The fish in shoals about the bottom creep;
Nor longer dares the crooked dolphin leap:
Gasping for breath, the unshapen Phocae die,
And on the boiling wave extended lie:
Nereus, and Doris, with her virgin train,
Seek out the last recesses of the main:
Beneath unfathomable depths they faint,
And secret in their gloomy caverns pant:
Stern Neptune thrice above the waves upheld
His face, and thrice was by the flames repell’d.
The Earth at length, on every side embraced
With scalding seas, that floated round her waist,
When now she felt the springs and rivers come,
And crowd within the hollow of her womb,
Uplifted to the heavens her blasted head,
And clapp’d her hand upon her brows, and said,
(But first, impatient of the sultry heat,
Sunk deeper down, and sought a cooler seat):
“If you, great king of gods, my death approve,
And I deserve it, let me die by Jove:
If I must perish by the force of fire,
Let me transfix’d with thunderbolts expire.
See, while I speak, my breath the vapours choke
(For now her face lay wrapp’d in clouds of smoke),
See my singed hair, behold my faded eye,
And wither’d face, where heaps of cinders lie!
And does the plough for this my body tear?
This the reward for all the fruits I bear,
Tortured with rakes, and harass’d 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?
The wavy empire, which by lot was given,
Why does it waste, and farther shrink from heaven?
If I nor he 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.
Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate,
And succour Nature ere it be too late.”
She ceased, for choked with vapours round her spread,
Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head.
Jove call’d to witness ev’ry power above,
And even the god whose son the chariot drove,
That what he acts he is compell’d to do,
Or universal ruin must ensue.
Straight he ascends the high ethereal throne,
From whence he used to dart his thunder down,
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 hurl’d the forky brand
In dreadful thunderings. Thus the almighty sire
Suppress’d the raging of the fires with fire.
At once from life and from the chariot driven,
The ambitious boy fell thunderstruck from heaven;
The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
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 scatter’d 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 hurl’d,
Far from his country, in the western world.
Phaeton’s Sisters Transformed Into Trees
The nymphs of Latium erect a monument to the memory of Phaeton, whose sisters are changed into poplars while bewailing their brother’s untimely fate.
The Latian nymphs came round him, and amazed,
On the dead youth, transfix’d with thunder, gazed,
And, while yet smoking from the bolt he lay,
His shatter’d body to a tomb convey;
And o’er the tomb an epitaph devise:
“Here he who drove the sun’s bright chariot lies;
His father’s fiery steeds he could not guide,
But in the glorious enterprise he died.”
Apollo hid his face, and pined for grief,
And, if the story may deserve belief,
The space of one whole day is said to run,
From morn to wonted ev’n, without a sun;
The burning ruins, with a fainter ray,
Supply the sun, and counterfeit a day,
A day that still did Nature’s face disclose,
This comfort from the mighty mischief rose.
But Clymene, enraged with grief, laments,
And as her grief inspires her passion vents;
Wild for her son, and frantic in her woes,
With hair dishevell’d, round the world she goes
To seek where’er his body might be cast,
Till, on the borders of the Po, at last
The name inscribed on the new tomb appears
The dear, dear name she bathes in flowing tears,
Hangs o’er the tomb, unable to depart,
And hugs the marble to her throbbing heart.
Her daughters too lament, and sigh, and mourn
(A fruitless tribute to their brother’s urn),
And beat their naked bosoms, and complain,
And call aloud for Phaeton in vain;
All the long night their mournful watch they keep,
And all the day stand round the tomb and weep.
Four times, revolving, the full moon return’d,
So long the mother and the daughters mourn’d,
When now the eldest, Phaethusa, strove
To rest her weary limbs, but could not move;
Lampetia would have help’d her, but she found
Herself withheld and rooted to the ground;
A third, in wild affliction as she grieves,
Would rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves:
One sees her thighs transform’d, another views
Her arms slot out and branching into boughs,
And now their legs, and breasts, and bodies, stood
Crusted with bark, and harden’d into wood;
But still above were female heads display’d,
And mouths, that call’d the mother to their aid.
What could, alas! the weeping mother do?
From this to that with eager haste she flew,
And kiss’d her sprouting daughters as they grew;
She tears the bark that to each body cleaves;
And from their verdant fingers strips the leaves;
The blood came trickling where she tore away
The leaves and bark. The maids were heard to say
“Forbear, mistaken parent, O forbear!
A wounded daughter in each tree you tear;
Farewell for ever.” Here the bark increased,
Closed on their faces, and their words suppress’d.
The new-made trees in tears of amber run,
Which, harden’d into value by the sun,
Distil for ever on the stream below;
The limpid streams their radiant treasure show
Mix’d in the sand, whence the rich drops convey’d
Shine in the dress of the bright Latian maid.
Transformation of Cycnus Into a Swan
Cycnus, the son of Sthenelus, is deeply affected at the death of his friend and
