And, in effect, the action must be good.
Vain resolution! for, at every gate
The trusty sentinels successive wait;
The keys my father keeps: ah! there’s my grief;
’Tis he obstructs all hopes of my relief.
Gods! that this hated light I’d never seen!
Or all my life without a father been!
But gods we all may be; for those that dare
Are gods, and Fortune’s chiefest favours share
The ruling powers a lazy prayer detest;
The bold adventurer succeeds the best.
What other maid, inspired with such a flame,
But would take courage, and abandon shame?
But would, though ruin should ensue, remove
Whate’er opposed, and clear the way to love?
This shall another’s feeble passion dare,
While I sit tame, and languish in despair?
No; for though fire and sword before me lay,
Impatient love through both should force its way.
Yet I have no such enemies to fear;
My sole obstruction is my father’s hair;
His purple lock my sanguine hope destroys,
And clouds the prospect of my rising joys.”
While thus she spoke, amid the thick’ning air
Night supervenes, the greatest nurse of care;
And as the goddess spreads her sable wings,
The virgin’s fears decay, and courage springs.
The hour was come, when man’s o’er-labour’d breast
Surceased its care, by downy sleep possess’d:
All things now hush’d, Scylla, with silent tread,
Urged her approach to Nisus’ royal bed;
There of the fatal lock (accursed theft!)
She her unwitting father’s head bereft.
In safe possession of her impious prey,
Out at a postern gate she takes her way.
Imbolden’d by the merit of the deed,
She traverses the adverse camp with speed,
Till Minos’ tent she reach’d: the righteous king
She thus bespoke, who shiver’d at the thing:
“Behold the effect of love’s resistless sway!
I, Nisus’ royal seed, to thee betray
My country and my gods. For this strange task,
Minos, no other boon but thee I ask.
This purple lock, a pledge of love, receive;
No worthless present, since in it I give
My father’s head.” Moved at a crime so new,
And with abhorrence fill’d, back Minos drew,
Nor touch’d the unhallow’d gift, but thus exclaim’d
(With mien indignant, and with eyes inflamed)—
“Perdition seize thee, thou, thy kind’s disgrace!
May thy devoted carcass find no place
In earth, or air, or sea, by all outcast!
Shall Minos, with so foul a monster, blast
His Cretan world, where cradled Jove was nursed?
Forbid it, heaven!—away, thou most accursed!”
And now Alcathoe, its lord exchanged,
Was under Minos’ domination ranged.
While the most equal king his care applies
To curb the conquer’d, and new laws devise,
The fleet, by his command, with hoisted sails,
And ready oars, invites the murmuring gales.
At length the Cretan hero anchor weigh’d,
Repaying with neglect the abandon’d maid:
Deaf to her cries, he furrows up the main;
In vain she prays, solicits him in vain.
And now she furious grows, in wild despair
She wrings her hands and throws aloft her hair.
“Where runn’st thou?” thus she vents her deep distress,
“Why shunn’st thou her that crown’d thee with success?
Her whose fond love to thee could sacrifice
Her country and her parent; sacred ties!
Can nor my love, nor proffer’d presents, find
A passage to thy heart, and make thee kind?
Can nothing move thy pity? O ingrate!
Canst thou behold my lost, forlorn estate,
And not be soften’d? Canst thou throw off one
Who has no refuge left but thee alone?
Where shall I seek for comfort? whither fly?
My native country does in ashes lie:
Or were ’t not so, my treason bars me there,
And bids me wander. Shall I next repair
To a wrong’d father, by my guilt undone?—
Me all mankind deservedly will shun.
I out of all the world myself have thrown,
To purchase an access to Crete alone,
Which, since refused, ungenerous man, give o’er
To boast thy race; Europa never bore
A thing so savage: thee some tigress bred,
On the bleak Syrt’s inhospitable bed,
Or where Charybdis pours its rapid tide
Tempestuous. Thou art not to Jove allied;
Nor did the king of gods thy mother meet
Beneath a bull’s forged shape, and bear to Crete:
That fable of thy glorious birth is feign’d;
Some wild outrageous bull thy dam sustain’d.
O, father Nisus, now my death behold:
Exult, O city, by my baseness sold:
Minos, obdurate, has avenged ye all;
But ’twas more just by those I wrong’d to fall:
For why shouldst thou, who only didst subdue
By my offending, my offence pursue?
Well art thou match’d to one whose amorous flame
Too fiercely raged for humankind to tame;
One who, within a wooden heifer thrust,
Courted a lowing bull’s mistaken lust,
And from whose monster-teeming womb the earth
Received, what much it mourn’d, a bi-form birth.
But what avail my plaints? the whistling wind,
Which bears him far away, leaves them behind.
Well weigh’d Pasiphae, when she preferr’d
A bull to thee, more brutish than the herd.
But ah! time presses, and the labour’d oars
To distance drive the fleet, and lose the lessening shores.
Think not, ungrateful man, the liquid way
And threat’ning billows shall enforce my stay:
I’ll follow thee in spite: my arms I’ll throw
Around thy oars, or grasp thy crooked prow,
And drag through drenching seas.” Her eager tongue
Had hardly closed the speech, when forth she sprung,
And proved the deep. Cupid, with added force,
Recruits each nerve, and aids her watery course.
Soon she the ship attains; unwelcome guest!
And as with close embrace its sides she press’d,
A hawk from upper air came pouring down.
(’Twas Nisus cleft the sky with wings new-grown.)
At Scylla’s head his horny bill he aims;
She, fearful of the blow, the ship disclaims,
Quitting her hold; and yet she fell not far,
But, wond’ring, finds herself sustain’d in air.
Changed to a lark, she mottled pinions shook,
And, from the ravish’d lock, the name of Ciris took.
The Labyrinth
Theseus destroys the Minotaur by the aid of Ariadne, who conducts the hero through the windings of the labyrinth—Her kindness is ill requited by her lover, who cruelly deserts her in the Isle of Dias, where she is discovered by Bacchus, who makes her his wife, and presents her with a splendid crown, which is afterward made a constellation.
Now Minos, landed on the Cretan shore,
Performs his vows to Jove’s protecting power:
A hundred bullocks, of the largest breed,
With flowerets crown’d, before his altar bleed;
While trophies of the vanquish’d, brought from far,
Adorn the palace with the spoils of war.
Meanwhile the monster of a human beast
His family’s reproach and stain increased.
His double kind the rumour swiftly spread,
And evidenced the mother’s beastly
