That hate, relentless, its revenge did want,
And that revenge the Furies soon could grant:
They could the glory of proud Thebes efface,
And hide in ruin the Cadmean race.
For this she largely promises, entreats,
And to entreaties adds imperial threats.
Then fell Tisiphone with rage was stung,
And from her mouth the untwisted serpents flung.
“To gain this trifling boon, there is no need,”
She cried, “in formal speeches to proceed.
Whatever thou command’st to do is done;
Believe it finish’d, though not yet begun.
But from these melancholy seats repair
To happier mansions, and to purer air.”
She spoke. The goddess, darting upwards, flies,
And joyous reascends her native skies:
Nor enter’d there, till round her Iris threw
Ambrosial sweets, and pour’d celestial dew.
The faithful fury, guiltless of delays,
With cruel haste the dire command obeys.
Girt in a bloody gown, a torch she shakes,
And round her neck twines speckled wreaths of snakes.
Fear, and dismay, and agonizing pain,
With frantic rage, complete her loveless train.
To Thebes her flight she sped, and hell forsook;
At her approach the Theban turrets shook;
The sun shrunk back, thick clouds the day o’ercast,
And springing greens were wither’d as she pass’d.
Now, dismal yellings heard, strange spectre seen,
Confound as much the monarch as the queen.
In vain to quit the palace they prepared,
Tisiphone was there, and kept the ward.
She wide extended her unfriendly arms,
And all the fury lavish’d all her harms,
Part of her tresses loudly hiss, and part
Spread poison, as their forky tongues they dart:
Then from her middle locks two snakes she drew,
Whose merit from superior mischief grew:
The envenom’d ruin, thrown with spiteful care,
Clung to the bosoms of the hapless pair.
The hapless pair soon with wild thoughts were fired,
And madness by a thousand ways inspired.
’Tis true, the unwounded body still was sound,
But ’twas the soul which felt the deadly wound.
Nor did the unsated monster here give o’er,
But dealt of plagues a fresh unnumber’d store.
Each baneful juice too well she understood,
Foam churn’d by Cerberus, and Hydra’s blood.
Hot hemlock and cold aconite she chose,
Delighted in variety of woes.
Whatever can untune the harmonious soul,
And its mild reas’ning faculties control,
Give false ideas, raise desires profane,
And whirl in eddies the tumultuous brain,
Mix’d with cursed art, she direfully around
Through all their nerves diffused the sad compound;
Then toss’d her torch in circles still the same,
Improved their rage, and added flame to flame.
The grinning fury her own conquest spied,
And to her rueful shades return’d with pride,
And threw the exhausted useless snakes aside.
Now Athamas cries out, his reason fled,
“Here, fellow-hunters, let the toils be spread.
I saw a lioness, in quest of food,
With her two young, run roaring in this wood.”
Again the fancied savages were seen,
As through his palace still he chased his queen;
Then tore Learchus from her breast: the child
Stretch’d little arms, and on its father smiled:
A father now no more, who now begun
Around his head to whirl his giddy son,
And, quite insensible to nature’s call,
The helpless infant flung against the wall.
The same mad poison in the mother wrought:
Young Melicerta in her arms she caught,
And with disorder’d tresses, howling, flies,
“O! Bacchus, Evoe, Bacchus!” loud she cries.
The name of Bacchus Juno laugh’d to hear,
And said, “Thy foster-god has cost thee dear.”
A rock there stood, whose side the beating waves
Had long consumed, and hollow’d into caves;
The head shot forwards in a bending steep,
And cast a dreadful covert o’er the deep.
The wretched Ino, on destruction bent,
Climb’d up the cliff, such strength her fury lent,
Thence with her guiltless boy, who wept in vain,
At one bold spring she plunged into the main.
Her niece’s fate touch’d Cytherea’s breast,
And in soft sounds she Neptune thus address’d:
“Great god of waters, whose extended sway
Is next to his whom heaven and earth obey,
Let not the suit of Venus thee displease,
Pity the floaters on the Ionian seas.
Increase thy subject-gods, nor yet disdain
To add my kindred to that glorious train.
If from the sea I may such honours claim,
If ’tis desert that from the sea I came,
As Grecian poets artfully have sung,
And in the name confess’d from whence I sprung.”
Pleased Neptune nodded his assent, and free
Both soon became from frail mortality.
He gave them form, and majesty divine,
And bade them glide along the foamy brine.
For Melicerta is Palaemon known,
And Ino once, Leucothoe is grown.
Transformation of the Theban Matrons
The companions of Ino, lamenting the fate of their unhappy mistress, excite the displeasure of Juno, who transforms them into stones and birds.
The Theban matrons their loved queen pursued,
And tracing to the rock, her footsteps view’d.
Too certain of her fate, they rend the skies
With piteous shrieks, and lamentable cries;
All beat their breasts, and Juno all upbraid,
Who still remember’d a deluded maid,
Who, still revengeful for one stolen embrace,
Thus wreak’d her hate on the Cadmean race.
This Juno heard: “And shall such elfs,” she cried
“Dispute my justice, or my power deride?
You too shall feel my wrath not idly spent;
A goddess never for insults was meant.”
She who loved most, and who most loved had been,
Said: “Not the waves shall part me from my queen.”
She strove to plunge into the roaring flood,
Fix’d to the stone, a stone herself she stood;
This, on her breast would fain her blows repeat;
Her stiffen’d hands refused her breast to beat;
That stretch’d her arms unto the seas, in vain
Her arms she labour’d to unstretch again.
To tear her comely locks another tried;
Both comely locks and fingers petrified.
Part thus; but Juno, with a softer mind,
Part doom’d to mix among the feather’d kind.
Transform’d, the name of Theban birds they keep,
And skim the surface of that fatal deep.
Cadmus and His Queen Transformed Into Serpents
Wearied with toil and infirm with age, Cadmus and his wife retire to Illyricum, and at their own request are changed into Serpents.
Meantime the wretched Cadmus mourns, nor knows
That they who mortal fell, immortal rose.
With a long series of new ills oppress’d,
He droops, and all the man forsakes his breast:
Strange prodigies confound his frighted eyes;
From the fair city, which he raised, he flies;
As it misfortune not pursued his race,
But only hung o’er that devoted place.
Resolved by sea to seek some distant land,
At last he safely gain’d the Illyrian strand.
Cheerless himself, his consort still he cheers,
Hoary, and laden both with woes and years.
Then to recount past
