proudly roll
In their new orbs, 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 transformed 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,
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Restore the adulteress 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 strumpet taint your streams.'
The goddess ended, and her wish was given.
Back she returned in triumph up to heaven;
Her gaudy peacocks drew her through the skies,
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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 STORY OF CORONIS, AND BIRTH OF AESCULAPIUS.

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,
Confessed the fairest of the fairer kind.
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Apollo loved her, till her guilt he knew,
While true she was, or whilst he thought her true.
But his own bird, the raven, chanced to find
The false one with a secret rival joined.
Coronis begged 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.
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The daw gave honest counsel, though despised,
And, tedious in her tattle, thus advised:
'Stay, silly bird, the ill-natured task refuse,
Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news.
Be warned 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;
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Minerva nursed him, and the infant laid