sight;
The seat with parti-colour’d gems was bright:
Apollo shined amid the glare of light.
The youth with secret joy the work surveys,
When now the moon disclosed her purple rays:
The stars were fled, for Lucifer had chased
The stars away, and fled himself at last.
Soon as the father saw the rosy morn,
And the moon shining with a blunter horn,
He bid the nimble Hours, without delay,
Bring forth the steeds: the nimble Hours obey.
From their full racks the generous steeds retire,
Dropping ambrosial foams, and snorting fire.
Still anxious for his son, the god of day,
To make him proof against the burning ray,
His temples with celestial ointment wet,
Of sovereign virtue, to repel the heat;
Then fix’d the beamy circle on his head,
And fetch’d a deep foreboding sigh, and said:
“Take this at least, this last advice, my son:
Keep a stiff rein, and move but gently on:
The coursers of themselves will run too fast;
Your art must be to moderate their haste.
Drive them not on directly through the skies,
But where the zodiac’s winding circle lies,
Along the midmost zone; but sally forth,
Nor to the distant south, nor stormy north.
The horses’ hoofs a beaten track will show;
But neither mount too high, nor sink too low.
That no new fires or heaven or earth infest,
Keep the mid way: the middle way is best:
Nor where, in radiant folds, the serpent twines,
Direct your course; nor where the altar shines:
Shun both extremes; the rest let Fortune guide,
And better for thee than thyself provide!
See, while I speak, the shades disperse away,
Aurora gives the promise of a day;
I’m call’d, nor can I make a longer stay.
Snatch up the reins, or still the attempt forsake,
And not my chariot, but my counsel, take,
While yet securely on the earth you stand,
Nor touch the horses with too rash a hand.
Let me alone to light the world, while you
Enjoy those beams which you may safely view.”
He spoke in vain: the youth, with active heat
And sprightly vigour, vaults into the seat,
And joys to hold the reins, and fondly gives
Those thanks his father with remorse receives.

Meanwhile the restless horses neigh’d aloud,
Breathing out fire, and pawing where they stood.
Tethys, not knowing what had pass’d, gave way,
And all the waste of heaven before them lay.
They spring together out, and swiftly bear
The flying youth through clouds and yielding air;
With wingy speed outstrip the eastern wind,
And leave the breezes of the morn behind.
The youth was light, nor could he fill the seat,
Or poise the chariot with its wonted weight:
But as at sea the unballasted vessel rides,
Cast to and fro, the sport of winds and tides,
So in the bounding chariot, toss’d on high,
The youth is hurried headlong through the sky.
Soon as the steeds perceive it, they forsake
Their stated course, and leave the beaten track.
The youth was in a maze, nor did he know
Which way to turn the reins, or where to go:
Nor would the horses, had he known, obey.
Then the seven stars first felt Apollo’s ray,
And wish’d to dip in the forbidden sea.
The folded serpent, next the frozen pole,
Stiff and benumb’d before, began to roll,
And raged with inward heat, and threaten’d war,
And shot a redder light from every star;
Nay, and ’tis said, Bootes, too, that fain
Thou wouldst have fled, though cumber’d with thy wain.

The unhappy youth then, bending down his head,
Saw earth and ocean far beneath him spread.
His colour changed, he startled at the sight,
And his eyes darken’d by too great a light.
Now could he wish the fiery steeds untried,
His birth obscure, and his request denied:
Now would he Merops for his father own,
And quit his boasted kindred to the Sun.

So fares the pilot, when his ship is toss’d
In troubled seas, and all its steerage lost;
He gives her to the winds, and, in despair,
Seeks his last refuge in the gods and prayer.

What could he do? his eyes, if backward cast,
Find a long path he had already pass’d;
If forward, still a longer path they find:
Both he compares, and measures in his mind;
And sometimes casts an eye upon the east,
And sometimes looks on the forbidden west.
The horses’ names he knew not in the fright;
Nor would he loose the reins, nor could he hold them right.

Now all the horrors of the heavens he spies,
And monstrous shadows of prodigious size,
That, deck’d with stars, lie scatter’d o’er the skies.
There is a place above, where Scorpio bent
In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent;
In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines,
And fills the space of two celestial signs.
Soon as the youth beheld him, vex’d with heat,
Brandish his sting, and in his poison sweat,
Half dead with sudden fear, he dropp’d the reins;
The horses felt them loose upon their manes,
And, flying out through all the plains above,
Ran, uncontroll’d, where’er their fury drove;
Rush’d on the stars, and, through a pathless way
Of unknown regions, hurried on the day.
And now above and now below they flew,
And near the earth the burning chariot drew.

The clouds disperse in fumes, the wond’ring moon
Beholds her brother’s steeds beneath her own:
The high lands smoke, cleft by the piercing rays,
Or, clad with woods, in their own fuel blaze.
Next o’er the plains, where ripen’d harvests grow,
The running conflagration spreads below.
But these are trivial ills: whole cities burn,
And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn.

The mountains kindle as the car draws near;
Athos and Tmolus red with fires appear;
Oeagrian Haemus (then a single name)
And virgin Helicon increase the flame:
Taurus and Oete glare amid the sky;
And Ida, spite of all her fountains, dry:
Eryx, and Othrys, and Cithaeron, glow;
And Rhodope, no longer clothed in snow:
High Pindus, Mimas, and Parnassus, sweat;
And Aetna rages with redoubled heat:
Ev’n Scythia, through her hoary regions warm’d,
In vain with all her native frost was arm’d:
Cover’d with flames, the towering Apennine,
And Caucasus, and proud Olympus, shine;
And where the long-extended Alps aspire
Now stands a huge continued range of fire.

The astonish’d youth, where’er his eyes could turn,
Beheld the universe around him burn:
The world was in a blaze; nor could he bear
The sultry vapours and the scorching air,
Which from below, as from a furnace, flow’d:
And now the axletree beneath him glow’d.
Lost in the whirling clouds that round him broke,
And white with ashes, hovering in the smoke,
He flew where’er the horses drove, nor knew
Whither the horses drove, or where he flew.

’Twas then, they say, the swarthy Moor begun
To change his hue, and blacken in the sun;
Then Libya first, of all her moisture drain’d,
Became a barren waste, a wild of sand;
The water-nymphs lament their empty urns;
Boeotia, robb’d of silver Dirce, mourns;
Corinth Pyrene’s wasted spring bewails;
And Argos grieves while Amymone fails.

The foods are drain’d from every distant coast;
Ev’n Tanais, though fix’d in ice, was lost:
Enraged Caicus and Lycormas roar,
And Xanthus, fated to be burnt once more:
The famed Maeander, that unwearied strays
Through many windings, smokes in every maze:
From his loved Babylon Euphrates flies:
The big-swoln Ganges and the Danube rise
In thick’ning fumes, and darken half the skies:
In flames Ismenos and the Phasis roll’d,
And Tagus, floating in his melted gold:
The swans, that on Cayster often tried
Their tuneful songs, now sung their last, and died:
The frighted Nile ran off, and under ground
Conceal’d his head, nor can it yet be found;
His seven divided currents all are dry,
And, where they roll’d, seven gaping trenches lie:
No more the Rhine or Rhone their course maintain,
Nor Tiber, of his promised empire vain.

The ground, deep cleft, admits the dazzling ray,
And startles Pluto with the flash of day:
The seas shrink in, and to the sight disclose
Wide naked plains, where once their billows rose;
Their rocks are all discover’d, and increase
The number of the scatter’d Cyclades;
The fish in shoals about the bottom creep;
Nor longer dares the crooked dolphin leap:
Gasping for breath, the unshapen Phocae die,
And on the boiling wave extended lie:
Nereus, and Doris, with her virgin train,
Seek out the last recesses of the main:
Beneath unfathomable depths they faint,
And secret in their gloomy caverns pant:
Stern Neptune thrice above the waves upheld
His face, and thrice was by the flames repell’d.

The Earth at length, on every side embraced
With scalding seas, that floated round her waist,
When now she felt the springs and rivers come,
And crowd within the hollow of her womb,
Uplifted to the heavens her blasted head,
And clapp’d her hand upon her brows, and said,
(But first, impatient of the sultry heat,
Sunk deeper down, and sought a cooler seat):
“If you, great king of gods, my death approve,
And I deserve it, let me die by Jove:
If I must perish by the force of fire,
Let me transfix’d with thunderbolts expire.
See, while I speak, my breath the vapours choke
(For now her face lay wrapp’d in clouds of smoke),
See my singed hair, behold my faded eye,
And wither’d face, where heaps of cinders lie!
And does the plough for this my body tear?
This the reward for all the fruits I bear,
Tortured with rakes, and harass’d all the year?
That herbs for cattle daily I renew,
And food for man, and frankincense for you?
But, grant me guilty, what has Neptune done?
Why are his waters boiling in the sun?
The wavy empire, which by lot was given,
Why does it waste, and farther shrink from heaven?
If I nor he your pity can provoke,
See your own heavens, the heavens begin to smoke!
Should once the sparkles catch those bright abodes,
Destruction seizes on the heavens and gods;
Atlas becomes unequal to his freight,
And almost faints beneath the glowing weight.
If heaven, and earth, and sea, together burn,
All must again into their chaos turn.
Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate,
And succour Nature ere it be too late.”
She ceased, for choked with vapours round her spread,
Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head.

Jove call’d to witness ev’ry power above,
And even the god whose son the chariot drove,
That what he acts he is compell’d to do,
Or universal ruin must ensue.
Straight he ascends the high ethereal throne,
From whence he used to dart his thunder down,
From whence his showers and storms he used to pour,
But now could meet with neither storm nor shower:
Then, aiming at the youth, with lifted hand,
Full at his head he hurl’d the forky brand
In dreadful thunderings. Thus the almighty sire
Suppress’d the raging of the fires with fire.

At once from life and from the chariot driven,
The ambitious boy fell thunderstruck from heaven;
The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
The studded harness from their necks they broke,
Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke,
Here were the beam and axle torn away,
And scatter’d o’er the earth the shining fragments lay.
The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair,
Shot from the chariot like a falling star,
That in a summer’s evening from the top
Of heaven drops down, or seems, at least, to drop,
Till on the Po his blasted corpse was hurl’d,
Far from his country, in the western world.

The Latian nymphs came round him, and amazed,
On the dead youth, transfix’d with thunder, gazed,
And, while yet smoking from the bolt he lay,
His shatter’d body to a tomb convey;
And o’er the tomb an epitaph devise:
“Here he who drove the sun’s bright chariot lies;
His father’s fiery steeds he could not guide,
But in the glorious enterprise he died.”

Apollo hid his face, and pined for grief,
And, if the story may deserve belief,
The space of one whole day is said to run,
From morn to wonted ev’n, without a sun;
The burning ruins, with a fainter ray,
Supply the sun, and counterfeit a day,
A day that still did Nature’s face disclose,
This comfort from the mighty mischief rose.

But Clymene, enraged with grief, laments,
And as her grief inspires her passion vents;
Wild for her son, and frantic in her woes,
With hair dishevell’d, round the world she goes
To seek where’er his body might be cast,
Till, on the borders of the Po, at last
The name inscribed on the new tomb appears
The dear, dear name she bathes in flowing tears,
Hangs o’er the tomb, unable to depart,
And hugs the marble to her throbbing heart.

Her daughters too lament, and sigh, and mourn
(A fruitless tribute to their brother’s urn),
And beat their naked bosoms, and complain,
And call aloud for Phaeton in vain;
All the long night their mournful watch they keep,
And all the day stand round the tomb and weep.

Four times, revolving, the full moon return’d,
So long the mother and the daughters mourn’d,
When now the eldest, Phaethusa, strove
To rest her weary limbs, but could not move;
Lampetia would have help’d her, but she found
Herself withheld and rooted to the ground;
A third, in wild affliction as she grieves,
Would rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves:
One sees her thighs transform’d, another views
Her arms slot out and branching into boughs,
And now their legs, and breasts, and bodies, stood
Crusted with bark, and harden’d into wood;
But still above were female heads display’d,
And mouths, that call’d the mother to their aid.
What could, alas! the weeping mother do?
From this to that with eager haste she flew,
And kiss’d her sprouting daughters as they grew;
She tears the bark that to each body cleaves;
And from their verdant fingers strips the leaves;
The blood came trickling where she tore away
The leaves and bark. The maids were heard to say
“Forbear, mistaken parent, O forbear!
A wounded daughter in each tree you tear;
Farewell for ever.” Here the bark increased,
Closed on their faces, and their words suppress’d.

The new-made trees in tears of amber run,
Which, harden’d into value by the sun,
Distil for ever on the stream below;
The limpid streams their radiant treasure show
Mix’d in the sand, whence the rich drops convey’d
Shine in the dress of the bright Latian maid.

Cycnus beheld the nymphs transform’d, allied
To their dead brother on the mortal side,
In friendship and affection nearer bound,
He left the cities and the realms he own’d,
Through pathless fields and lonely shores to range,
And woods made thicker by the sisters’ change.
While here within the dismal gloom alone,
The melancholy monarch made his moan,
His voice was lessen’d as he tried to speak,
And issued through a long extended neck;
His hair transforms to down, his fingers meet
In skinny films and shape his oary feet;
From both his sides the wings and feathers break,
And from his mouth proceeds a blunted beak:
All Cycnus now into a swan was turn’d,
Who, still remembering how his kinsman burn’d,
To solitary pools and lakes retires,
And loves the waters as opposed to fires.
Meanwhile Apollo, in the gloomy shade
(The native lustre of his brows decay’d),
Indulging sorrow, sickens at the sight
Of his own sunshine, and abhors the light.
The hidden griefs that in his bosom rise,
Sadden his looks and overcast his eyes,
As when some dusky orb obstructs his ray,
And sullies, in a dim eclipse, the day.

