Till, piercing each the other’s flesh, they run
Together, and incorporate in one:
Last, in one face are both their faces join’d,
As when the stock and grafted twig combined
Shoot up the same, and wear a common ring.”
Alcithoe and Her Sisters Transformed to Bats
The impiety of Alcithoe and her sisters is punished by their transformation into the shape of bats by the power of Bacchus.
But Mineus’ daughters still their task pursue,
To wickedness most obstinately true;
At Bacchus still they laugh, when all around,
Unseen, the timbrels hoarse were heard to sound.
Saffron and myrrh their fragrant odours shed,
And now the present deity they dread.
Strange to relate! here ivy first was seen,
Along the distaff crept the wondrous green;
Then sudden, springing vines began to bloom,
And the soft tendrils curl’d around the loom;
While purple clusters, dangling from on high,
Tinged the wrought purple with a second die.
Now from the skies was shot a doubtful light,
The day declining to the bounds of night.
The fabric’s firm foundations shake all o’er,
False tigers rage, and figured lions roar,
Torches, aloft, seem blazing in the air,
And angry flashes of red lightnings glare.
To dark recesses, the dire sight to shun,
Swift the pale sisters in confusion run:
Their arms were lost in pinions as they fled,
And subtle films each slender limb o’erspread.
Their alter’d forms their senses soon reveal’d;
Their forms, how alter’d, darkness still conceal’d.
Close to the roof each, wond’ring, upwards springs,
Borne on unknown, transparent, plumeless wings.
They strove for words; their little bodies found
No words, but murmur’d in a fainting sound.
In towns, not woods, the sooty bats delight,
And never till the dusk begin their flight;
Till Vesper rises with his evening flame,
From whom the Romans have derived their name.
Transformation of Ino and Melicerta to Sea-Gods
Juno, jealous of the prosperity of Ino, the nurse of Bacchus, sends the fury Tisiphone to the house of Athamas, her husband, who is seized with such a sudden frenzy, that he mistakes his wife and children for a lioness with her whelps, and dashes his son Learchus against a wall—Ino effects her escape, and from a high rock precipitates herself into the sea with Melicerta in her arms—She is promoted by Neptune to the dignity of a sea-deity, afterward called Leucothoe, while Melicerta becomes a sea-god, known by the name of Palaemon.
The power of Bacchus now o’er Thebes had flown:
With awful reverence soon the god they own.
Proud Ino all around the wonder tells,
And on her nephew deity still dwells.
Of numerous sisters, she alone yet knew
No grief, but grief which she from sisters drew.
Imperial Juno saw her with disdain
Vain in her offspring, in her consort vain,
Who ruled the trembling Thebans with a nod,
But saw her vainest in her foster-god.
“Could then,” she cried, “a bastard boy have power
To make a mother her own son devour?
Could he the Tuscan crew to fishes change,
And now three sisters damn to forms so strange?
Yet shall the wife of Jove find no relief?
Shall she still unrevenged disclose her grief?
Have I the mighty freedom to complain?
Is that my power? Is that to ease my pain?
A foe has taught me vengeance; and who ought
To scorn that vengeance which a foe has taught?
What sure destruction frantic rage can throw,
The gaping wounds of slaughter’d Pentheus show.
Why should not Ino, fired with madness, stray,
Like her mad sisters her own kindred slay?
Why she not follow where they lead the way?”
Down a steep yawning cave where yews display’d
In arches meet, and lend a baleful shade,
Through silent labyrinths a passage lies
To mournful regions and infernal skies.
Here Styx exhales its noisome clouds, and here,
The funeral rites once paid, all souls appear,
Stiff, cold; and horror, with a ghastly face,
And staring eyes, infests the dreary place.
Ghosts, new-arrived, and strangers to these plains,
Know not the palace where grim Pluto reigns;
They journey doubtful, nor the road can tell,
Which leads to the metropolis of hell.
A thousand avenues those towers command,
A thousand gates for ever open stand.
As all the rivers, disembogued, find room
For all their waters in old Ocean’s womb,
So this vast city worlds of shades receives,
And space for millions still of worlds she leaves.
The unbodied spectres freely rove, and show
Whate’er they loved on earth they love below:
The lawyers still, or right or wrong support,
The courtiers smoothly glide to Pluto’s court,
Still airy heroes thoughts of glory fire,
Still the dead poet strings his deathless lyre,
And lovers still with fancied darts expire.
The queen of heaven, to gratify her hate,
And sooth immortal wrath, forgets her state;
Down from the realms of day to realms of night,
The goddess swift precipitates her flight.
At hell arrived, the noise hell’s porter heard,
The enormous dog his triple head uprear’d:
Thrice from three grisly throats he howl’d profound,
Then suppliant couch’d, and stretch’d along the ground.
The trembling threshold, which Saturnia press’d,
The weight of such divinity confess’d.
Before a lofty adamantine gate,
Which closed a tower of brass, the Furies sate;
Misshapen forms, tremendous to the sight,
The implacable foul daughters of the night.
A sounding whip each bloody sister shakes,
Or from her tresses combs the curling snakes.
But now great Juno’s majesty was known;
Through the thick gloom all heavenly bright she shone;
The hideous monsters their obedience show’d,
And, rising from their seats, submissive bow’d.
This is the place of wo, here groan the dead:
Huge Tityus o’er nine acres here is spread:
Fruitful for pain the immortal liver breeds,
Still grows, and still the insatiate vulture feeds:
Poor Tantalus to taste the water tries,
But from his lips the faithless water flies:
Then thinks the bending tree he can command;
The tree starts backwards, and eludes his hand:
The labour too of Sisyphus is vain;
Up the steep mount he heaves the stone with pain,
Down from the summit rolls the stone again:
The Belides their leaky vessels still
Are ever filling, and yet never fill;
Doom’d to this punishment for blood they shed,
For bridegrooms slaughter’d in the bridal bed;
Stretch’d on the rolling wheel Ixion lies;
Himself he follows, and himself he flies.
Ixion, tortured, Juno sternly eyed,
Then turn’d, and toiling Sisyphus espied:
“And why,” she said, “so wretched is the fate
Of him, whose brother proudly reigns in state?
Yet still my altars unadored have been
By Athamas and his presumptuous queen.”
What caused her hate, the goddess thus confess’d,
What caused her journey now was more
