set on fire,
Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire.
Given up to Envy, (for in every thought,
The thorns, the venom, and the vision wrought).
Oft did she call on death, as oft decreed,
Rather than see her sister's wish succeed,
To tell her awful father what had passed:
At length before the door herself she cast;
_140
And, sitting on the ground with sullen pride,
A passage to the love-sick god denied.
The god caressed, and for admission prayed,
And soothed, in softest words, the envenomed maid.
In vain he soothed; 'Begone!' the maid replies,
'Or here I keep my seat, and never rise.'
'Then keep thy seat for ever!' cries the god,
And touched the door, wide-opening to his rod.
Fain would she rise, and stop him, but she found
Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground;
_150
Her joints are all benumbed, her hands are pale,
And marble now appears in every nail.
As when a cancer in her body feeds,
And gradual death from limb to limb proceeds;
So does the dullness to each vital part
Spread by degrees, and creeps into her heart;
Till, hardening everywhere, and speechless grown,
She sits unmoved, and freezes to a stone.
But still her envious hue and sullen mien
Are in the sedentary figure seen.
_160

EUROPA'S RAPE.

When now the god his fury had allayed,
And taken vengeance of the stubborn maid,
From where the bright Athenian turrets rise
He mounts aloft, and reascends the skies.
Jove saw him enter the sublime abodes,
And, as he mixed among the crowd of gods,
Beckoned him out, and drew him from the rest,
And in soft whispers thus his will expressed.
'My trusty Hermes, by whose ready aid
Thy sire's commands are through the world conveyed,
_10
Resume thy wings, exert their utmost force,
And to the walls of Sidon speed they course;
There find a herd of heifers wandering o'er
The neighbouring hill, and drive them to the shore.'
Thus spoke the god, concealing his intent.
The trusty Hermes on his message went,
And found the herd of heifers wandering o'er
A neighbouring hill, and drove them to the shore;
Where the king's daughter, with a lovely train
Of fellow-nymphs, was sporting on the plain.
_20
The dignity of empire laid aside,
(For love but ill agrees with kingly pride,)
The ruler of the skies, the thundering god,
Who shakes the world's foundations with a nod,
Among a herd of lowing heifers ran