Now secretly with inward griefs he pined,
Now warm resentments to his grief he join’d,
And now renounced his office to mankind.
“E’er since the birth of time,” said he, “I’ve borne
A long ungrateful toil without return;
Let now some other manage, if he dare,
The fiery steeds, and mount the burning car;
Or, if none else, let Jove his fortune try,
And learn to lay his murd’ring thunder by;
Then will he own, perhaps, but own too late,
My son deserved not so severe a fate.”

The gods stand round him, as he mourns, and pray
He would resume the conduct of the day,
Nor let the world be lost in endless night;
Jove too himself, descending from his height,
Excuses what had happen’d, and entreats,
Majestically mixing prayers and threats.
Prevail’d upon at length, again he took
The harness’d steeds, that still with horror shook,
And plies them with the lash, and whips them on,
And, as he whips, upbraids them with his son.

The day was settled in its course, and Jove
Walk’d the wide circuit of the heavens above.
To search if any cracks or flaws were made;
But all was safe: the earth he then survey’d,
And cast an eye on ev’ry different coast,
And ev’ry land, but on Arcadia most.
Her fields he clothed, and cheer’d her blasted face
With running fountains and with springing grass.
No tracks of heaven’s destructive fire remain,
The fields and woods revive, and nature smiles again.

But as the god walk’d to and fro the earth,
And raised the plants, and gave the spring its birth,
By chance a fair Arcadian nymph he view’d,
And felt the lovely charmer in his blood.
The nymph nor spun nor dress’d with artful pride.
Her vest was gather’d up, her hair was tied:
Now in her hand a slender spear she bore,
Now a light quiver on her shoulders wore;
To chaste Diana from her youth inclined,
The sprightly warriors of the wood she join’d.
Diana too the gentle huntress loved,
Nor was there one of all the nymphs that roved
O’er Maenalus, amid the maiden throng,
More favour’d once; but favour lasts not long.

The sun now shone in all its strength, and drove
The heated virgin panting to the grove:
The grove around a grateful shadow cast:
She dropp’d her arrows, and her bow unbraced;
She flung herself on the cool grassy bed,
And on the painted quiver raised her head.
Jove saw the charming huntress unprepared,
Stretch’d on the verdant turf, without a guard.
“Here I am safe,” he cries, “from Juno’s eye:
Or should my jealous queen the theft descry,
Yet I would venture on a theft like this,
And stand her rage, for such, for such a bliss!”
Diana’s shape and habit straight he took,
Soften’d his brows, and smooth’d his awful look,
And mildly in a female accent spoke:
“How fares my girl? how went the morning chase?”
To whom the virgin, starting from the grass,
“All hail! bright deity, whom I prefer
To Jove himself, though Jove himself were here.”
The god was nearer than she thought, and heard,
Well pleased, himself before himself preferr’d.

He then salutes her with a warm embrace;
And, ere she half had told the morning chase,
With love inflamed, and eager on his bliss:
Smother’d her words, and stopp’d her with a kiss:
His kisses with unwonted ardour glow’d,
Nor could Diana’s shape conceal the god.

Possess’d at length of what his heart desired,
Back to his heavens the exulting god retired.

But now Diana, with a sprightly train
Of quiver’d virgins, bounding o’er the plain,
Call’d to the nymph; the nymph began to fear
A second fraud, a Jove disguised in her;
But when she saw the sister nymphs, suppress’d
Her rising fears, and mingled with the rest.

How in the look does conscious guilt appear!
Slowly she moved, and loiter’d in the rear;
Nor lightly tripp’d, nor by the goddess ran,
As once she used, the foremost of the train;
Her looks were fush’d, and sullen was her mien,
That sure the virgin goddess (had she been
Aught but a virgin) must the guilt have seen.
’Tis said the nymphs saw all, and guess’d aright.
And now the moon had nine times lost her light,
When Dian, fainting in the midday beams,
Found a cool covert and refreshing streams,
That in soft murmurs through the forest flow’d,
And a smooth bed of shining gravel show’d.

A covert so obscure and streams so clear
The goddess praised: “And now no spies are near;
Let’s strip, my gentle maids, and wash,” she cries.
Pleased with the motion, every maid complies;
Only the blushing huntress stood confused,
And form’d delays, and her delays excused:
In vain excused; her fellows round her press’d,
And the reluctant nymph by force undress’d.
The naked huntress all her shame reveal’d,
In vain her hands her pregnancy conceal’d;
“Begone!” the goddess cries, with stern disdain,
“Begone! nor dare the hallow’d stream to stain.”
She fled, for ever banish’d from the train.

This Juno heard, who long had watch’d her time
To punish the detested rival’s crime;
The time was come; for, to enrage her more,
A lovely boy the teeming rival bore.

The goddess cast a furious look, and cried,
“It is enough! I’m fully satisfied!
This boy shall stand a living mark, to prove
My husband’s baseness and the harlot’s love:
But vengeance shall awake: those guilty charms,
That drew the Thunderer from Juno’s arms,
No longer shall their wonted force retain,
Nor please the god, nor make the mortal vain.”

This said, her hand within her hair she wound,
Swung her to earth, and dragg’d her on the ground.
The prostrate wretch lifts up her arms in prayer;
Her arms grow shaggy and deform’d with hair,
Her nails are sharpen’d into pointed claws,
Her hands bear balf her weight and turn to paws,
Her lips, that once could tempt a god, begin
To grow distorted in an ugly grin;
And, lest the supplicating brute might reach
The cars of Jove, she was deprived of speech;
Her surly voice through a hoarse passage came
In savage sounds, her mind was still the same.
The furry monster fix’d her eyes above,
And heaved her new unwieldy paws to Jove,
And begg’d his aid with inward groans; and though
She could not call him false she thought him so.

How did she fear to lodge in woods alone,
And haunt the fields and meadows once her own!
How often would the deep-mouth’d dogs pursue,
While from her hounds the frighted huntress flew!
How did she fear her fellow brutes, and shun
The shaggy bear, though now herself was one!
How from the sight of rugged wolves retire,
Although the grim Lycaon was her sire!

But now her son had fifteen summers told,
Fierce at the chase, and in the forest bold;
When, as he beat the woods in quest of prey,
He chanced to rouse his mother where she lay.
She knew her son, and kept him in her sight,
And fondly gazed. The boy was in a fright,
And aim’d a pointed arrow at her breast,
And would have slain his mother in the beast;
But Jove forbade, and snatch’d them through the air
In whirlwinds up to heaven, and fix’d them there;
Where the new constellations nightly rise,
And add a lustre to the northern skies.

When Juno saw the rival in her height,
Spangled with stars and circled round with light,
She sought old Ocean in his deep abodes,
And Tethys, both revered among the gods.
They ask what brings her there. “Ne’er ask,” says she,
“What brings me here, heaven is no place for me.
You’ll see, when all things are obscured by night,
Jove’s starry mistress with resplendent light
Usurp the heavens; you’ll see her proudly roll
In her new orb, and brighten all the pole.
And who shall now on Juno’s altars wait,
When those she hates grow greater by her hate?
I on the nymph a brutal form impress’d,
Jove to a goddess has transform’d the beast.
This, this was all my weak revenge could do;
But let the god his chaste amours pursue,
And, as he acted after Io’s rape,
Restore the adultress to her former shape;
Then may he cast his Juno off, and lead
The great Lycaon’s offspring to his bed.
But you, ye venerable powers, be kind,
And, if my wrongs a due resentment find,
Receive not in your waves their setting beams,
Nor let the glaring harlot taint your streams.”

The goddess ended, and her wish was given
Back she return’d in triumph up to heaven;
Her gaudy peacocks drew her through the skies;
Their tails were spotted with a thousand eyes;
The eyes of Argus on their tails were ranged,
At the same time the raven’s colour changed.

The raven once in snowy plumes was dress’d,
White as the whitest dove’s unsullied breast,
Fair as the guardian of the capitol,
Soft as the swan, a large and lovely fowl;
His tongue, his prating tongue, had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white.

The story of his change shall here be told.
In Thessaly there lived a nymph of old,
Coronis named; a peerless maid she shined,
Confess’d the fairest of the fairer kind.
Apollo loved her till her guilt he knew,
While true she was, or while he thought her true;
“But his own bird, the raven, chanced to find
The false one with a secret rival join’d.
Coronis begg’d him to suppress the tale;
But could not with repeated prayers prevail.
His milk-white pinions to the god he plied;
The busy daw flew with him side by side,
And, by a thousand teasing questions, drew
The important secret from him as they flew.
The daw gave honest counsel, though despised,
And, tedious in her tattle, thus advised:

“Stay, silly bird, the illnatured task refuse;
Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news.
Be warn’d by my example. You discern
What now I am, and what I was shall learn.
My foolish honesty was all my crime:
Then hear my story. Once upon a time,
The two-shaped Ericthonius had his birth
(Without a mother) from the teeming earth:
Minerva nursed him, and the infant laid
Within a chest of twining osiers made.
The daughters of King Cecrops undertook
To guard the chest, commanded not to look
On what was hid within. I stood to see
The charge obey’d, perch’d on a neighbouring tree,
The sisters, Pandrosos and Herse, keep
The strict command; Aglauros needs would peep,
And saw the monstrous infant, in a fright,
And call’d her sisters to the hideous sight.
A boy’s soft shape did to the waist prevail;
But the boy ended in a dragon’s tail.
I told the stern Minerva all that pass’d;
But for my pains discarded and disgraced.
The frowning goddess drove me from her sight,
And for her fav’rite chose the bird of night.
Be then no telltale; for I think my wrong
Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue.

“But you, perhaps, may think I was removed
As never by the heavenly maid beloved:
But I was loved; ask Pallas if I lie;
Though Pallas hates me now, she wont deny.
For I, whom in a feather’d shape you view,
Was once a maid, by heaven the story’s true!
A blooming maid, and a king’s daughter too.
A crowd of lovers own’d my beauty’s charms;
My beauty was the cause of all my harms;
Neptune, as on his shores I wont to rove,
Observed me in my walks, and fell in love.
He made his courtship, he confess’d his pain,
And offer’d force when all his arts were vain:
Swift he pursued; I ran along the strand,
Till spent and wearied on the sinking sand,
I shriek’d aloud, with cries I fill’d the air
To gods and men, nor god nor man was there:
A virgin goddess heard a virgin’s prayer.
For, as my arms I lifted to the skies,
I saw black feathers from my fingers rise;
I strove to fling my garment on the ground,
My garment turn’d to plumes, and girt me round;
My hands to beat my naked bosom try,
Nor naked bosom now nor hands had I;
Lightly I tripp’d, nor weary as before:
Sunk in the sand, but skimm’d along the shore,
Till, rising on my wings, I was preferr’d
To be the chaste Minerva’s virgin bird.
Preferr’d in vain! I now am in disgrace:
Nyctimene, the owl, enjoys my place.

“On her incestuous life I need not dwell
(In Lesbos still the horrid tale they tell),
And of her dire amours you must have heard,
For which she now does penance in a bird;
That, conscious of her shame, avoids the light,
And loves the gloomy covering of the night.
The birds, where’er she flutters, scare away
The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day.”

The raven, urged by such impertinence,
Grew passionate, it seems, and took offence,
And cursed the harmless daw; the daw withdrew.
The raven to her injured patron flew,
And found him out, and told the fatal truth
Of false Coronis, and the favour’d youth.

The god was wroth, the colour left his look,
The wreath his head, the harp his hand, forsook;
His silver bow and feather’d shafts he took,
And lodged an arrow in the tender breast
That had so often to his own been press’d.
Down fell the wounded nymph, and sadly groan’d,
And pull’d his arrow reeking from the wound;
And, weltering in her blood, thus faintly cried:
“Ah, cruel god! though I have justly died,
What has, alas! my unborn infant done,
That he should fall, and two expire in one?”
This said, in agonies she fetch’d her breath.

The god dissolves in pity at her death;
He hates the bird that made her falsehood known,
And hates himself for what himself had done;
The feather’d shaft that sent her to the Fates,
And his own hand that sent the shaft, he hates.
Fain would he heal the wound and ease her pain,
And tries the compass of his art in vain.
Soon as he saw the lovely nymph expire,
The pile made ready, and the kindling fire,
With sighs and groans her obsequies he kept,
And, if a god could weep, the god had wept.
Her corpse he kiss’d, and heavenly incense brought,
And solemnized the death himself had wrought.

But lest his offspring should her fate partake,
Spite of the immortal mixture in his make,
He ripp’d her womb and set the child at large,
And gave him to the centaur Chiron’s charge;
Then in his fury black’d the raven o’er,
And bade him prate in his white plumes no more.

Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Chariclo to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevell’d on her shoulders, came
To see the child, Ocyrrhoe was her name;
She knew her father’s arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
Once as the sacred infant she survey’d,
The god was kindled in the raving maid,
And thus she utter’d her prophetic tale:
“Hail! great physician of the world, all hail!
Hail! mighty infant! who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations and defraud the tomb.
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfined!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
Then shalt thou die; but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a god.
And thou, my sire, not destined by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,
How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to die,
And quit thy claim to immortality,
When thou shalt feel, enraged with inward pains,
The Hydra’s venom rankling in thy veins!
The gods, in pity, shall contract thy date,
And give thee over to the power of Fate.”

Thus, entering into destiny, the maid
The secrets of offended Jove betray’d:
More had she still to say; but now appears
Qppress’d with sobs and sighs, and drown’d in tears:
“My voice,” says she, “is gone, my language fails,
Through every limb my kindred shape prevails:
Why did the god this fatal gift impart,
And with prophetic raptures swell my heart?
What new desires are these? I long to pace
O’er flowery meadows, and to feed on grass;
I hasten to a brute, a maid no more:
But why, alas! am I transform’d all o’er?
My sire does half a human shape retain,
And in his upper parts preserves the man.”

Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords,
But in shrill accents and misshapen words
Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare
The human form confounded in the mare,
Till by degrees accomplish’d in the beast,
She neigh’d outright, and all the steed expressed;
Her stooping body on her hands is borne,
Her hands are turn’d to hoofs and shod in horn;
Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane,
And in a flowing tail she frisks her train.
The mare was finish’d in her voice and look,
And a new name from the new figure took.

Sore wept the centaur, and to Phoebus pray’d.
But how could Phoebus give the centaur aid?
Degraded of his power by angry Jove,
In Elis then a herd of bees he drove,
And wielded in his hand a staff of oak,
And o’er his shoulders threw the shepherd’s cloak.
On seven compacted reeds he used to play,
And on his rural pipe to waste the day.

As once attentive to his pipe he play’d,
The crafty Hermes from the god convey’d
A drove, that separate from their fellows stray’d.
The theft an old insidious peasant view’d
(They call’d him Battus in the neighbourhood),
Hired by a wealthy Pylian prince to feed
His fav’rite mares, and watch the generous breed.
The thievish god suspected him, and took
The hind aside, and thus in whispers spoke:
“Discover not the theft, whoe’er thou be,
And take that milk-white heifer for thy fee.”
“Go, stranger,” cries the clown, “securely on,
That stone shall sooner tell,” and showed a stone.

The god withdrew, but straight return’d again,
In speech and habit like a country swain,
And cries out: “Neighbour, hast thou seen a stray
Of bullocks and of heifers pass this way?
In the recovery of my cattle join,
A bullock and a heifer shall be thine.”
The peasant quick replies: “You’ll find them there
In yon dark vale;” and in the vale they were.
The double bribe had his false heart beguiled.
The god, successful in the trial, smiled:
“And dost thou thus betray myself to me?
Me to myself dost thou betray?” says he.
Then to a touchstone turns the faithless spy,
And in his name records his infamy.

This done, the god flew up on high, and pass’d
O’er lofty Athens, by Minerva graced,
And wide Munichia, while his eyes survey
All the vast region that beneath him lay.

’Twas now the feast, when each Athenian maid
Her yearly homage to Minerva paid,
In canisters with garlands cover’d o’er,
High on their heads their mystic gifts they bore;
And now, returning in a solemn train,
The troop of shining virgins fill’d the plain.

The god, well pleased, beheld the pompous show,
And saw the bright procession pass below,
Then veer’d about and took a wheeling flight,
And hover’d o’er them; as the spreading kite,
That smells the slaughter’d victims from on high,
Flies at a distance, if the priests are nigh,
And sails around and keeps it in her eye,
So kept the god the virgin choir in view,
And in slow winding circles round them flew.

As Lucifer excels the meanest star,
Or as the full-orb’d Phoebe Lucifer,
So much did Herse all the rest outvie,
And gave a grace to the solemnity.
Hermes was fired as in the clouds he hung;
So the cold bullet, that with fury slung
From Balearic engines, mounts on high,
Glows in the whirl, and burns along the sky.
At length he pitch’d upon the ground, and show’d
The form divine, the features of a god.
He knew their virtue o’er a female heart,
And yet he strives to better them by art.
He hangs his mantle loose, and sets to show
The golden edging on the seam below;
Adjusts his flowing curls, and in his hand,
Waves with an air the sleep-procuring wand;
The glittering sandals to his feet applies,
And to each heel the well-trimm’d pinion ties.

His ornaments with nicest art display’d,
He seeks the apartment of the royal maid.
The roof was all with polish’d ivory lined,
That richly mix’d, in clouds of tortoise shined;
Three rooms, contiguous, in a range were placed,
The midmost by the beauteous Herse graced,
Her virgin sisters lodged on either side.
Aglauros first the approaching god descried,
And as he cross’d her chamber asked his name,
And what his bus’ness was, and whence he came.
“I come,” replied the god, “from heaven, to woo
Your sister, and to make an aunt of you.
I am the son and messenger of Jove,
My name is Mercury, my bus’ness love;
Do you, kind damsel, take a lover’s part,
And gain admittance to your sister’s heart.”

She stared him in the face with looks amaz’d,
As when she on Minerva’s secret gaz’d,
And asks a mighty treasure for her hire,
And till he brings it makes the god retire.
Minerva griev’d to see the nymph succeed,
And now remembering the late impious deed,
When, disobedient to her strict command,
She touch’d the chest with an unhallow’d hand,
In big-swoln sighs her inward rage express’d,
That heav’d the rising aegis on her breast;
Then sought out Envy in her dark abode,
Defil’d with ropy gore and clots of blood:
Shut from the winds and from the wholesome skies,
In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies,
Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light
Invades the winter or disturbs the night.

Directly to the cave her course she steer’d,
Against the gates her martial lance she rear’d,
The gates flew open, and the fiend appear’d.
A pois’nous morsel in her teeth she chew’d,
And gorged the flesh of vipers for her food.
Minerva, loathing, turn’d away her eye;
The hideous monster, rising heavily,
Came stalking forward with a sullen pace,
And left her mangled offals on the place.
Soon as she saw the goddess gay and bright,
She fetch’d a groan at such a cheerful sight;
Livid and meager were her looks, her eye
In foul distorted glances turn’d awry;
A hoard of gall her inward parts possess’d,
And spread a greenness o’er her canker’d breast;
Her teeth were brown with rust, and from her tongue,
In dangling drops, the stringy poison hung;
She never smiles but when the wretched weep,
Nor lulls her malice with a moment’s sleep;
Restless in spite, while watchful to destroy,
She pines and sickens at another’s joy;
Foe to herself, distressing and distress’d,
She bears her own tormentor in her breast.
The goddess gave (for she abhorr’d her sight)
A short command: “To Athens speed thy flight;
On cursed Aglauros try thy utmost art,
And fix thy rankest venoms in her heart.”
This said, her spear she push’d against the ground,
And mounting from it with an active bound,
Flew off to heaven. The hag with eyes askew
Look’d up, and mutter’d curses as she flew;
For sore she fretted, and began to grieve
At the success which she herself must give;
Then takes her staff, hung round with wreaths of thorn,
And sails along, in a black whirlwind borne,
O’er fields and flowery meadows. Where she steers
Her baneful course a mighty blast appears,
Mildews and blights; the meadows are defaced,
The fields, the flowers, and the whole year, laid waste.
On mortals next and peopled towns she falls,
And breathes a burning plague among their walls.

When Athens she beheld, for arts renown’d,
With peace made happy, and with plenty crown’d,
Scarce could the hideous fiend from tears forbear
To find out nothing that deserved a tear.
The apartment now she enter’d where at rest
Aglauros lay, with gentle sleep oppress’d,
To execute Minerva’s dire command;
She stroked the virgin with her canker’d hand,
Then prickly thorns into her breast convey’d,
That stung to madness the devoted maid;
Her subtle venom still improves the smart,
Frets in the blood, and festers in the heart.

To make the work more sure, a scene she drew,
And placed before the dreaming virgin’s view
Her sister’s marriage, and her glorious fate;
The imaginary bride appears in state,
The bridegroom with unwonted beauty glows;
For envy magnifies whate’er she shows.
Full of the dream, Aglauros pin’d away
In tears all night, in darkness all the day;
Consumed like ice, that just begins to run,
When feebly smitten by the distant sun;
Or like unwholesome weeds, that, set on fire,
Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire.
Given up to envy (for in every thought
The thorns, the venom, and the vision wrought),
Oft did she call on death, as oft decreed,
Rather than see her sister’s wish succeed,
To tell her awful father what had pass’d;
At length before the door herself she cast,
And, sitting on the ground with suilen pride,
A passage to the lovesick god denied.
The god caress’d and for admission pray’d,
And soothed in softest words the envenom’d maid.
In vain he soothed. “Begone!” the maid replies,
“Or here I keep my seat and never rise.”
“Then keep thy seat for ever,” cries the god,
And touch’d the door, wide opening to his rod.
Fain would she rise and stop him, but she found
Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground;
Her joints are all benumb’d, her hands are pale,
And marble now appears in every nail.
As when a cancer in the body feeds,
And gradual death from limb to limb proceeds,
So does the chillness to each vital part
Spread by degrees, and creeps into her heart,
Till hardening everywhere, and speechless grown,
She sits unmoved, and freezes to a stone.
But still her envious hue and sullen mien
Are in ’he sedentary figure seen.

When now the god his fury had allay’d,
And taken vengeance of the stubborn maid,
From where the bright Athenian turrets rise
He mounts aloft, and reascends the skies.
Jove saw him enter the sublime abodes,
And, as he mix’d among the crowd of gods,
Beckon’d him out, and drew him from the rest,
And in soft whispers thus his will express’d:

“My trusty Hermes, by whose ready aid
Thy sire’s commands are through the world convey’d,
Resume thy wings, exert their utmost force,
And to the walls of Sidon speed thy course;
There find a herd of heifers wandering o’er
The neighb’ring hill, and drive them to the shore.”

Thus spoke the god, concealing his intent.
The trusty Hermes on his message went,
And found the herd of heifers wand’ring o’er
A neighb’ring hill, and drove them to the shore
Where the king’s daughter, with a lovely train
Of fellow-nymphs, was sporting on the plain.

The dignity of empire laid aside
(For love but ill agrees with kingly pride),
The ruler of the skies, the thund’ring god,
Who shakes the world’s foundations with a nod,
Among a herd of lowing heifers ran,
Frisk’d in a bull, and bellow’d o’er the plain.
Large rolls of fat about his shoulders clung,
And from his neck the double dewlap hung;
His skin was whiter than the snow that lies
Unsullied by the breath of southern skies:
Small shining horns on his curl’d forehead stand,
As turn’d and polish’d by the workman’s hand;
His eyeballs roll’d, not formidably bright,
But gazed and languish’d with a gentle light;
His every look was peaceful, and express’d
The softness of the lover in the beast.

Agenor’s royal daughter, as she play’d
Among the fields, the milk-white bull survey’d,
And view’d his spotless body with delight,
And at a distance kept him in her sight.
At length she pluck’d the rising flowers, and fed
The gentle beast, and fondly stroked his head.
He stood, well pleased to touch the charming fair,
But hardly could confine his pleasures there.
And now he wantons o’er the neighb’ring strand,
Now rolls his body on the yellow sand;
And, now perceiving all her fears decay’d,
Comes tossing forward to the royal maid.
Gives her his breast to stroke, and downward turns
His grisly brow, and gently stoops his horns.
In flowery wreaths the royal virgin dress’d
His bending horns, and kindly clapp’d his breast;
Till now grown wanton and devoid of fear,
Not knowing that she press’d the Thunderer,
She placed herself upon his back, and rode
O’er fields and meadows, seated on the god.

He gently march’d along, and by degrees
Left the dry meadow, and approach’d the seas,
Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,
Now plunges in, and carries off the prize.
The frighted nymph looks backward on the shore,
And hears the tumbling billows round her roar;
But still she holds him fast; one hand is borne
Upon his back, the other grasps a horn;
Her train of ruffling garments flies behind,
Swells in the air, and hovers in the wind.

Through storms and tempests he the virgin bore,
And lands her safe on the Dictaean shore;
Where now, in his divinest form array’d,
In his true shape he captivates the maid,
Who gazes on him, and with wond’ring eyes
Beholds the new majestic figure rise,
His glowing features, and celestial light,
And all the god discover’d to her sight.

When now Agenor had his daughter lost,
He sent his son to search on every coast,
And sternly bid him to his arms restore
The darling maid, or see his face no more,
But live in exile in a foreign clime;
Thus was the father pious to a crime.

The restless youth search’d all the world around;
But how can Jove in his amours be found?
When, tired at length with unsuccessful toil,
To shun his angry sire and native soil,
He goes a suppliant to the Delphic dame;
There asks the god what new-appointed home
Should end his wand’rings, and his toil relieve.
The Delphic oracles this answer give:

“Behold among the fields a lonely cow,
Unworn with yokes, unbroken to the plough:
Mark well the place where first she lays her down,
There measure out thy walls, and build thy town;
And from the guide Boeotia call the land,
In which the destined walls and town shall stand.”

No sooner had he left the dark abode,
Big with the promise of the Delphic god,
When in the fields the fatal cow he view’d,
Nor gall’d with yokes, nor worn with servitude;
Her gently at a distance he pursued,
And, as he walk’d aloof, in silence pray’d
To the great power whose counsels he obey’d.
Her way through flowery Panope she took,
And now, Cephisus, cross’d thy silver brook,
When to the heavens her spacious front she raised,
And bellow’d thrice, then backward turning gazed
On those behind, till on the destined place
She stoop’d, and couch’d amid the rising grass.

Cadmus salutes the soil, and gladly hails
The new-found mountains and the nameless vales,
And thanks the gods, and turns about his eye
To see his new dominions round him lie;
Then sends his servants to a neighb’ring grove
For living streams, a sacrifice to Jove.
O’er the wide plain there rose a shady wood
Of aged trees; in its dark bosom stood
A bushy thicket, pathless and unworn,
O’errun with brambles, and perplex’d with thorn:
Amid the brake a hollow den was found,
With rocks and shelving arches vaulted round.

