d if,' says he, 'such virtue in you lie,
That he who dares your slimy folds untie
Must change his kind, a second stroke I'll try.'
_20
Again he struck the snakes, and stood again
New-sexed, and straight recovered into man.
Him therefore both the deities create
The sovereign umpire in their grand debate;
And he declared for Jove; when Juno, fired
More than so trivial an affair required,
Deprived him, in her fury, of his sight,
And left him groping round in sudden night.
But Jove (for so it is in heaven decreed,
That no one god repeal another's deed)
_30
Irradiates all his soul with inward light,
And with the prophet's art relieves the want of sight.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF ECHO.

Famed far and near for knowing things to come,
From him the inquiring nations sought their doom;
The fair Liriope his answers tried,
And first the unerring prophet justified;
This nymph the god Cephisus had abused,
With all his winding waters circumfused,
And on the Nereid got a lovely boy,
Whom the soft maids even then beheld with joy.
The tender dame, solicitous to know
Whether her child should reach old age or no,
_10
Consults the sage Tiresias, who replies,
'If e'er he knows himself, he surely dies.'
Long lived the dubious mother in suspense,
Till time unriddled all the prophet's sense.
Narcissus now his sixteenth year began,
Just turned of boy, and on the verge of man;
Many a friend the blooming youth caressed,
Many a love-sick maid her flame confessed:
Such was his pride, in vain the friend caressed,
The love-sick maid in vain her flame confessed.
_20
Once, in the woods, as he pursued the chase,
The babbling Echo had descried his face;
She, who in others' words her silence breaks,
Nor speaks herself but when another speaks.
Echo was then a maid, of speech bereft,
Of wonted speech; for though her voice was left,
Juno a curse did on her tongue impose,
To sport with every sentence in the close.
Full often, when the goddess might have caught
Jove and her rivals in the very fault,
_30
This nymph with subtle stories would delay
Her coming, till the lovers slipped away.
The goddess found out the deceit in time,
And then she cried, 'That tongue, for this thy crime,
Which could so many subtle tales produce,
Shall be hereafter but of little use.'
Hence 'tis she prattles in a fainter tone,
With mimic sounds, and