My long-experienc'd age shall be your guide;
Rely on that, and lay distrust aside:
No breath of air fhall on the fecret blow,
Nor fhall (what most you fear) your father know.
Struck once again, as with a thunder-clap,
The guilty virgin bounded from her lap,
And threw her body proftrate on the bed,
And, to conceal her blushes, hid her head :
There filent lay, and warn'd her with her hand
To go but she receiv'd not the command;
Remaining ftill importunate to know:
Then Myrrha thus; Or ask no more, or go:
I pr'ythee go, or staying spare iny shame;
What thou wouldst hear, is impious ev'n to name.
At this, on high the beldame holds her hands,
And, trembling both with age and terror, ftands;
Adjures, and falling at her feet intreats,
Sooths her with blandishments, and frights with threats,
To tell the crime intended, or difclofe
What part of it she knew, if she no farther knows :
And last, if conscious to her counsel made,
Confirms anew the promise of her aid.
Now Myrrha rais'd her head; but foon, oppress'd
With fhame, reclin'd it on her nurse's breast;
Bath'd it with tears, and ftrove to have confefs'd:
Twice she began, and ftopp'd; again fhe try'd;
The faltering tongue its office still deny'd :
At last her veil before her face she spread,
And drew a long preluding figh, and faid,
O happy mother, in thy marriage bed !
The door was ope, they blindly grope their way,
Where dark in bed th' expecting monarch lay ;
Thus far her courage held, but here forsakes;
Her faint knees knock at every step she makes.
The nearer to her crime, the more within
She feels remorfe, and horror of her fin i
Repents too late her criminal defire,
And wishes, that unknown she could retire.
Her lingering thus, the nurse (who fear'd delay
The fatal fecret might at length betray)
Pull'd forward, to complete the work begun,
And faid to Cinyras, Receive thy own:
Thus faying, fhe deliver'd kind to kind,
Accurs'd, and their devoted bodies join'd.
The fire, unknowing of the crime, admits
His bowels, and profanes the hallow'd sheets;
He found the trembled, but believ'd she strove
With maiden modefty, against her love;
And fought with flattering words vain fancies to re
Perhaps he faid, My daughter, ceafe thy fears,
(Because the title fuited with her years ;)
And, Father, fhe might whisper him again,
That names might not be wanting to the fin.
Full of her fire, fhe left th' incestuous bed,
And carried in her womb the crime the bred :
Another, and another night fhe came;
For frequent fin had left no sense of shame:
Till Cinyras defir'd to see her face,
Whofe body he had held in close embrace,
And brought a taper; the revealer, light,
Expos'd both crime and criminal to fight:
Grief, rage, amazement, could no speech afford,
But from the sheath he drew th' avenging sword;
The guilty fled: the benefit of night,
That favour'd firft the fin, fecur'd the flight.
Long wandering through the spacious fields, she bent
Her voyage to th' Arabian continent;
Then pafs'd the region which Panchæa join'd,
And flying left the palmy plains behind.
Nine times the moon had mew'd her horns; at length
With travel weary, unfupply'd with strength,
And with the burden of her womb opprefs'd;
Sabæan fields affords her needful reft:
There, loathing life, and yet of death afraid,
In anguish of her spirit, thus he pray'd :
Ye powers, if any so propitious are
T'accept my penitence, and hear my prayer;
Your judgments, I confefs, are justly fent:
Great fins deferve as great a punishment:
Yet fince my life the living will profane,
And fince my death the happy dead will stain,
A middle ftate 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 fhe spoke, the ground began to rise,
And gather'd round her feet, her legs, and thighs :
Her toes in roots descend, and, spreading wide,`
A firm foundation for the trunk provide:
Her folid bones convert to folid wood,
To pith her marrow, and to fap her blood:
Her arms are boughs, her fingers change their kind.
Her tender fkin is harden'd into rind.
And now the rifing tree her womb invests,
Now, fhooting upwards ftill, invades her breafts,
And fhades the neck; and, weary with delay,
She funk her head within, and met it half the way.
And though with outward fhape fhe loft her fenfe,
With bitter tears the wept her last offence ;
And still the weeps, nor fheds her tears in vain ;
For ftill the precious drops her name retain.
Mean time the misbegotten infant grows,
And, ripe for birth, diftends with deadly throes
The fwelling rind, with unavailing ftrife,
To leave the wooden womb, and pushes into life.
The mother-tree, as if opprefs'd with pain,
Writhes here and there, to break the bark, in vain :
And, like a labouring woman, would have pray'd,
But wants a voice to call Lucina's aid:
The bending bole fends cut a hollow found,
And trickling tears fall thicker on the ground.
The mild Lucina came uncall'd, and stood
Befide the ftruggling boughs, and heard the groaning wood :
Then reach'd her midwife-hand, to speed the throes, And spoke the powerful fpells that babes to birth
The bark divides, the living load to free,
And fafe delivers the convulfive tree.
The ready nymphs receive the crying child,
And wash him in the tears the parent plant diftill'd. They fwath'd him with their scarfs; beneath him spread The ground with herbs; with rofes rais'd his head. The lovely babe was born with every grace:
Ev'n envy must have prais'd fo fair a face:
Such was his form, as painters, when they show
Their utmoft 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 undifcover'd haste,
The future but a length behind the past:
So fwift are years: the babe, whom juft before
His grandfire got, and whom his fifter bore;
The drop, the thing which late the tree inclos'd,
And late the yawning bark to life expos'd;
A babe, a boy, a beauteous youth appears;
And lovelier than himself at riper years.
Now to the queen of love he gave defires,
And, with her pains, reveng'd his mother's fires.
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