Deep in the dreary den, conceal’d from day,
Sacred to Mars, a mighty dragon lay,
Bloated with poison to a monstrous size;
Fire broke in flashes when he glanced his eyes;
His towering crest was glorious to behold,
His shoulders and his sides were scaled with gold;
Three tongues he brandish’d when he charged his foes,
His teeth stood jaggy in three dreadful rows.
The Tyrians in the den for water sought,
And with their urns explored the hollow vault;
From side to side their empty urns rebound,
And rouse the sleeping serpent with the sound.
Straight he bestirs him, and is seen to rise,
And now with dreadful hissings fills the skies,
And darts his forky tongues, and rolls his glaring eyes.
The Tyrians drop their vessels in the fright,
All pale and trembling at the hideous sight.
Spire above spire uprear’d in air he stood,
And gazing round him overlook’d the wood,
Then floating on the ground in circles roll’d,
Then leap’d upon them in a mighty fold.
Of such a bulk and such a monstrous size
The serpent in the polar circle lies,
That stretches over half the northern skies.
In vain the Tyrians on their arms rely,
In vain attempt to fight, in vain to fly;
All their endeavours and their hopes are vain;
Some die entangled in the winding train;
Some are devour’d, or feel a loathsome death,
Swoln up with blasts of pestilential breath.

And now the scorching sun was mounted high,
In all its lustre, to the noonday sky,
When, anxious for his friends, and fill’d with cares,
To search the woods the impatient chief prepares.
A lion’s hide around his loins he wore,
The well-poised javelin to the field he bore,
Inured to blood, the far-destroying dart,
And, the best weapon, an undaunted heart.

Soon as the youth approach’d the fatal place,
He saw his servants breathless on the grass;
The scaly foe amid their corpse he view’d,
Basking at ease and feasting in their blood.
“Such friends,” he cries, “deserved a longer date;
But Cadmus will revenge, or share their fate.”
Then heaved a stone, and rising to the throw,
He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe;
A lower, assaulted by so rude a stroke,
With all its lofty battlements had shook;
But nothing here the unwieldy rock avails,
Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales,
That, firmly join’d, preserved him from a wound,
With native armour crusted all around.
With more success the dart unerring flew,
Which at his back the raging warrior threw:
Amid the plaited scales it took its course,
And in the spinal marrow spent its force.
The monster hiss’d aloud, and raged in vain,
And writhed his body to and fro with pain;
He bit the dart, and wrench’d the wood away;
The point still buried in the marrow lay;
And now his rage, increasing with his pain,
Reddens his eyes and beats in every vein;
Churn’d in his teeth the foamy venom flows,
While from his mouth a blast of vapours rose,
Such as the infernal Stygian waters cast;
The plants around him wither in the blast.
Now in a maze of rings he lies enroll’d;
Now all unravell’d and without a fold;
Now, like a torrent, with a mighty force
Bears down the forest in his boist’rous course.
Cadmus gave back, and on the lion’s spoil
Sustain’d the shock, then forced him to recoil:
The pointed javelin warded off his rage:
Mad with his pains, and furious to engage,
The serpent champs the steel, and bites the spear,
Till blood and venom all the point besmear.
But still the hurt he yet received was slight;
For, while the champion with redoubled might
Strikes home the javelin, his retiring foe
Shrinks from the wound, and disappoints the blow.

The dauntless hero still pursues his stroke,
And presses forward, till a knotty oak
Retards his foe, and stops him in the rear;
Full in his throat he plunged the fatal spear,
That in the extended neck a passage found,
And pierced the solid timber through the wound.
Fix’d to the reeling trunk, with many a stroke
Of his huge tail he lash’d the sturdy oak,
Till spent with toil, and lab’ring hard for breath,
He now lay twisting in the pangs of death.
Cadmus beheld him wallow in a flood
Of swimming poison intermix’d with blood,
When suddenly a speech was heard from high
(The speech was heard, nor was the speaker nigh),
“Why dost thou thus with secret pleasure see,
Insulting man! what thou thyself shalt be?”
Astonish’d at the voice, he stood amazed,
And all around, with inward horror, gazed,
When Pallas, swift descending from the skies,
Pallas, the guardian of the bold and wise,
Bids him plough up the field, and scatter round
The dragon’s teeth o’er all the furrow’d ground;
Then tells the youth how to his wondering eyes
Embattled armies from the field shall rise.

He sows the teeth at Pallas’s command,
And flings the future people from his hand;
The clods grow warm, and crumble where he sows,
And now the pointed spears advance in rows;
Now nodding plumes appear, and shining crests,
Now the broad shoulders and the rising breasts;
O’er all the field the breathing harvest swarms,
A growing host, a crop of men and arms.

So through the parting stage a figure rears
Its body up, and limb by limb appears
By just degrees, till all the man arise,
And in his full proportion strikes the eyes.

Cadmus, surprised and startled at the sight
Of his new foes, prepared himself for fight;
When one cried out, “Forbear, fond man, forbear,
To mingle in a blind promiscuous war.”
This said, he struck his brother to the ground,
Himself expiring by another’s wound;
Nor did the third his conquest long survive,
Dying ere scarce he had begun to live.

The dire example ran through all the field,
Till heaps of brothers were by brothers kill’d;
The furrows swam in blood, and only five
Of all the vast increase were left alive.
Echion one, at Pallas’s command
Let fall the guiltless weapon from his hand,
And with the rest a peaceful treaty makes,
Whom Cadmus as his friends and partners takes.
So founds a city on the promised earth,
And gives his new Boeotian empire birth.

Here Cadmus reign’d; and now one would have guess’d
The royal founder in his exile bless’d:
Long did he live within his new abodes,
Allied by marriage to the deathless gods;
And in a fruitful wife’s embraces old,
A long increase of children’s children told:
But no frail man, however great or high,
Can be concluded bless’d before he die.

Actaeon was the first of all his race,
Who grieved his grandsire in his borrow’d face,
Condemn’d by stern Diana to bemoan
The branching horns and visage not his own;
To shun his once loved dogs, to bound away,
And from their huntsman to become their prey.
And yet consider why the change was wrought,
You’ll find it his misfortune, not his fault;
Or, if a fault, it was the fault of chance:
For how can guilt proceed from ignorance?

In a fair chase a shady mountain stood,
Well stored with game, and mark’d with trails of blood;
Here did the huntsmen, till the heat of day,
Pursue the stag, and load themselves with prey;
When thus Actaeon calling to the rest:
“My friends,” said he, “our sport is at the best,
The sun is high advanced, and downward sheds
His burning beams directly on our heads;
Then by consent abstain from further spoils,
Call off the dogs, and gather up the toils,
And ere to-morrow’s sun begins his race
Take the cool morning to renew the chase.”
They all consent, and in a cheerful train
The jolly huntsmen, laden with the slain,
Return in triumph from the sultry plain.

Down in a vale with pine and cypress clad,
Refresh’d with gentle winds, and brown with shade,
The chaste Diana’s private haunt there stood,
Full in the centre of the darksome wood,
A spacious grotto, all around o’ergrown
With hoary moss, and arch’d with pumice-stone.
From out its rocky clefts the waters flow,
And trickling swell into a lake below.
Nature had everywhere so play’d her part,
That everywhere she seem’d to vie with art.
Here the bright goddess, toil’d and chafed with heat,
Was wont to bathe her in the cool retreat.

Here did she now with all her train resort,
Panting with heat, and breathless from the sport;
Her armour-bearer laid her bow aside,
Some loosed her sandals, some her veil untied;
Each busy nymph her proper part undress’d,
While Crocale, more handy than the rest,
Gather’d her flowing hair, and in a noose
Bound it together, while her own hung loose;
Five of the more ignoble sort, by turns,
Fetch up the water, and unlade the urns.

Now all undress’d the shining goddess stood,
When young Actaeon wilder’d in the wood,
To the cool grot by his hard fate betray’d,
The fountains fill’d with naked nymphs survey’d.
The frighted virgins shriek’d at the surprise
(The forest echo’d with their piercing cries),
Then in a huddle round their goddess press’d;
She, proudly eminent above the rest,
With blushes glow’d; such blushes as adorn
The ruddy welkin or the purple morn;
And though the crowding nymphs her body hide,
Half backward shrunk, and view’d him from aside.
Surprised, at first she would have snatch’d her bow,
But sees the circling waters round her flow;
These in the hollow of her hand she took,
And dash’d them in his face, while thus she spoke:
“Tell, if thou canst, the wondrous sight disclosed,
A goddess naked to thy view exposed.”

This said, the man began to disappear
By slow degrees, and ended in a deer.
A rising horn on either brow he wears,
And stretches out his neck, and pricks his ears;
Rough is his skin, with sudden hairs o’ergrown,
His bosom pants with fears before unknown;
Transform’d at length, he flies away in haste,
And wonders why he flies away so fast.
But, as by chance within a neighb’ring brook,
He saw his branching horns and alter’d look,
Wretched Actaeon! in a doleful tone
He tried to speak, but only gave a groan;
And as he wept, within the watery glass
He saw the big round drops, with silent pace,
Run trickling down a savage hairy face.
What should he do? Or seek his old abodes,
Or herd among the deer and skulk in woods?
Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails,
And each by turns his aching heart assails.

As he thus ponders, he behind him spies
His op’ning hounds, and now he hears their cries:
A gen’rous pack, or to maintain the chase,
Or snuff the vapour from the scented grass.

He bounded off with fear, and swiftly ran
O’er craggy mountains and the flow’ry plain,
Through brakes and thickets forced his way, and flew
Through many a ring where once he did pursue.
In vain he oft endeavour’d to proclaim
His new misfortune, and to tell his name;
Nor voice, nor words, the brutal tongue supplies,
From shouting men, and horns, and dogs, he flies,
Deafen’d and stunn’d with their promiscuous cries.
When now the fleetest of the pack, that press’d
Close at his heels and sprung before the rest,
Had fasten’d on him, straight another pair
Hung on his wounded haunch, and held him there,
Till all the pack came up, and every hound
Tore the sad huntsman grovelling on the ground,
Who now appear’d but one continued wound.
With dropping tears his bitter fate he moans,
And fills the mountain with his dying groans.
His servants with a piteous look he spies,
And turns about his supplicating eyes.
His servants, ignorant of what had chanced,
With eager haste and joyful shouts advanced,
And call’d their lord, Actaeon, to the game;
He shook his head in answer to the name;
He heard, but wish’d he had indeed been gone;
Or only to have stood a looker-on:
But to his grief he finds himself too near,
And feels his ravenous dogs with fury tear
Their wretched master panting in a deer.

Actaeon’s sufferings, and Diana’s rage,
Did all the thoughts of men and gods engage;
Some call’d the evils which Diana wrought
Too great, and disproportion’d to the fault:
Others, again, esteem’d Actaeon’s woes
Fit for a virgin goddess to impose.
The hearers into different parts divide,
And reasons are produced on either side.

Juno alone, of all that heard the news,
Nor would condemn the goddess, nor excuse;
She heeded not the justice of the deed,
But joy’d to see the race of Cadmus bleed;
For still she kept Europa in her mind,
And, for her sake, detested all her kind.
Besides, to aggravate her hate, she heard
How Semele, to Jove’s embrace preferr’d,
Was now grown big with an immortal load,
And carried in her womb a future god.
Thus, terribly incensed, the goddess broke
To sudden fury, and abruptly spoke:

“Are my reproaches of so small a force?
’Tis time I then pursue another course.
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die,
If I’m indeed the mistress of the sky;
If rightly styled, among the powers above,
The wife and sister of the thundering Jove
(And none can sure a sister’s right deny),
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die.
She boasts an honour I can hardly claim,
Pregnant she rises to a mother’s name;
While proud and vain she triumphs in her Jove,
And shows the glorious tokens of his love:
But if I’m still the mistress of the skies,
By her own lover the fond beauty dies.”
This said, descending in a yellow cloud,
Before the gates of Semele she stood.

Old Beroe’s decrepit shape she wears,
Her wrinkled visage, and her hoary hairs,
While in her trembling gait she totters on,
And learns to tattle in the nurse’s tone.
The goddess thus disguised in age, beguiled
With pleasing stories her false foster-child.
Much did she talk of love, and when she came
To mention to the nymph her lover’s name,
Fetching a sigh, and holding down her head,
“ ’Tis well,” says she, “if all be true that’s said.
But trust me, child, I’m much inclined to fear
Some counterfeit in this your Jupiter.
Many an honest, well-designing maid,
Has been by these pretended gods betray’d.
But if he be indeed the thund’ring Jove,
Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,
Descend triumphant, from the ethereal sky,
In all the pomp of his divinity,
Encompass’d round by those celestial charms
With which he fills the immortal Juno’s arms.”

The unwary nymph, insnared with what she said,
Desired of Jove, when next he sought her bed,
To grant a certain gift which she would choose.
“Fear not,” replied the god, “that I’ll refuse
Whate’er you ask: may Styx confirm my voice,
Choose what you will, and you shall have your choice.”
“Then,” says the nymph, “when next you seek my arms,
May you descend in those celestial charms
With which your Juno’s bosom you inflame,
And fill with transport heaven’s immortal dame.”
The god, surprised, would fain have stopp’d her voice,
But he had sworn, and she had made her choice.

To keep his promise he ascends, and shrouds
His awful brow in whirlwinds and in clouds;
While all around, in terrible array,
His thunders rattle and his lightnings play;
And yet the dazzling lustre to abate,
He set not out in all his pomp and state,
Clad in the mildest lightning of the skies,
And arm’d with thunder of the smallest size:
Not those huge bolts by which the giants slain
Lay overthrown on the Phlegrean plain;
’Twas of a lesser mould and lighter weight,
They call it thunder of a second rate;
For the rough Cyclops, who by Jove’s command
Temper’d the bolt, and turn’d it to his hand,
Work’d up less flame and fury in its make,
And quench’d it sooner in the standing lake.
Thus dreadfully adorn’d with horror bright,
The illustrious god, descending from his height,
Came rushing on her in a storm of light.

The mortal dame, too feeble to engage
The lightning’s flashes and the thunder’s rage,
Consumed amid the glories she desired,
And in the terrible embrace expired.

But to preserve his offspring from the tomb,
Jove took him smoking from his mother’s womb,
And, if on ancient tales we may rely,
Enclosed the abortive infant in his thigh.
Here when the babe had all his time fulfill’d,
Ino first took him for her foster-child;
Then the Niseans, in their dark abode,
Nursed secretly with milk the thriving god.

