A lovely boy the teeming rival bore.
The goddess cast a furious look, and cried,
“It is enough! I’m fully satisfied!
This boy shall stand a living mark, to prove
My husband’s baseness and the harlot’s love:
But vengeance shall awake: those guilty charms,
That drew the Thunderer from Juno’s arms,
No longer shall their wonted force retain,
Nor please the god, nor make the mortal vain.”
This said, her hand within her hair she wound,
Swung her to earth, and dragg’d her on the ground.
The prostrate wretch lifts up her arms in prayer;
Her arms grow shaggy and deform’d with hair,
Her nails are sharpen’d into pointed claws,
Her hands bear balf her weight and turn to paws,
Her lips, that once could tempt a god, begin
To grow distorted in an ugly grin;
And, lest the supplicating brute might reach
The cars of Jove, she was deprived of speech;
Her surly voice through a hoarse passage came
In savage sounds, her mind was still the same.
The furry monster fix’d her eyes above,
And heaved her new unwieldy paws to Jove,
And begg’d his aid with inward groans; and though
She could not call him false she thought him so.
How did she fear to lodge in woods alone,
And haunt the fields and meadows once her own!
How often would the deep-mouth’d dogs pursue,
While from her hounds the frighted huntress flew!
How did she fear her fellow brutes, and shun
The shaggy bear, though now herself was one!
How from the sight of rugged wolves retire,
Although the grim Lycaon was her sire!
But now her son had fifteen summers told,
Fierce at the chase, and in the forest bold;
When, as he beat the woods in quest of prey,
He chanced to rouse his mother where she lay.
She knew her son, and kept him in her sight,
And fondly gazed. The boy was in a fright,
And aim’d a pointed arrow at her breast,
And would have slain his mother in the beast;
But Jove forbade, and snatch’d them through the air
In whirlwinds up to heaven, and fix’d them there;
Where the new constellations nightly rise,
And add a lustre to the northern skies.
When Juno saw the rival in her height,
Spangled with stars and circled round with light,
She sought old Ocean in his deep abodes,
And Tethys, both revered among the gods.
They ask what brings her there. “Ne’er ask,” says she,
“What brings me here, heaven is no place for me.
You’ll see, when all things are obscured by night,
Jove’s starry mistress with resplendent light
Usurp the heavens; you’ll see her proudly roll
In her new orb, 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 transform’d 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,
Restore the adultress 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 harlot taint your streams.”
The goddess ended, and her wish was given
Back she return’d in triumph up to heaven;
Her gaudy peacocks drew her through the skies;
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.
Story of Coronis, and Birth of Esculapius
Apollo is informed by the raven, whose plumage was originally white, of the infidelity of Coronis, his favourite mistress, whom he destroys, while he delivers her newborn son, Esculapius, to the custody of Chiron—A dark colour is bestowed on the raven as a punishment of his garrulity.
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,
Confess’d the fairest of the fairer kind.
Apollo loved her till her guilt he knew,
While true she was, or while he thought her true;
“But his own bird, the raven, chanced to find
The false one with a secret rival join’d.
Coronis begg’d 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.
The daw gave honest counsel, though despised,
And, tedious in her tattle, thus advised:
“Stay, silly bird, the illnatured task refuse;
Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news.
Be warn’d 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:
Minerva nursed him, and the infant laid
Within a chest of twining osiers made.
The daughters of King Cecrops undertook
To guard the chest, commanded not to look
On what was hid within. I stood to see
The charge obey’d, perch’d on a neighbouring tree,
The sisters, Pandrosos and Herse, keep
The strict command; Aglauros needs would peep,
And saw the monstrous infant, in a fright,
And call’d her sisters to the hideous sight.
A boy’s soft shape did to the waist prevail;
But the boy ended in a dragon’s tail.
I told the stern Minerva all that pass’d;
But for my pains discarded and disgraced.
The frowning goddess drove me from her sight,
And for her fav’rite chose the bird of night.
Be then no telltale; for I think my wrong
Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue.
“But you, perhaps, may think I was removed
As never by the heavenly maid beloved:
But I was loved; ask Pallas if I lie;
Though Pallas hates me now, she wont deny.
For I, whom in a feather’d shape you view,
Was once a maid, by heaven the story’s true!
A blooming maid, and a king’s daughter too.
A crowd of lovers own’d my beauty’s charms;
My beauty was the cause of all my harms;
Neptune, as on his shores I wont to
