ward for all the fruits I bear,
Tortured with rakes, and harassed 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?
_340
The wavy empire, which by lot was given,
Why does it waste, and further shrink from heaven?
If I nor lie 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.
_350
Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate,
And succour nature, e'er it be too late.'
She ceased; for, choked with vapours round her spread,
Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head.
Jove called to witness every power above,
And even the god whose son the chariot drove,
That what he acts he is compelled to do,
Or universal ruin must ensue.
Straight he ascends the high ethereal throne,
From whence he used to dart his thunder down,
_360
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 hurled the forky brand,
In dreadful thunderings. Thus the almighty sire
Suppressed the raging of the fires with fire.
At once from life and from the chariot driven,
The ambitious boy fell thunder-struck from heaven.
The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
_370
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, scattered 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 hurled,
Far from his country, in the western world.
_380

PHAETON'S SISTERS TRANSFORMED INTO TREES.

The Latian nymphs came round him, and amazed
On the dead youth, transfixed with thunder, gazed;
And, whilst yet smoking from the bolt he lay,
His shattered body to a tomb convey;
And o'er the tomb an epitaph devise