Famed far and near for knowing things to come,
From him the inquiring nations sought their doom.
The fair Liriope his answers tried,
And first the unerring prophet justified.
This nymph the god Cephisus had abused,
With all his winding waters circumfused,
And by the Nereid had a lovely boy,
Whom the soft maids ev’n then beheld with joy.

The tender dame, solicitous to know
Whether her child should reach old age or no,
Consults the sage Tiresias; who replies,
“If e’er he knows himself he surely dies.”
Long lived the dubious mother in suspense,
Till time unriddled all the prophet’s sense.

Narcissus now his sixteenth year began,
Just turn’d of boy, and on the verge of man;
Many a friend the blooming youth caress’d,
Many a lovesick maid in vain her flame confess’d,
Such was his pride, in vain the friend caress’d,
The lovesick maid in vain her flame confess’d.

Once, in the woods, as he pursued the chase,
The babbling Echo had descried his face,
She, who in other words her silence breaks,
Nor speaks herself but when another speaks.
Echo was then a maid of speech bereft,
Of wonted speech; for though her voice was left,
Juno a curse did on her tongue impose,
To sport with every sentence in the close.
Full often when the goddess might have caught
Jove and her rivals in the very fault,
This nymph with subtle stories would delay
Her coming, till the lovers slipp’d away.
The goddess found out the deceit in time,
And then she cried, “That tongue, for this thy crime,
Which could so many subtle tales produce,
Shall be hereafter but of little use.”
Hence ’tis she prattles in a fairer tone,
With mimic sounds and accents not her own.

This lovesick virgin, overjoy’d to find
The boy alone, still follow’d him behind;
When glowing warmly at her near approach,
As sulphur blazes at the taper’s touch,
She long’d her hidden passion to reveal
And tell her pains, but had not words to tell;
She can’t begin, but waits for the rebound
To catch his voice, and to return the sound.

The nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move,
Still dash’d with blushes for her slighted love,
Lived in the shady covert of the woods,
In solitary caves and dark abodes,
Where pining wander’d the rejected fair,
Till harass’d out and worn away with care,
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft,
Besides her bones and voice, had nothing left.
Her bones are petrified, her voice is found
In vaults, where still it doubles every sound.

Thus did the nymphs in vain caress the boy,
He still was lovely, but he still was coy,
When one fair virgin of the slighted train
Thus pray’d the gods, provoked by his disdain:
“O! may he love like me, and love like me in vain!”
Rhamnusia pitied the neglected fair,
And with just vengeance answer’d to her prayer.

There stands a fountain in a darksome wood,
Nor stain’d with falling leaves, nor rising mud,
Untroubled by the breath of winds it rests,
Unsullied by the touch of men or beasts;
High bowers of shady trees above it grow,
And rising grass and cheerful greens below.
Pleased with the form and coolness of the place,
And overheated by the morning chase,
Narcissus on the grassy verdure lies;
But while within the crystal fount he tries
To quench his heat, he feels new heat arise:
For, as his own bright image he survey’d,
He fell in love with the fantastic shade,
And o’er the fair resemblance hung unmoved;
Nor knew, fond youth! it was himself he loved.
The well-turn’d neck and shoulders he descries,
The spacious forehead, and the sparkling eyes,
The hands that Bacchus might not scorn to show,
And hair that round Apollo’s head might flow,
With all the purple youthfulness of face,
That gently blushes in the watery glass.
By his own flames consumed the lover lies,
And gives himself the wound by which he dies.
To the cold water oft he joins his lips,
Oft catching at the beauteous shade he dips
His arms, as often from himself he slips.
Nor knows he who it is his arms pursue
With eager clasps, but loves he knows not who.

What could, fond youth, this helpless passion move?
What kindled in thee this unpitied love?
Thy own warm blush within the water glows,
With thee the colour’d shadow comes and goes,
Its empty being on thyself relies;
Step thou aside and the frail charmer dies.

Still o’er the fountain’s watery gleam he stood,
Mindless of sleep, and negligent of food,
Still view’d his face, and languish’d as he view’d.
At length he raised his head, and thus began
To vent his griefs, and tell the woods his pain:
“You trees,” says he, “and thou surrounding grove,
Who oft have been the kindly scenes of love,
Tell me, if e’er within your shades did lie
A youth so tortured, so perplex’d as I?
I, who before me see the charming fair,
While there he stands, and yet he stands not there:
In such a maze of love my thoughts are lost;
And yet no bulwark’d town nor distant coast
Preserves the beauteous youth from being seen,
No mountains rise nor oceans flow between;
A shallow water hinders my embrace,
And yet the lovely mimic wears a face
That kindly smiles, and when I bend to join
My lips to his, he fondly bends to mine.
Hear, gentle youth, and pity my complaint;
Come from thy well, thou fair inhabitant.
My charms an easy conquest have obtain’d
O’er other hearts, by thee alone disdain’d.
But why should I despair? I’m sure he burns
With equal flames, and languishes by turns.
Whene’er I stoop, he offers at a kiss,
And when my arms I stretch, he stretches his;
His eyes with pleasure on my face he keeps,
He smiles my smiles, and when I weep he weeps:
Whene’er I speak his moving lips appear
To utter something, which I cannot hear.

“Ah, wretched me! I now begin too late
To find out all the long perplex’d deceit;
It is myself I love, myself I see,
The gay delusion is a part of me;
I kindle up the fires by which I burn,
And my own beauties from the well return.
Whom should I court? how utter my complaint?
Enjoyment but produces my restraint,
And too much plenty makes me die for want.
How gladly would I from myself remove!
And at a distance set the thing I love;
My breast is warm’d with such unusual fire,
I wish him absent whom I most desire;
And now I faint with grief, my fate draws nigh,
In all the pride of blooming youth I die.
Death will the sorrows of my heart relieve.
O! might the visionary youth survive,
I should with joy my latest breath resign!
But, oh! I see his fate involved in mine.”

This said, the weeping youth again return’d
To the clear fountain, where again he burn’d.
His tears defaced the surface of the well,
With circle after circle as they fell;
And now the lovely face but half appears,
O’errun with wrinkles and deform’d with tears.
“Ah! whither,” cries Narcissus, “dost thou fly?
Let me still feed the flame by which I die;
Let me still see, though I’m no further bless’d.”
Then rends his garment off and beats his breast;
His naked bosom redden’d with the blow,
In such a blush as purple clusters show,
Ere yet the sun’s autumnal heats refine
Their sprightly juice, and mellow it to wine;
The glowing beauties of his breast he spies,
And with a new redoubled passion dies.
As wax dissolves, as ice begins to run
And trickle into drops before the sun,
So melts the youth, and languishes away,
His beauty withers, and his limbs decay,
And none of those attractive charms remain,
To which the slighted Echo sued in vain.

She saw him in his present misery,
Whom, spite of all her wrongs, she grieved to see.
She answer’d sadly to the lover’s moan,
Sigh’d back his sighs, and groan’d to every groan.
“Ah youth! beloved in vain,” Narcissus cries;
“Ah youth! beloved in vain,” the nymph replies.
“Farewell,” says he; the parting sound scarce fell
From his faint lips, but she replied, “Farewell.”
Then on the unwholesome earth he gasping lies,
Till death shuts up those self-admiring eyes.
To the cold shades his fitting ghost retires,
And in the Stygian waves itself admires.

For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn,
Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn;
And now the sister-nymphs prepare his urn:
When, looking for his corpse, they only found
A rising stalk with yellow blossoms crown’d.

This sad event gave blind Tiresias fame,
Through Greece establish’d in a prophet’s name.

The unhallow’d Pentheus only durst deride
The cheated people and their eyeless guide.
To whom the prophet in his fury said,
Shaking the hoary honours of his head,
“ ’Twere well, presumptuous man, ’twere well for thee,
If thou wert eyeless too, and blind like me:
For the time comes, nay, ’tis already here,
When the young god’s solemnities appear,
Which, if thou dost not with just rites adorn,
Thy impious carcass, into pieces torn,
Shall strew the woods, and hang on every thorn.
Then, then remember what I now foretell,
And own the blind Tiresias saw too well.”

Still Pentheus scorns him, and derides his skill;
But time did all the prophet’s threats fulfil.
For now through prostrate Greece young Bacchus rode,
While howling matrons celebrate the god.
All ranks and sexes to his orgies ran,
To mingle in the pomps and fill the train,
When Pentheus thus his wicked rage express’d:
“What madness, Thebans, has your souls possess’d?
Can hollow timbrels, can a drunken shout,
And the lewd clamours of a beastly rout,
Thus quell your courage? Can the weak alarm
Of women’s yells those stubborn souls disarm,
Whom nor the sword nor trumpet e’er could fright,
Nor the loud din and horror of a fight?
And you, our sires, who left your old abodes,
And fix’d in foreign earth your country gods,
Will you without a stroke your city yield,
And poorly quit an undisputed field?
But you, whose youth and vigour should inspire
Heroic warmth, and kindle martial fire,
Whom burnish’d arms and crested helmets grace,
Not flowery garlands and a painted face;
Remember him to whom you stand allied;
The serpent for his well of waters died.
He fought the strong, do you his courage show,
And gain a conquest o’er a feeble foe.
If Thebes must fall, O might the Fates afford
A nobler doom from famine, fire, or sword;
Then might the Thebans perish with renown:
But now a beardless victor sacks the town,
Whom nor the prancing steed, nor ponderous shield,
Nor the hack’d helmet, nor the dusty field,
But the soft joys of luxury and ease,
The purple vests, and flowery garlands, please.
Stand then aside, I’ll make the counterfeit
Renounce his godhead, and confess the cheat.
Acrisius from the Grecian walls repell’d
This boasted power: why then should Pentheus yield?
Go quickly, drag the impostor boy to me,
I’ll try the force of his divinity.”
Thus did the audacious wretch those rites profane;
His friends dissuade the andacious wretch in vain,
In vain his grandsire urged him to give o’er
His impious threats, the wretch but raves the more.

So have I seen a river gently glide
In a smooth course and inoffensive tide,
But if with dams its current we restrain,
It bears down all, and foams along the plain.

But now his servants came, besmear’d with blood,
Sent by their haughty prince to seize the god;
The god they found not in the frantic throng,
But dragg’d a zealous votary along.

Him Pentheus view’d with fury in his look,
And scarce withheld his hands while thus he spoke:
“Vile slave! whom speedy vengeance shall pursue,
And terrify thy base seditious crew,
Thy country and thy parentage reveal,
And why thou join’st in these mad orgies tell.”

The captive views him with undaunted eyes,
And, arm’d with inward innocence, replies:

“From high Maeonia’s rocky shores I came,
Of poor descent, Acoetes is my name.
My sire was meanly born; no oxen plough’d
His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures low’d;
His whole estate within the waters lay,
With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey;
His art was all his livelihood, which he
Thus with his dying lips bequeathed to me:
‘In streams, my boy, and rivers, take thy chance,
There swims,’ said he, ‘thy whole inheritance.’
Long did I live on this poor legacy,
Till, tired with rocks and my old native sky,
To arts of navigation I inclined,
Observed the turns and changes of the wind,
Learn’d the fit havens, and began to note
The stormy Hyades, the rainy Goat,
The bright Taygete, and the shining Bears,
With all the sailors’ catalogue of stars.
Once, as by chance for Delos I design’d,
My vessel, driven by a strong gust of wind,
Moor’d in a Chian creek; ashore I went,
And all the following night in Chios spent.
When morning rose, I sent my mates to bring
Supplies of water from a neighb’ring spring,
While I the motion of the winds explored;
Then summon’d in my crew and went aboard.
Opheltes heard my summons, and with joy
Brought to the shore a soft and lovely boy,
With more than female sweetness in his look,
Whom straggling in the neighb’ring fields he took.
With fumes of wine the little captive glows,
And nods with sleep, and staggers as he goes.

“I view’d him nicely, and began to trace
Each heavenly frature, each immortal grace,
And saw divinity in all his face:
‘I know not who,’ said I, ‘this god should be,
But that he is a god I plainly see.
And thou, whoe’er thou art, excuse the force
These men have used; and O befriend our course!’
‘Pray not for us,’ the nimble Dictys cried,
Dictys, that could the main-topmast bestride,
And down the ropes with active vigour slide.
To the same purpose old Epopeus spoke,
Who overlook’d the oars, and timed the stroke:
The same the pilot, and the same the rest,
Such impious avarice their souls possess’d.
‘Nay, Heaven forbid that I should bear away
Within my vessel so divine a prey,’
Said I; and stood to hinder their intent,
When Lycabas, a wretch for murder sent
From Tuscany, to suffer banishment,
With his clinch’d fist had struck me overboard,
Had not my hands in falling grasp’d a cord.

“His base confederates the fact approve,
When Bacchus (for ’twas he) began to move,
Waked by the noise and clamours which they raised,
And shook his drowsy limbs, and round him gazed:
‘What means this noise?’ he cries, ‘am I betray’d?
Ah! whither, whither must I be convey’d?’
‘Fear not,’ said Proteus, ‘child, but tell us where
You wish to land, and trust our friendly care.’
‘To Naxos then direct your course,’ said he,
‘Naxos a hospitable port shall be
To each of you, a joyful home to me.’
By every god that rules the sea or sky,
The perjured villains promise to comply,
And bid me hasten to unmoor the ship.
With eager joy I launch into the deep;
And, heedless of the fraud, for Naxos stand.
They whisper oft, and beckon with the hand,
And give me signs, all anxious for their prey,
To tack about and steer another way.
‘Then let some other to my post succeed,’
Said I, ‘I’m guiltless of so foul a deed.’
‘What!’ says Ethalion, ‘must the ship’s whole crew
Follow your humour, and depend on you?’
And straight himself he seated at the prore,
And tack’d about and sought another shore.

