Jove (so she sung) was changed into a ram,
From whence the horns of Lybian Ammon came:
Bacchus a goat; Apollo was a crow;
Phoebe a cat; the wife of Jove a cow,
Whose hue was whiter than the falling snow;
Mercury to a nasty ibis turn’d,
The change obscene, afraid of Typhon mourn’d;
While Venus from a fish protection craves,
And once more plunges in her native waves.
“She sung, and to her harp her voice applied:
Then us again to match her they defied:
But our poor song, perhaps, for you to hear,
Nor leisure serves, nor is it worth your ear.”
“That causeless doubt remove, O muse; rehearse,”
The goddess cried, “your ever-grateful verse:”
Beneath a checker’d shade she takes her seat,
And bids the sister her whole song repeat.
The sister thus: “Calliope we chose
For the performance.” The sweet virgin rose,
With ivy crown’d; she tunes her golden strings,
And to her harp this composition sings:
Song of the Muses
The Muses commence their song with describing the arts of Venus and Cupid to inflame the god Pluto with a passion for Proserpine.
“First Ceres taught the labouring hind to plough
The pregnant earth, and quick’ning seed to sow;
She first for man did wholesome food provide,
And with just laws the wicked world supplied:
All good from her derived, to her belong
The grateful tributes of the muse’s song;
Her more than worthy of our verse we deem;
Oh! were our verse more worthy of the theme!
“Jove on the giant fair Trinacria hurl’d,
And with one bolt revenged his starry world.
Beneath her burning hills Typhoeus lies,
And, struggling always, strives in vain to rise.
Down does Pelorus his right hand suppress
Towards Latium; on the left Pachyne weighs:
His legs are under Lilybaeum spread,
And Aetna presses hard his horrid head:
On his broad back he there extended lies,
And vomits clouds of ashes to the skies:
Oft labouring with his load, at last he tires,
And pours out in revenge a flood of fires:
Mountains he struggles to o’erwhelm, and towns;
Earth’s inmost bowels quake, and Nature groans:
His terrors reach the direful king of hell;
He fears his throes will to the day reveal
The realms of night, and fright his trembling ghosts.
“This to prevent, he quits the Stygian coasts,
In his black car, by sooty horses drawn,
Fair Sicily he seeks, and dreads the dawn:
Around her plains he casts his eager eyes,
And every mountain to the bottom tries.
But when, in all the careful search, he saw
No cause of fear, no ill-suspected flaw;
Secure from harm, and wand’ring on at will,
Venus beheld him from her flowery bill;
When straight the dame her little Cupid press’d,
With secret rapture, to her snowy breast,
And in these words the fluttering boy address’d:
“ ‘O thou, my arms, my glory, and my power,
My son, whom men and deathless gods adore,
Bend thy sure bow, whose arrows never miss’d,
No longer let hell’s king thy sway resist;
Take him, while straggling from his dark abodes,
He coasts the kingdoms of superior gods.
If sovereign Jove, if gods who rule the waves,
And Neptune, who rules them, have been thy slaves,
Shall hell be free? The tyrant strike, my son;
Enlarge thy mother’s empire, and thy own:
Let not our heaven be made the mock of hell,
But Pluto to confess thy power compel.
Our rule is slighted in our native skies;
See Pallas, see Diana too, defies
Thy darts, which Ceres’ daughter would despise:
She too our empire treats with awkward scorn:
Such insolence no longer’s to be borne:
Revenge our slighted reign, and with thy dart
Transfix the virgin’s to the uncle’s heart.’
“She said; and from his quiver straight he drew
A dart that surely would the business do;
She guides his hand; she makes her touch the test,
And of a thousand arrows chose the best:
No feather better poised, a sharper head
None had, and sooner none, and surer sped.
He bends his how, he draws it to his ear,
Through Pluto’s heart it drives, and fixes there.”
Rape of Proserpine
Pluto surprises Proserpine while gathering towers in the plains of Enna, and transports her to the internal regions.
Near Enna’s walls a spacious lake is spread,
Famed for the sweetly-singing swans it bred;
Pergusa is its name: and never more
Were heard, or sweeter on Cayster’s shore.
Woods crown the lake; and Phoebus ne’er invades
The tufted fences, or offends the shades:
Fresh fragrant breezes fan the verdant bowers,
And the moist ground smiles with enamell’d flowers:
The cheerful birds their airy carols sing,
And the whole year is one eternal spring.
Here while young Proserpine, among the maids,
Diverts herself in these delicious shades;
While, like a child, with busy speed and care,
She gathers lilies here, and violets there;
While first to fill her little lap she strives,
Hell’s grisly monarch at the shade arrives;
Sees her thus sporting on the flowery green,
And loves the blooming maid as soon as seen.
His urgent flame impatient of delay,
Swift as his thought he seized the beauteous prey,
And bore her in his sooty car away.
The frighted goddess to her mother cries;
But all in vain, for now far off she flies;
Far she behind her leaves her virgin train;
To them too cries, and cries to them in vain;
And while with passion she repeats her call,
The violets from her lap and lilies fall:
She misses them, poor heart! and makes new moan;
Her lilies, ah! are lost, her violets gone.
O’er hills the ravisher and valleys speeds,
By name encouraging his foamy steeds;
He rattles o’er their necks the rusty reins,
And ruffles with the stroke their shaggy manes.
O’er lakes he whirls his flying wheels, and comes
To the Palici, breathing sulph’rous fumes;
And thence to where the Bacchiads of renown,
Between unequal havens, built their town;
Where Arethusa, round the imprison’d sea,
Extends her crooked coast to Cyane;
The nymph who gave the neighb’ring lake a name,
Of all Sicilian nymphs the first in fame:
She from the waves advanced her beauteous head;
The goddess knew, and thus to Pluto said:
“Farther thou shalt not with the virgin run;
Ceres unwilling, canst thou be her son?
The maid should be by sweet persuasion won:
Force suits not with the softness of the fair;
For, if great things with small I may compare,
Me Anapis once loved; a milder course
He took, and won me by his words, not force.”
Then, stretching out her arms, she stopp’d his way:
But he, impatient of the shortest stay,
Throws to his dreadful steeds the slacken’d rein,
And
