Nor seeks in air her humble flight to raise,
Content to skim the surface of the seas;
Her bill, though slender, sends a creaking noise,
And imitates a lamentable voice;
Now lighting where the bloodless body lies,
She with a funeral note renews her cries.
At all her stretch her little wings she spread,
And with her feather'd arms embraced the dead;
Then flickering to his pallid lips, she strove
To print a kiss, the last essay of love;
Whether the vital touch revived the dead,
Or that the moving waters raised his head
To meet the kiss, the vulgar doubt alone,
For sure a present miracle was shown.
The gods their shapes to winter-birds translate,
But both obnoxious to their former fate.
Their conjugal affection still is tied,
And still the mournful race is multiplied;
They bill, they tread; Alcyone compress'd,
Seven days sits brooding on her floating nest,
A wintery queen; her sire at length is kind,
Calms every storm, and hushes every wind;
Prepares his empire for his daughter's ease,
And for his hatching nephews smooths the seas.
TRANSFORMED INTO A CORMORANT.
FROM THE ELEVENTH BOOK OF
HESE some old man sees wanton in the air, And praises the unhappy constant pair;
Then to his friend the long-neck'd Cormorant shows,
The former tale reviving other woes:
That sable bird, he cries, which cuts the flood
With slender legs, was once of royal blood;
His ancestors from mighty Tros proceed,
The brave Laomedon and Ganymede,
Whose beauty tempted Jove to steal the boy,
And Priam, hapless prince! who fell with Troy;
Himself was Hector's brother, and, had fate
But given this hopeful youth a longer date,
Perhaps had rivall'd warlike Hector's worth,
Though on the mother's side of meaner birth;
Fair Alyxothoé, a country maid,
Bare Esacus by stealth in Ida's shade.
He fled the noisy town, and pompous court,
Loved the lone hills, and simple rural sport,
And seldom to the city would resort.
Yet he no rustic clownishness profest,
Nor was soft love a stranger to his breast;
The youth had long the nymph Hesperio woo'd,
Oft through the thicket, or the mead, pursued.
Her haply on her father's bank he spied,
While fearless she her silver tresses dried;
Away she fled; not stags with half such speed,
Before the prowling wolf, scud o'er the mead;
Not ducks, when they the safer flood forsake,
Pursued by hawks, so swift regain the lake,
As fast he follow'd in the hot career';
Desire the lover wing'd, the virgin fear.
A snake unseen now pierced her heedless foot,
Quick through the veins the venom'd juices shoot;
She fell, and 'scaped by death his fierce pursuit.
Her lifeless body, frighted, he embraced,
And cried,-Not this I dreaded, but thy haste,;
O had my love been less, or less thy fear!
The victory thus bought is far too dear.
Accursed snake! yet I more cursed than he!
He gave the wound; the cause was given by me.
Yet none shall say, that unrevenged you died.
He spoke; then climb'd a cliff's o'er-hanging side,
And, resolute, leap'd on the foaming tide.
Tethys received him gently on the wave;
The death he sought denied, and feathers gave.
Debarr'd the surest remedy of grief,.
And forced to live, he curst the unask'd relief;
Then on his airy pinions upwards flies,
And at a second fall successless tries,
The downy plume a quick descent denies.
Enraged, he often dives beneath the wave,
And there in vain expects to find a grave.
His ceaseless sorrow for the unhappy maid
Meager'd his look, and on his spirits prey'd.
Still near the sounding deep he lives; his name
From frequent diving and emerging came.
CONNECTION TO THE END OF THE ELEVENTH BOOK.
Esacus, the son of Priam, loving a country life, forsakes the court; living obscurely, he falls in love with a nymph, who, flying from him, was killed by a serpent; for grief of this, he would have drowned himself; but, by the pity of the gods, is turned into a Cormorant. Priam, not hearing of Esacus, believes him to be dead, and raises a tomb to preserve his memory. By this transition, which is one of the finest in all Ovid, the poet naturally falls into the story of the Trojan war, which is summed up in the present book; but so very briefly in many places, that Ovid seems more short than Virgil, contrary to his usual style. Yet the House of Fame, which is here described, is one of the most beautiful pieces in the whole Metamorphoses. The fight of Achilles and Cygnus, and the fray betwixt the Lapitha and Centaurs, yield to no other part of this poet; and particularly the loves and death of Cyllarus and Hylonome, the male and female Centaur, are wonderfully moving.
PRIAM, to whom the story was unknown,
As dead, deplored his metamorphosed son;
A cenotaph his name and title kept,
And Hector round the tomb, with all his brothers, wept.
This pious office Paris did not share;
Absent alone, and author of the war,
Which, for the Spartan queen, the Grecians drew To avenge the rape, and Asia to subdue.
A thousand ships were mann'd, to sail the sea;
Nor had their just resentments found delay,
Had not the winds and waves opposed their way.
At Aulis, with united powers, they meet,
But there, cross winds or calms detain'd the fleet.
Now, while they raise an altar on the shore,
And Jove with solemn sacrifice adore,
A boding sign the priests and people see:
A snake of size immense ascends the tree,
And in the leafy summit spied a nest,
Which, o'er her callow young, a sparrow press'd.
Eight were the birds unfledged; their mother flew,
And hover'd round her care, but still in view;
Till the fierce reptile first devour'd the brood,
Then seized the fluttering dam, and drank her blood.
This dire ostent the fearful people view;
Calchas alone, by Phoebus taught, foreknew
What heaven decreed; and, with a smiling glance,
Thus gratulates to Greece her happy chance.
O, Argives, we shall conquer; Troy is ours,
But long delays shall first afflict our powers;
Nine years of labour the nine birds portend,
The tenth shall in the town's destruction end.
The serpent, who his maw obscene had fill'd,
The branches in his curl'd embraces held;
But as in spires he stood, he turn'd to stone;
The stony snake retain'd the figure still his own.
Yet not for this the wind-bound navy weigh'd;
Slack were their sails, and Neptune disobey'd.
Some thought him loth the town should be destroy'd,
Whose building had his hands divine employ'd;
Not so the seer, who knew, and known fore-show'd,
The virgin Phoebe, with a virgin's blood,
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