“The beauteous youth now found himself betray’d,
And from the deck the rising waves survey’d,
And seem’d to weep, and as he wept he said:
‘And do you thus my easy faith beguile?
Thus do ye bear me to my native isle?
Will such a multitude of men employ
Their strength against a weak, defenceless boy?’

“In vain did I the godlike youth deplore,
The more I begg’d, they thwarted me the more.
And now by all the gods in heaven, that hear
This solemn oath, by Bacchus’ self I swear,
The mighty miracle that did ensue,
Although it seems beyond belief, is true.
The vessel, fix’d and rooted in the flood,
Unmoved by all the beating billows, stood.
In vain the mariners would plough the main
With sails unfurl’d, and strike their oars in vain;
Around their oars a twining ivy cleaves,
And climbs the mast, and hides the cords in leaves:
The sails are cover’d with a cheerful green,
And berries in the fruitful canvass seen.
Amid the waves a sudden forest rears
Its verdant head, and a new spring appears.

“The god we now behold with open’d eyes;
A herd of spotted panthers round him lies
In glaring forms, the grapy clusters spread
On his fair brows, and dangle on his head.
And while he frowns and brandishes his spear,
My mates, surprised with madness or with fear,
Leap’d overboard; first perjur’d Madon found
Rough scales and fins his stiff’ning sides surround.

“ ’Ah! what,’ cries one, ‘has thus transform’d thy look?’
Straight his own mouth grew wider as he spoke:
And now himself he views with like surprise.
Still at his oar the industrious Libys plies;
But, as he plies, each busy arm shrinks in,
And by degrees is fashion’d to a fin.
Another, as he catches at a cord,
Misses his arms, and, tumbling overboard,
With his broad fins and forky tail he laves
The rising surge, and flounces in the waves.
Thus all my crew transform’d around the ship,
Or dive below, or on the surface leap,
And spout the waves, and wanton in the deep.
Full nineteen sailors did the ship convey,
A shoal of nineteen dolphins round her play.
I only in my proper shape appear,
Speechless with wonder, and half dead with fear,
Till Bacchus kindly bid me fear no more.
With him I landed on the Chian shore,
And him shall ever gratefully adore.”

“This forging slave,” says Pentheus, “would prevail
O’er our just fury by a far-fetch’d tale:
Go; let him feel the whips, the swords, the fire,
And in the tortures of the rack expire.”
The officious servants hurry him away,
And the poor captive in a dungeon lay.
But, while the whips and tortures are prepared,
The gates fly open, of themselves unbarr’d;
At liberty the unfetter’d captive stands,
And flings the loosen’d shackles from his hands.

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.

Yet still Alcithoe perverse remains,
And Bacchus still and all his rites disdains.
Too rash and madly bold, she bids him prove
Himself a god, nor owns the son of Jove:
Her sisters too unanimous agree,
Faithful associates in impiety.

Be this a solemn feast, the priest had said;
Be, with each mistress, unemploy’d each maid.
With skins of beasts your tender limbs enclose,
And with an ivy crown adorn your brows;
The leafy thyrsus high in triumph bear,
And give your locks to wanton in the air.

These rites profaned, the holy seer foreshow’d
A mourning people, and a vengeful god.
Matrons and pious wives obedience show,
Distaffs, and wool half spun, away they throw:
Then incense burn, and, Bacchus, thee adore:
Or lovest thou Neseus, or Lyaeus, more?
O, doubly got! O, doubly born! they sung,
Thou mighty Bromius, hail! from lightning sprung.
Hail! Thyon, Eleleus, each name is thine:
Or, listen parent of the genial vine!
Iacchus! Evan! loudly they repeat,
And not one Grecian attribute forget,
Which to thy praise, great deity, belong,
Styled, justly, Liber in the Roman song.
Eternity of youth is thine! enjoy
Years roll’d on years, yet still a blooming boy.
In heaven thou shinest with a superior grace;
Conceal thy horns, and ’tis a virgin’s face.
Thou taught’st the tawny Indian to obey,
And Ganges, smoothly flowing, own’d thy sway.
Lycurgus, Pentheus, equally profane,
By thy just vengeance equally were slain.
By thee the Tuscans, who conspired to keep
Thee captive, plunged and cut with fins the deep.
With painted reins, all glittering from afar,
The spotted Lynxes proudly draw thy car;
Around the Bacchae and the Satyrs throng,
Behind, Silenus, drunk, lags slow along;
On his dull ass he nods from side to side,
Forbears to fall, yet half forgets to ride.
Still at thy near approach applauses loud
Are heard, with yellings of the female crowd;
Timbrels, and boxen pipes, with mingled cries,
Swell up in sounds confused and rend the skies.
Come, Bacchus, come propitious, all implore,
And act thy secret orgies o’er and o’er.

But Mineus’ daughters, while these rites were paid,
At home impertinently busy stay’d;
Their wicked tasks they ply with various art,
And through the loom the sliding shuttle dart,
Or at the fire to comb the wool they stand,
Or twirl the spindle with a dext’rous hand.
Guilty themselves, they force the guiltless in,
Their maids, who share the labour, share the sin.
At last one sister cries, who nimbly knew
To draw nice threads, and wind the finest clue,

“While others idly rove, and gods revere,
Their fancied gods! they know not who or where;
Let us, whom Pallas taught her better arts,
Still working, cheer with mirthful chat our hearts;
And, to deceive the time, let me prevail
With each by turns to tell some antique tale.”
She said: her sisters liked the humour well,
And, smiling, bade her the first story tell.
But she a while profoundly seem’d to muse,
Perplex’d amid variety to choose;
And knew not whether she should first relate
The poor Dircetis, and her wondrous fate
(The Palestines believe it to a man,
And show the lake in which her scales began):
Or if she rather should the daughter sing,
Who in the hoary verge of life took wing;
Who soar’d from earth, and dwelt in towers on high,
And now a dove she flits along the sky:
Or how the tree, which once white berries bore,
Still crimson bears, since stain’d with crimson gore.
The tree was new; she likes it, and begins
To tell the tale, and as she tells she spins.

“In Babylon, where first her queen, for state,
Raised walls of brick magnificently great,
Lived Pyramus and Thisbe, lovely pair!
He found no eastern youth his equal there,
And she beyond the fairest nymph was fair.
A closer neighbourhood was never known,
Though two the houses, yet the roof was one.
Acquaintance grew, the acquaintance they improve
To friendship, friendship ripen’d into love:
Love had been crown’d, but, impotently mad,
What parents could not hinder, they forbade:
For with fierce flames young Pyramus still burn’d,
And grateful Thisbe flames as fierce return’d.
Aloud in words their thoughts they dare not break,
But silent stand: and silent looks can speak.
The fire of love, the more it is suppress’d,
The more it glows and rages in the breast.

“When the division-wall was built, a chink
Was left, the cement unobserved to shrink.
So slight the cranny, that it still had been
For centuries unclosed, because unseen.
But, oh! what thing so small, so secret lies,
Which ’scapes, if form’d for love, a lover’s eyes?
Ev’n in this narrow chink they quickly found
A friendly passage for a trackless sound.
Safely they told their sorrows and their joys,
In whisper’d murmurs and a dying noise;
By turns to catch each other’s breath they strove,
And suck’d in all the balmy breeze of love.
Oft, as on different sides they stood, they cried,
‘Malicious wall, thus lovers to divide!
Suppose thou shouldst a while to us give place,
To lock and fasten in a close embrace;
But, if too much to grant so sweet a bliss,
Indulge at least the pleasure of a kiss.
We scorn ingratitude: to thee, we know,
This safe conveyance of our minds we owe.’

“Thus, they their vain petition did renew
Till night, and then they softly sigh’d adieu.
But first they strove to kiss, and that was all,
Their kisses died untasted on the wall.
Soon as the morn had o’er the stars prevail’d,
And, warn’d by Phoebus, flowers their dews exhaled,
The lovers to their well-known place return,
Alike they suffer and alike they mourn.
At last their parents they resolve to cheat
(If to deceive in love he call’d deceit),
To steal by night from home, and thence unknown
To seek the fields, and quit the unfaithful town.
But, to prevent their wand’ring in the dark,
They both agree to fix upon a mark,
A mark, that could not their designs expose,
The tomb of Ninus was the mark they chose.
There they might rest secure beneath the shade,
Which boughs, with snowy fruit encumber’d, made:
A wide-spread mulberry its rise had took
Just on the margin of a gurgling brook.
Impatient for the friendly dusk they stay,
And chide the slowness of departing day.
In western seas down sunk at last the light,
From western seas uprose the shades of night.
The loving Thisbe ev’n prevents the hour,
With cautious silence she unlocks the door,
And veils her face, and marching through the gloom,
Swiftly arrives at th’ assignation tomb.
For still the fearful sex can fearless prove,
Boldly they act, if spirited by love.
When, lo! a lioness rush’d o’er the plain,
Grimly besmear’d with blood of oxen slain:
And what to the dire sight new horrors brought,
To slake her thirst the neighb’ring spring she sought;
Which, by the moon, when trembling Thisbe spies,
Wing’d with her fear, swift as the wind, she flies,
And in a cave recovers from her fright,
But dropp’d her veil, confounded in her flight.
When sated with repeated draughts, again
The queen of beasts scour’d back along the plain:
She found the veil, and, mouthing it all o’er,
With bloody jaws the lifeless prey she tore.

“The youth, who could not cheat his guards so soon,
Late came, and noted by the glimmering moon
Some savage feet new printed on the ground,
His cheeks turn’d pale, his limbs no vigour found:
But when, advancing on, the veil he spied
Distain’d with blood, and ghastly torn, he cried,
‘One night shall death to two young lovers give,
But she deserved unnumber’d years to live!
’Tis I am guilty, I have thee betray’d,
Who came not early as my charming maid.
Whatever slew thee, I the cause remain,
I named and fix’d the place where thou wast slain.
Ye lions, from your neighb’ring dens repair,
Pity the wretch; this impious body tear!
But cowards thus for death can idly cry;
The brave still have it in their power to die.’
Then to the appointed tree he hastes away,
The veil first gather’d, though all rent it lay;
The veil all rent, yet still itself endears,
He kiss’d, and kissing, wash’d it with his tears.
‘Though rich,’ he cried, ‘with many a precious stain,
Still from my blood a deeper tincture gain.’
Then in his breast his shining sword he drown’d,
And fell supine extended on the ground.
As out again the blade he dying drew,
Out spun the blood, and streaming upwards flew.
So, if a conduit-pipe e’er burst you saw,
Swift spring the gushing waters through the flaw;
Then spouting in a bow they rise on high,
And a new fountain plays amid the sky.
The berries, stain’d with blood, began to show
A dark complexion, and forgot their snow,
While, fatten’d with the flowing gore, the root
Was doom’d for ever to a purple fruit.

“Meantime poor Thisbe fear’d, so long she stay’d,
Her lover might suspect a perjured maid.
Her fright scarce o’er, she strove the youth to find
With ardent eyes, which spoke an ardent mind.
Already in his arms, she hears him sigh
At her destruction, which was once so nigh.
The tomb, the tree, but not the fruit, she knew.
The fruit she doubted for its alter’d hue.
Still as she doubts, her eyes a body found,
Quivering in death, and gasping on the ground.
She started back, the red her cheeks forsook,
And every nerve with thrilling horrors shook.
So trembles the smooth surface of the seas,
If brush’d o’er gently with a rising breeze.
But when her view her bleeding love confess’d,
She shriek’d, she tore her hair, she beat her breast.
She raised the body, and embraced it round,
And bathed with tears unfeign’d the gaping wound;
Then her warm lips to the cold face applied,
‘And is it thus, ah! thus we meet?’ she cried,
‘My Pyramus! whence sprung thy cruel fate?
My Pyramus!⁠—ah speak, ere ’tis too late.
I, thy own Thisbe, but one word implore,
One word thy Thisbe never ask’d before.’
At Thisbe’s name, awaked, he open’d wide
His dying eyes, with dying eyes he tried
On her to dwell, but closed them slow, and died.

“The fatal cause was now at last explored,
Her veil she knew, and saw his sheathless sword:
‘From thy own hand thy ruin thou hast found,’
She said, ‘but love first taught that hand to wound:
Ev’n I for thee as bold a hand can show,
And love, which shall as true direct the blow.
I will against the woman’s weakness strive,
And never thee, lamented youth, survive.
The world may say I caused, alas! thy death,
But saw thee breathless, and resign’d my breath.
Fate, though it conquers, shall no triumph gain,
Fate, that divides us, still divides in vain.

“ ‘Now, both our cruel parents, hear my prayer;
My prayer to offer for us both I dare,
Oh! see our ashes in one urn confined,
Whom love at first, and fate at last, has join’d.
The bliss you envied is not our request;
Lovers, when dead, may sure together rest.
Thou, tree, where now one lifeless lump is laid,
Ere long o’er two shall cast a friendly shade.
Still let our loves from thee be understood,
Still witness in thy purple fruit our blood.’
She spoke, and in her bosom plunged the sword,
All warm and reeking from its slaughter’d lord.

“The prayer which dying Thisbe had preferr’d,
Both gods and parents with compassion heard.
The whiteness of the mulberry soon fled,
And, ripening, sadden’d in a dusky red;
While both their parents their lost children mourn,
And mix their ashes in one golden urn.”

Thus did the melancholy tale conclude,
And a short silent interval ensued.
The next in birth unloosed her artful tongue,
And drew attentive all the sister throng.

