He found she trembled, but believed she strove,
With maiden modesty, against her love;
And sought, with flattering words, vain fancies to
Perhaps he said, My daughter, cease thy fears,-
Because the title suited with her years;
And, Father, she might whisper him again,
That names might not be wanting to the sin.
Full of her sire, she left the incestuous bed,
And carried in her womb the crime she bred.
Another, and another night she came;
For frequent sin had left no sense of shame;
Till Cinyras desired to see her face,
Whose body he had held in close embrace,
And brought a taper; the revealer, light,
Exposed both crime, and criminal, to sight.
Grief, rage, amazement, could no speech afford,
But from the sheath he drew the avenging sword;
The guilty fled; the benefit of night,
That favoured first the sin, secured the flight.
Long wandering through the spacious fields, she bent
Her voyage to the Arabian continent;
Then passed the region which Panchæa joined,
And flying left the palmy plains behind.
Nine times the moon had mewed her horns; at length
With travel weary, unsupplied with strength,
And with the burden of her womb oppressed,
Sabæan fields afford her needful rest;
There, loathing life, and yet of death afraid,
In anguish of her spirit, thus she prayed :—
Ye powers, if any so propitious are
To accept my penitence, and hear my prayer,
Your judgments, I confess, are justly sent;
Great sins deserve as great a punishment:
Yet, since my life the living will profane,
And since my death the happy dead will stain,
A middle state your mercy may bestow,
Betwixt the realms above, and those below;
Some other form to wretched Myrrha give,
Nor let her wholly die, nor wholly live.-
The prayers of penitents are never vain;
At least, she did her last request obtain ;
For, while she spoke, the ground began to rise,
And gathered round her feet, her legs, and thighs;
Her toes in roots descend, and, spreading wide,
A firm foundation for the trunk provide;
Her solid bones convert to solid wood,
To pith her marrow, and to sap her blood;
Her arms are boughs, her fingers change their kind,
Her tender skin is hardened into rind.
And now the rising tree her womb invests,
Now, shooting upwards still, invades her breasts,
And shades the neck; and, weary with delay,
She sunk her head within, and met it half the way.
And though with outward shape she lost her sense,
With bitter tears she wept her last offence;
And still she weeps, nor sheds her tears in vain;
For still the precious drops her name retain.
Mean time the misbegotten infant grows,
And, ripe for birth, distends with deadly throes
The swelling rind, with unavailing strife,
To leave the wooden womb, and pushes into life.
The mother-tree, as if oppressed with pain,
Writhes here and there, to break the bark, in vain ;
And, like a labouring woman, would have prayed,
But wants a voice to call Lucina's aid;
The bending bole sends out a hollow sound,
And trickling tears fall thicker on the ground.
The mild Lucina came uncalled, and stood
Beside the struggling boughs, and heard the groan-
ing wood;
Then reached her midwife-hand, to speed the throes, And spoke the powerful spells that babes to birth disclose.
The bark divides, the living load to free,
And safe delivers the convulsive tree.
The ready nymphs receive the crying child,
And wash him in the tears the parent plant distilled. They swathed him with their scarfs; beneath him
The ground with herbs; with roses raised his head.
The lovely babe was born with every grace;
Even envy must have praised so fair a face:
Such was his form, as painters, when they show
Their utmost art, on naked loves bestow;
And that their arms no difference might betray,
Give him a bow, or his from Cupid take away.
Time glides along, with undiscovered haste,
The future but a length behind the past,
So swift are years; the babe, whom just before
His grandsire got, and whom his sister bore;
The drop, the thing which late the tree inclosed,
And late the yawning bark to life exposed;
A babe, a boy, a beauteous youth appears;
And lovelier than himself at riper years.
Now to the queen of love he gave desires,
And, with her pains, revenged his mother's fires.
CONNECTION OF THIS FABLE WITH THE FORMER.
Ceyx, the son of Lucifer, (the morning star,) and king of Trachin, in Thessaly, was married to Alcyone, daughter to Eolus, god of the winds. Both the husband and the wife loved each other with an entire affection. Dadalion, the elder brother of Ceyx, whom he succeeded, having been turned into a falcon by Apollo, and Chione, Dadalion's daughter, slain by Diana, Ceyx prepares a ship to sail to Claros, there to consult the oracle of Apollo, and (as Ovid seems to intimate) to enquire how the anger of the Gods might be atoned.
THESE prodigies affect the pious prince;
But, more perplexed with those that happened since,
He purposes to seek the Clarian God,
Avoiding Delphos, his more famed abode;
Since Phlegian robbers made unsafe the road.
Yet could not he from her he loved so well,
The fatal voyage, he resolved, conceal;
But when she saw her lord prepared to part,
A deadly cold ran shivering to her heart;
Her faded cheeks are changed to boxen hue,
And in her eyes the tears are ever new ;
She thrice essayed to speak; her accents hung,
And, faultering, died unfinished on her tongue,
Or vanished into sighs; with long delay
Her voice returned; and found the wonted way.
Tell me, my lord, she said, what fault unknown
Thy once beloved Alcyone has done?
Whither, ah whither is thy kindness gone!
Can Ceyx then sustain to leave his wife,
And unconcerned forsake the sweets of life?
What can thy mind to this long journey move,
Or need'st thou absence to renew thy love?
Yet, if thou goest by land, though grief possess
My soul even then, my fears will be the less.
But ah! be warned to shun the watery way,
The face is frightful of the stormy sea.
For late I saw a drift disjointed planks,
And empty tombs erected on the banks.
Nor let false hopes to trust betray thy mind,
Because my sire in caves constrains the wind,
Can with a breath a clamorous rage appease,
They fear his whistle, and forsake the seas:
Not so; for, once indulged, they sweep the main,
Deaf to the call, or, hearing, hear in vain ;
But bent on mischief, bear the waves before,
And, not content with seas, insult the shore;
When ocean, air, and earth, at once engage,
And rooted forests fly before their rage;
At once the clashing clouds to battle move,
And lightnings run across the fields above:
I know them well, and marked their rude comport,
While yet a child, within my father's court;
In times of tempest they command alone,
And he but sits precarious on the throne;
The more I know, the more my fears augment,
And fears are oft prophetic of the event.
|