Free as in air, let birds on earth remain,
Nor let insidious glue their wings constrain;
Nor opening hounds the trembling stags affright,
Nor purple feathers intercept his flight;
Nor hooks conceal’d in baits for fish prepare,
Nor lines to heave them twinkling up in air.
“ ‘Take not away the life you cannot give;
For all things have an equal right to live:
Kill noxious creatures, where ’tis sin to save;
This only just prerogative we have:
But nourish life with vegetable food,
And shun the sacrilegious taste of blood.’ ”
These precepts by the Samian sage were taught,
Which godlike Numa to the Sabines brought,
And thence transferr’d to Rome, by gift his own;
A willing people, and an offer’d throne.
Oh happy monarch! sent by Heaven to bless
A savage nation with soft arts of peace;
To teach religion, rapine to restrain,
Give laws to lust, and sacrifice ordain:
Himself a saint, a goddess was his bride;
And all the muses o’er his acts preside.
Story of Hippolytus
Hippolytus, rejecting with horror the advances of his stepmother Phaedra, is accused by her of the guilt which he has refused to contract—The angry Theseus entreats Neptune to punish the incontinence of his son, and the innocent youth is thrown from his chariot and dashed to pieces—He is after ward restored to life by Diana, who disguises his features, and bestows on him immortal existence.
Advanced in years he died; one common date
His reign concluded, and his mortal state.
Their tears plebeians and patricians shed,
And pious matrons wept their monarch dead.
His mournful wife, her sorrows to bewail,
Withdrew from Rome, and sought the Arician vale:
Hid in thick woods, she made incessant moans,
Disturbing Cynthia’s sacred rites with groans.
How oft the nymphs, who ruled the wood and lake,
Reproved her tears, and words of comfort spake!
“How oft in vain,” the son of Theseus said,
“Thy stormy sorrows be with patience laid;
Nor are thy fortunes to be wept alone;
Weigh others’ woes, and learn to bear thine own.
Be mine an instance to assuage thy grief:
Would mine were none! yet mine may bring relief.
“You’ve heard, perhaps, in conversation told,
What once befell Hippolytus of old;
To death by Theseus’ easy faith betray’d,
And caught in snares his wicked stepdame laid.
The wondrous tale your credit scarce may claim,
Yet, strange to say, behold in me the same
Whom amorous Phaedra oft had press’d in vain,
My father’s honour and my own to stain;
Till, seized with fear, or by revenge inspired,
She charged on me the crimes herself desired.
Expell’d by Theseus, from his home I fled,
With heaps of curses on my guiltless head.
Forlorn, I sought Pitthean Troezen’s land,
And drove my chariot o’er Corinthus’ strand;
When from the surface of the level main
A billow rising, heaved above the plain,
Rolling and gathering, till so high it swell’d,
A mountain’s height the enormous mass excell’d;
Then bellowing, burst, when from the summit cleaved,
A horned bull his ample chest upheaved:
His mouth and nostrils storms of briny rain,
Expiring, blew. Dread horror seized my train.
I stood unmoved. My father’s cruel doom
Claim’d all my soul, nor fear could find a room.
Amazed, a while my trembling coursers stood,
With prick’d-up ears, contemplating the flood;
Then, starting sudden from the dreadful view,
At once like lightning from the seas they flew,
And o’er the craggy rocks the chariot drew.
In vain to stop the hot-mouthed steeds I tried,
And, bending backward, all my strength applied;
The frothy foam in driving flakes distains
The bits and bridles, and bedews the reins.
But though as yet untamed they run, at length
Their heady rage had tired beneath my strength,
When in the spokes a stump entangling, tore
The shatter’d wheel, and from its axle bore.
The shock impetuous toss’d me from the seat,
Caught in the reins, beneath my horses’ feet;
Then stretch’d, the well-knit limbs in pieces haled;
Part stuck behind, and part the chariot trail’d,
Till, midst my cracking joints and breaking bones,
I breathed away my wearied soul in groans.
No part distinguish’d from the rest was found,
But all my parts a universal wound.
“Now say, self-tortured nymph, can you compare
Our griefs as equal, or in justice dare?
I saw besides the darksome realms of wo,
And bathed my wounds in smoking streams below.
There I had stay’d, nor second life enjoy’d,
But Paean’s son his wondrous art employ’d.
To light restored, by medicinal skill,
In spite of fate, and rigid Pluto’s will,
The invidious object to preserve from view,
A misty cloud around me Cynthia threw;
And lest my sight should stir my foes to rage,
She stamp’d my visage with the marks of age.
My former hue was changed, and for it shown
A set of features and a face unknown.
A while the goddess stood in doubt, or Crete,
Or Delos’ isle, to choose for my retreat.
Delos and Crete refused, this wood she chose,
Bade me my former luckless name depose,
Which kept alive the memory of my woes;
Then said, ‘Immortal life be thine, and thou,
Hippolytus once call’d, be Virbius now.’
Here then a god, but of the inferior race,
I serve my goddess, and attend her chase.”
Egeria Transformed to a Fountain
Egeria, the wife of Numa, while lamenting the loss of her husband, is changed by Apollo into a fountain.
But others’ woes were useless to appease
Egeria’s grief, or set her mind at ease:
Beneath the hill fill comfortless she laid;
The dropping tears her eyes incessant shed,
Till pitying Phoebus eased her pious wo,
Thaw’d to a spring, whose streams for ever flow.
The nymphs and Virbius like amazement fill’d,
As seized the swains who Tyrrhene furrows till’d,
When heaving up, a clod was seen to roll,
Untouch’d, self-moved, and big with human soul.
The spreading mass, in former shape deposed,
Began to shoot, and arms and legs disclosed,
Till, form’d a perfect man, the living mould
Oped its new mouth, and future truths foretold;
And, Tages named by natives of the place,
Taught arts prophetic to the Tuscan race.
Or such as once by Romulus was shown,
Who saw his lance with sprouting leaves o’ergrown,
When fix’d in earth the point began to shoot,
And, growing downward, turn’d a fibrous root;
While spread aloft, the branching arms display’d,
O’er wondering crowds, an unexpected shade.
Story of Cippus
A noble Roman, named Cippus, while returning victorious to the city, finds horns growing on his forehead, which are pronounced by the soothsayers to foretell his future reign if he should enter Rome—Unwilling to enslave his country, he voluntarily banishes himself;