“The Sun, the source of light, by beauty’s power
Once amorous grew; then hear the sun’s amour.
Venus, and Mars, with his far-piercing eyes,
This god first spied; this god first all things spies.
Stung at the sight, and swift on mischief bent,
To haughty Juno’s shapeless son he went,
To him his consort’s shame to represent.
Poor Vulcan soon desired to hear no more,
He dropp’d his hammer, and he shook all o’er;
Then courage takes, and full of vengeful ire
He heaves the bellows, and blows fierce the fire;
From liquid brass, though sure, yet subtle snares
He forms, and next a wondrous net prepares,
Drawn with such curious art, so nicely sly,
Unseen the meshes cheat the searching eye.
Not half so thin their webs the spiders weave,
Which the most wary buzzing prey deceive.
These chains, obedient to the touch, he spread
In secret foldings o’er the conscious bed.

“Through heaven the news of this surprisal run,
But Venus did not thus forget the Sun.
He, who stolen transports idly had betray’d,
By a betrayer was in kind repaid.
What now avails, great god, thy piercing blaze,
That youth, and beauty, and those golden rays?
Thou, who canst warm this universe alone,
Feel’st now a warmth more pow’rful than thy own;
And those bright eyes, which all things should survey,
Know not from fair Leucothoe to stray.
The lamp of light, for human good design’d,
Is to one virgin niggardly confin’d.
Sometimes too early rise thy eastern beams,
Sometimes too late they set in western streams;
’Tis then her beauty thy swift course delays,
And gives to winter skies long summer days.
Now in thy face thy lovesick mind appears,
And spreads through impious nations empty fears;
For when thy beamless head is wrapp’d in night,
Poor mortals tremble in despair of light.
’Tis not the moon that o’er thee casts a veil,
’Tis love alone which makes thy looks so pale.
Leucothoe is grown thy only care,
Not Phaeton’s fair mother now is fair.
The youthful Rhodos moves no tender thought,
And beauteous Persa is at last forgot.
Fond Clytie, scorn’d, yet loved and sought thy bed,
Ev’n then thy heart for other virgins bled.
Leucothoe has all thy soul possess’d,
And chased each rival passion from thy breast.
To this bright nymph Eurynome gave birth,
In the bless’d confines of the spicy earth.
Excelling others, she herself beheld,
By her own blooming daughter far excell’d.
The sire was Orchamus, whose vast command,
The seventh from Belus, ruled the Persian land.

“Deep in cool vales, beneath the Hesperian sky,
For the Sun’s fiery steeds the pastures lie.
Ambrosia there they eat, and thence they gain
New vigour, and their daily toils sustain.
While thus on heavenly food the coursers fed,
And Night around her gloomy empire spread,
The god assumed the mother’s shape and air,
And pass’d unheeded to his darling fair.
Close by a lamp, with maids encompass’d round,
The royal spinster full employ’d he found:
Then cried, ‘Awhile from work, my daughter, rest,’
And, like a mother, scarce her lips he press’d.
‘Servants retire; nor secrets dare to hear,
Entrusted only to a daughter’s ear.’
They swift obey’d; not one, suspicious, thought
The secret which their mistress would be taught.
Then he: ‘Since now no witnesses are near,
Behold the god who guides the various year!
The world’s vast eye, of light the source serene,
Who all things sees, by whom are all things seen.
Believe me, nymph (for I the truth have show’d),
Thy charms have power to charm so great a god.’
Confused, she heard him his soft passion tell,
And on the floor, untwirl’d, the spindle fell:
Still from the sweet confusion some new grace
Blush’d out by stealth, and languish’d in her face.
The lover, now inflamed, himself put on,
And out at once the god all radiant shone.
The virgin startled at his alter’d form,
Too weak to bear a god’s impetuous storm.

“This Clytie knew, and knew she was undone,
Whose soul was fixed, and doted on the Sun.
She raged to think on her neglected charms,
And Phoebus panting in another’s arms.
With envious madness fired, she flies in haste,
And tells the king his daughter was unchaste.
The king, incensed to hear his honour stain’d,
No more the father nor the man retain’d.
In vain she stretch’d her arms, and turn’d her eyes
To her loved god, the enlightener of the skies.
In vain she own’d it was a crime, yet still
It was a crime not acted by her will.
The brutal sire stood deaf to every prayer,
And deep in earth entomb’d alive the fair.
What Phoebus could do was by Phoebus done,
Full on her grave with pointed beams he shone;
To pointed beams the gaping earth gave way;
Had the nymph eyes, her eyes had seen the day;
But lifeless now, yet lovely still, she lay.
Not more the god wept when the world was fired,
And in the wreck his blooming boy expired.
The vital flame he strives to light again,
And warm the frozen blood in every vein;
But since resistless fates denied that power,
On the cold nymph he rain’d a nectar shower.
‘Ah! undeserving thus,’ he said, ‘to die,
Yet still in odours thou shalt reach the sky.’
The body soon dissolved, and all around
Perfumed with heavenly fragrances the ground.
A sacrifice for gods uprose from thence,
A sweet delightful tree of frankincense.”

“Though guilty Clytie thus the Sun betray’d,
By too much passion she was guilty made.
Excess of love begot excess of grief,
Grief fondly bade her hence to hope relief.
But angry Phoebus hears unmoved her sighs,
And scornful from her loath’d embraces flies.
All day, all night, in trackless wilds alone
She pined, and taught the listening rocks her moan.
On the bare earth she lies, her bosom bare,
Loose her attire, dishevell’d is her hair.
Nine times the morn unbarr’d the gates of light,
As oft were spread the alternate shades of night,
So long no sustenance the mourner knew,
Unless she drank her tears, or suck’d the dew.
She turn’d about, but rose not from the ground,
Turn’d to the sun still as he roll’d his round;
On his bright face hung her desiring eyes,
Till, fix’d to earth, she strove in vain to rise;
Her looks their paleness in a flower retain’d,
But here and there some purple streaks they gain’d.
Still the loved object the fond leaves pursue,
Still move their root the moving sun to view,
And in the heliotrope the nymph is true.”

The sisters heard these wonders with surprise,
But part received them as romantic lies,
And pertly rallied, that they could not see
In powers divine so vast an energy.
Part own’d true gods such miracles might do,
But own’d not Bacchus one among the true.
At last a common, just request they make,
And beg Alcithoe her turn to take.
“I will,” said she, “and please you if I can;”
Then shot her shuttle swift, and thus began:

“The fate of Daphnis is a fate too known,
Whom an enamour’d nymph transform’d to stone;
Because she fear’d another nymph might see
The lovely youth, and love as much as she:
So strange the madness is of jealousy!
Nor shall I tell what changes Scython made,
And how he walk’d a man, or tripp’d a maid.
You too would peevish frown, and patience want
To hear, how Celmis grew an adamant:
He once was dear to Jove, and saw of old
Jove when a child; but what he saw he told.
Crocus and Smilax may be turn’d to flowers,
And the Curetes spring from bounteous showers.
I pass a hundred legends stale as these,
And with sweet novelty your taste will please.”

“How Salmacis, with weak, enfeebling streams,
Softens the body, and unnerves the limbs,
And what the secret cause, shall here be shown;
The cause is secret, but the effect is known.

“The Naiads nursed an infant heretofore,
That Citherea once to Hermes bore:
From both the illustrious authors of his race
The child was named, nor was it hard to trace
Both the bright parents through the infant’s face.
When fifteen years in Ida’s cool retreat
The boy had told, he left his native seat,
And sought fresh fountains in a foreign soil:
The pleasure lessen’d the attending toil.
With eager steps the Lycian fields he cross’d,
And fields that border on the Lycian coast:
A river here he view’d, so lovely bright,
It show’d the bottom in a fairer light,
Nor kept a sand conceal’d from human sight:
The stream produced nor slimy ooze, nor weeds,
Nor miry rushes, nor the spiky reeds,
But dealt enriching moisture all around,
The fruitful banks with cheerful verdure crown’d,
And kept the spring eternal on the ground.
A nymph presides, not practised in the chase,
Nor skilful at the bow, nor at the race;
Of all the blue-eyed daughters of the main,
The only stranger to Diana’s train.
Her sisters often, as ’tis said, would cry,
‘Fy, Salmacis: what! always idle; fy!
Or take thy quiver, or thy arrows seize,
And mix the toils of hunting with they ease.’
Nor quivers she, nor arrows, e’er would seize,
Nor mix the toils of hunting with her ease;
But oft would bathe her in the crystal tide,
Oft with a comb her dewy locks divide;
Now in the limpid stream she views her face,
And dress’d her image in the floating glass:
On beds of leaves she pow reposed her limbs,
Now gather’d flowers that grew about her streams,
And then by chance was gathering, as she stood
To view the boy, and long’d for what she view’d.

“Fain would she meet the youth with hasty feet,
She fain would meet him, but refused to meet
Before her looks were set with nicest care,
And well deserved to be reputed fair.

“ ‘Bright youth,’ she cries, ‘whom all thy features prove
A god, and, if a god, the god of love;
But if a mortal, bless’d thy nurse’s breast,
Bless’d are thy parents, and thy sisters bless’d:
But O! how bless’d, how more than bless’d thy bride!
Allied in bliss, if any yet allied.
If so, let mine the stolen enjoyments be;
If not, behold a willing bride in me.’

“The boy knew naught of love, and, touch’d with shame,
He strove, and blush’d, but still the blush became;
In rising blushes still fresh beauties rose;
The sunny side of fruit such blushes shows,
And such the moon, when all her silver white
Turns in eclipses to a ruddy light.
The nymph still begs, if not a nobler bliss,
A cold salute at least, a sister’s kiss;
And now prepares to take the lovely boy
Between her arms. He, innocently coy,
Replies, ‘Or leave me to myself alone,
You rude uncivil nymph, or I’ll be gone.’
‘Fair stranger, then,’ says she, ‘it shall be so;’
And, for she fear’d his threats, she feign’d to go;
But, hid within a covert’s neighbouring green,
She kept him still in sight, herself unseen.
The boy now fancies all the danger o’er,
And innocently sports about the shore;
Playful and wanton to the stream he trips,
And dips his foot, and shivers as he dips.
The coolness pleased him, and, with eager haste,
His airy garments on the banks he cast;
His godlike features, and his heavenly hue,
And all his beauties, were exposed to view.

“Now all undress’d upon the banks he stood,
And clapp’d his sides, and leap’d into the flood:
His lovely limbs the silver waves divide;
His limbs appear more lovely through the tide;
As lilies, shut within a crystal case,
Receive a glossy lustre from the glass.
‘He’s mine, he’s all my own,’ the Naiad cries,
And flings of all, and after him she flies.
And now she fastens on him as he swims,
And holds him close, and wraps about his limbs.
‘And why, coy youth,’ she cries, ‘why thus unkind?
O may the gods thus keep us over join’d!
O may we never, never part again!’
So pray’d the nymph, nor did she pray in vain:
For now she finds him, as his limbs she press’d.
Grow nearer still, and nearer to her breast,
Till, piercing each the other’s flesh, they run
Together, and incorporate in one:
Last, in one face are both their faces join’d,
As when the stock and grafted twig combined
Shoot up the same, and wear a common ring.”

But Mineus’ daughters still their task pursue,
To wickedness most obstinately true;
At Bacchus still they laugh, when all around,
Unseen, the timbrels hoarse were heard to sound.
Saffron and myrrh their fragrant odours shed,
And now the present deity they dread.
Strange to relate! here ivy first was seen,
Along the distaff crept the wondrous green;
Then sudden, springing vines began to bloom,
And the soft tendrils curl’d around the loom;
While purple clusters, dangling from on high,
Tinged the wrought purple with a second die.

Now from the skies was shot a doubtful light,
The day declining to the bounds of night.
The fabric’s firm foundations shake all o’er,
False tigers rage, and figured lions roar,
Torches, aloft, seem blazing in the air,
And angry flashes of red lightnings glare.
To dark recesses, the dire sight to shun,
Swift the pale sisters in confusion run:
Their arms were lost in pinions as they fled,
And subtle films each slender limb o’erspread.
Their alter’d forms their senses soon reveal’d;
Their forms, how alter’d, darkness still conceal’d.
Close to the roof each, wond’ring, upwards springs,
Borne on unknown, transparent, plumeless wings.
They strove for words; their little bodies found
No words, but murmur’d in a fainting sound.
In towns, not woods, the sooty bats delight,
And never till the dusk begin their flight;
Till Vesper rises with his evening flame,
From whom the Romans have derived their name.

The power of Bacchus now o’er Thebes had flown:
With awful reverence soon the god they own.
Proud Ino all around the wonder tells,
And on her nephew deity still dwells.
Of numerous sisters, she alone yet knew
No grief, but grief which she from sisters drew.

Imperial Juno saw her with disdain
Vain in her offspring, in her consort vain,
Who ruled the trembling Thebans with a nod,
But saw her vainest in her foster-god.
“Could then,” she cried, “a bastard boy have power
To make a mother her own son devour?
Could he the Tuscan crew to fishes change,
And now three sisters damn to forms so strange?
Yet shall the wife of Jove find no relief?
Shall she still unrevenged disclose her grief?
Have I the mighty freedom to complain?
Is that my power? Is that to ease my pain?
A foe has taught me vengeance; and who ought
To scorn that vengeance which a foe has taught?
What sure destruction frantic rage can throw,
The gaping wounds of slaughter’d Pentheus show.
Why should not Ino, fired with madness, stray,
Like her mad sisters her own kindred slay?
Why she not follow where they lead the way?”

Down a steep yawning cave where yews display’d
In arches meet, and lend a baleful shade,
Through silent labyrinths a passage lies
To mournful regions and infernal skies.
Here Styx exhales its noisome clouds, and here,
The funeral rites once paid, all souls appear,
Stiff, cold; and horror, with a ghastly face,
And staring eyes, infests the dreary place.
Ghosts, new-arrived, and strangers to these plains,
Know not the palace where grim Pluto reigns;
They journey doubtful, nor the road can tell,
Which leads to the metropolis of hell.
A thousand avenues those towers command,
A thousand gates for ever open stand.
As all the rivers, disembogued, find room
For all their waters in old Ocean’s womb,
So this vast city worlds of shades receives,
And space for millions still of worlds she leaves.
The unbodied spectres freely rove, and show
Whate’er they loved on earth they love below:
The lawyers still, or right or wrong support,
The courtiers smoothly glide to Pluto’s court,
Still airy heroes thoughts of glory fire,
Still the dead poet strings his deathless lyre,
And lovers still with fancied darts expire.

The queen of heaven, to gratify her hate,
And sooth immortal wrath, forgets her state;
Down from the realms of day to realms of night,
The goddess swift precipitates her flight.
At hell arrived, the noise hell’s porter heard,
The enormous dog his triple head uprear’d:
Thrice from three grisly throats he howl’d profound,
Then suppliant couch’d, and stretch’d along the ground.
The trembling threshold, which Saturnia press’d,
The weight of such divinity confess’d.

Before a lofty adamantine gate,
Which closed a tower of brass, the Furies sate;
Misshapen forms, tremendous to the sight,
The implacable foul daughters of the night.
A sounding whip each bloody sister shakes,
Or from her tresses combs the curling snakes.
But now great Juno’s majesty was known;
Through the thick gloom all heavenly bright she shone;
The hideous monsters their obedience show’d,
And, rising from their seats, submissive bow’d.

This is the place of wo, here groan the dead:
Huge Tityus o’er nine acres here is spread:
Fruitful for pain the immortal liver breeds,
Still grows, and still the insatiate vulture feeds:
Poor Tantalus to taste the water tries,
But from his lips the faithless water flies:
Then thinks the bending tree he can command;
The tree starts backwards, and eludes his hand:
The labour too of Sisyphus is vain;
Up the steep mount he heaves the stone with pain,
Down from the summit rolls the stone again:
The Belides their leaky vessels still
Are ever filling, and yet never fill;
Doom’d to this punishment for blood they shed,
For bridegrooms slaughter’d in the bridal bed;
Stretch’d on the rolling wheel Ixion lies;
Himself he follows, and himself he flies.
Ixion, tortured, Juno sternly eyed,
Then turn’d, and toiling Sisyphus espied:
“And why,” she said, “so wretched is the fate
Of him, whose brother proudly reigns in state?
Yet still my altars unadored have been
By Athamas and his presumptuous queen.”

What caused her hate, the goddess thus confess’d,
What caused her journey now was more than guess’d,
That hate, relentless, its revenge did want,
And that revenge the Furies soon could grant:
They could the glory of proud Thebes efface,
And hide in ruin the Cadmean race.
For this she largely promises, entreats,
And to entreaties adds imperial threats.

Then fell Tisiphone with rage was stung,
And from her mouth the untwisted serpents flung.
“To gain this trifling boon, there is no need,”
She cried, “in formal speeches to proceed.
Whatever thou command’st to do is done;
Believe it finish’d, though not yet begun.
But from these melancholy seats repair
To happier mansions, and to purer air.”
She spoke. The goddess, darting upwards, flies,
And joyous reascends her native skies:
Nor enter’d there, till round her Iris threw
Ambrosial sweets, and pour’d celestial dew.

The faithful fury, guiltless of delays,
With cruel haste the dire command obeys.
Girt in a bloody gown, a torch she shakes,
And round her neck twines speckled wreaths of snakes.
Fear, and dismay, and agonizing pain,
With frantic rage, complete her loveless train.
To Thebes her flight she sped, and hell forsook;
At her approach the Theban turrets shook;
The sun shrunk back, thick clouds the day o’ercast,
And springing greens were wither’d as she pass’d.

Now, dismal yellings heard, strange spectre seen,
Confound as much the monarch as the queen.
In vain to quit the palace they prepared,
Tisiphone was there, and kept the ward.
She wide extended her unfriendly arms,
And all the fury lavish’d all her harms,
Part of her tresses loudly hiss, and part
Spread poison, as their forky tongues they dart:
Then from her middle locks two snakes she drew,
Whose merit from superior mischief grew:
The envenom’d ruin, thrown with spiteful care,
Clung to the bosoms of the hapless pair.
The hapless pair soon with wild thoughts were fired,
And madness by a thousand ways inspired.
’Tis true, the unwounded body still was sound,
But ’twas the soul which felt the deadly wound.
Nor did the unsated monster here give o’er,
But dealt of plagues a fresh unnumber’d store.
Each baneful juice too well she understood,
Foam churn’d by Cerberus, and Hydra’s blood.
Hot hemlock and cold aconite she chose,
Delighted in variety of woes.
Whatever can untune the harmonious soul,
And its mild reas’ning faculties control,
Give false ideas, raise desires profane,
And whirl in eddies the tumultuous brain,
Mix’d with cursed art, she direfully around
Through all their nerves diffused the sad compound;
Then toss’d her torch in circles still the same,
Improved their rage, and added flame to flame.
The grinning fury her own conquest spied,
And to her rueful shades return’d with pride,
And threw the exhausted useless snakes aside.

Now Athamas cries out, his reason fled,
“Here, fellow-hunters, let the toils be spread.
I saw a lioness, in quest of food,
With her two young, run roaring in this wood.”
Again the fancied savages were seen,
As through his palace still he chased his queen;
Then tore Learchus from her breast: the child
Stretch’d little arms, and on its father smiled:
A father now no more, who now begun
Around his head to whirl his giddy son,
And, quite insensible to nature’s call,
The helpless infant flung against the wall.
The same mad poison in the mother wrought:
Young Melicerta in her arms she caught,
And with disorder’d tresses, howling, flies,
“O! Bacchus, Evoe, Bacchus!” loud she cries.
The name of Bacchus Juno laugh’d to hear,
And said, “Thy foster-god has cost thee dear.”

A rock there stood, whose side the beating waves
Had long consumed, and hollow’d into caves;
The head shot forwards in a bending steep,
And cast a dreadful covert o’er the deep.
The wretched Ino, on destruction bent,
Climb’d up the cliff, such strength her fury lent,
Thence with her guiltless boy, who wept in vain,
At one bold spring she plunged into the main.

Her niece’s fate touch’d Cytherea’s breast,
And in soft sounds she Neptune thus address’d:
“Great god of waters, whose extended sway
Is next to his whom heaven and earth obey,
Let not the suit of Venus thee displease,
Pity the floaters on the Ionian seas.
Increase thy subject-gods, nor yet disdain
To add my kindred to that glorious train.
If from the sea I may such honours claim,
If ’tis desert that from the sea I came,
As Grecian poets artfully have sung,
And in the name confess’d from whence I sprung.”

Pleased Neptune nodded his assent, and free
Both soon became from frail mortality.
He gave them form, and majesty divine,
And bade them glide along the foamy brine.
For Melicerta is Palaemon known,
And Ino once, Leucothoe is grown.

The Theban matrons their loved queen pursued,
And tracing to the rock, her footsteps view’d.
Too certain of her fate, they rend the skies
With piteous shrieks, and lamentable cries;
All beat their breasts, and Juno all upbraid,
Who still remember’d a deluded maid,
Who, still revengeful for one stolen embrace,
Thus wreak’d her hate on the Cadmean race.
This Juno heard: “And shall such elfs,” she cried
“Dispute my justice, or my power deride?
You too shall feel my wrath not idly spent;
A goddess never for insults was meant.”

She who loved most, and who most loved had been,
Said: “Not the waves shall part me from my queen.”
She strove to plunge into the roaring flood,
Fix’d to the stone, a stone herself she stood;
This, on her breast would fain her blows repeat;
Her stiffen’d hands refused her breast to beat;
That stretch’d her arms unto the seas, in vain
Her arms she labour’d to unstretch again.
To tear her comely locks another tried;
Both comely locks and fingers petrified.
Part thus; but Juno, with a softer mind,
Part doom’d to mix among the feather’d kind.
Transform’d, the name of Theban birds they keep,
And skim the surface of that fatal deep.

Meantime the wretched Cadmus mourns, nor knows
That they who mortal fell, immortal rose.
With a long series of new ills oppress’d,
He droops, and all the man forsakes his breast:
Strange prodigies confound his frighted eyes;
From the fair city, which he raised, he flies;
As it misfortune not pursued his race,
But only hung o’er that devoted place.
Resolved by sea to seek some distant land,
At last he safely gain’d the Illyrian strand.
Cheerless himself, his consort still he cheers,
Hoary, and laden both with woes and years.
Then to recount past sorrows they begin,
And trace them to the gloomy origin.
“That serpent sure was hallow’d,” Cadmus cried,
“Which once my spear transfix’d with foolish pride;
When the big teeth, a seed before unknown,
By me along the wond’ring glebe were sown,
And sprouting armies by themselves o’erthrown.
If thence the wrath of heaven on me is bent,
May heaven conclude it with one sad event;
To an extended serpent change the man;”
And, while he spoke, the wish’d-for change began.
His skin with sea-green spots was varied round,
And on his belly prone he press’d the ground;
He glitter’d soon with many a golden scale,
And his shrunk legs closed in a spiry tail;
Arms yet remain’d, remaining arms he spread
To his loved wife, and human tears yet shed.
“Come, my Harmonia, come, thy face recline
Down to my face; still touch what still is mine.
O! let these hands, while hands, be gently press’d,
While yet the serpent has not all possess’d.”
More he had spoke, but strove to speak in vain,
The forky tongue refused to tell his pain,
And learn’d in hissings only to complain.

Then shriek’d Harmonia: “Stay, my Cadmus, stay,
Glide not in such a monstrous shape away!
Destruction, like impetuous waves, rolls on.
Where are thy feet, thy legs, thy shoulders, gone?
Changed is thy visage, changed is all thy frame,
Cadmus is only Cadmus now in name.
Ye gods, my Cadmus to himself restore,
Or me like him transform; I ask no more.”

The husband serpent show’d he still had thought,
With wonted fondness an embrace he sought,
Play’d round her neck in many a harmless twist,
And lick’d that bosom which, a man, he kiss’d.
The lookers-on (for lookers-on there were),
Shock’d at the sight, half died away with fear.
The transformation was again renew’d,
And, like the husband, changed the wife they view’d.
Both serpents now, with fold involved in fold,
To the next covert amicably roll’d.
There curl’d they lie, or wave along the green,
Fearless see men, by men are fearless seen,
Still mild, and conscious what they once have been.

Yet though this harsh inglorious fate they found,
Each in the deathless grandson lived renown’d.
Through conquer’d India Bacchus nobly rode,
And Greece with temples hail’d the conquering god.
In Argos only proud Acrisius reign’d,
Who all the consecrated rites profaned.
Audacious wretch! thus Bacchus to deny,
And the great Thunderer’s great son defy!
Nor him alone: thy daughter vainly strove
Brave Perseus of celestial stem to prove,
And herself pregnant by a golden Jove.
Yet this was true, and truth in time prevails;
Acrisius now his unbelief bewails.
His former thought an impious thought he found,
And both the hero and the god were own’d.
He saw, already, one in heaven was placed,
And one with more than mortal triumphs graced.
The victor Perseus, with the Gorgon head,
O’er Libyan sands his airy journey sped.
The gory drops distill’d, as swift he flew,
And from each drop envenom’d serpents grew.
The mischiefs brooded on the barren plains,
And still the unhappy fruitfulness remains.

Thence Perseus, like a cloud, by storms was driven,
Through all the expanse beneath the cope of heaven.
The jarring winds unable to control,
He saw the southern and the northern pole;
And eastward thrice, and westward thrice, was whirl’d,
And from the skies survey’d the nether world.
But when gray evening show’d the verge of night,
He fear’d in darkness to pursue his flight.
He poised his pinions, and forgot to soar,
And, sinking, closed them on the Hesperian shore
Then begg’d to rest, till Lucifer begun
To wake the morn, the morn to wake the sun.

Here Atlas reign’d, of more than human size,
And in his kingdom the world’s limit lies.
Here Titan bids his wearied coursers sleep,
And cools the burning axle in the deep:
The mighty monarch, uncontroll’d, alone
His sceptre sways: no neighb’ring states are known:
A thousand flocks on shady mountains fed,
A thousand herds o’er grassy plains were spread:
Here wondrous trees their shining stores unfold,
Their shining stores too wondrous to be told,
Their leaves, their branches, and their apples, gold.
Then Perseus the gigantic prince address’d,
Humbly implored a hospitable rest:
“If bold exploits thy admiration fire,”
He said, “I fancy mine thou wilt admire:
Or, if the glory of a race can move,
Not mean my glory, for I spring from Jove.”
At this confession Atlas ghastly stared,
Mindful of what an oracle declared,
That the dark womb of time conceal’d a day,
Which should, disclosed, the bloomy gold betray;
All should at once be ravish’d from his eyes,
And Jove’s own progeny enjoy the prize.
For this, the fruit he loftily immured,
And a fierce dragon the strait pass secured:
For this, all strangers he forbade to land,
And drove them from the inhospitable strand.
To Perseus then: “Fly, quickly fly, this coast,
Nor falsely dare thy acts and race to boast.”
In vain the hero for one night entreats,
Threat’ning he storms, and next adds force to threats.
By strength not Perseus could himself defend;
For who in strength with Atlas could contend?
“But since short rest to me thou wilt not give,
A gift of endless rest from me receive.”
He said, and backward turn’d, no more conceal’d
The present, and Medusa’s head reveal’d.
Soon the high Atlas a high mountain stood;
His locks and beard became a leafy wood;
His hands and shoulders into ridges went;
The summit-head still crown’d the steep ascent;
His bones a solid, rocky hardness gain’d,
He, thus immensely grown (as Fate ordain’d),
The stars, the heavens, and all the gods, sustain’d.