When Minos, willing to conceal the shame
That sprung from the reports of tattling Fame,
Resolves a dark enclosure to provide,
And far from sight the two-form’d creature hide.
Great Daedalus of Athens was the man
That made the draught, and form’d the wondrous plan;
Where rooms within themselves encircled lie,
With various windings, to deceive the eye.
As soft Maeander’s wanton current plays,
When through the Phrygian fields it loosely strays;
Backward and forward rolls the dimpled tide,
Seeming at once two different ways to glide:
While circling streams their former banks survey,
And waters past succeeding waters see;
Now floating to the sea with downward course,
Now pointing upward to its ancient source:
Such was the work, so intricate the place,
That scarce the workman all its turns could trace;
And Daedalus was puzzled how to find
The secret ways of what himself design’d.
These private walls the Minotaur include,
Who twice was glutted with Athenian blood;
But the third tribute more successful proved—
Slew the foul monster, and the plague removed.
When Theseus, aided by the virgin’s art,
Had traced the guiding thread through every part,
He took the gentle maid that set him free,
And, bound for Dias, cut the briny sea;
There, quickly cloy’d, ungrateful, and unkind,
Left his fair consort in the isle behind,
Whom Bacchus sees and loves; decrees the dame
Shall shine for ever in the rolls of fame;
And bids her crown among the stars be placed,
With an eternal constellation graced.
The golden circle mounts, and, as it flies,
Its diamonds twinkle in the distant skies;
There, in their pristine form, the gemmy rays
Between Alcides and the dragon blaze.
Story of Daedalus and Icarus
Daedalus, accompanied by his son Icarus, effects his escape from the custody of Minos by the aid of wings compacted with wax—The heat of the sun melts tie pinions of the youth, who mounts too high, and he is precipitated into the sea; while the father arrives in Sicily, where he is kindly received by the king of that country.
In tedious exile now too long detain’d,
Daedalus languish’d for his native land;
The sea foreclosed his flight, yet thus he said:
“Though earth and water in subjection laid,
O cruel Minos, thy dominion be,
We’ll go through air; for sure the air is free.”
Then to new arts his cunning thought applies,
And to improve the work of nature tries.
A row of quills in gradual order placed,
Rise by degrees in length from first to last;
As on a cliff the ascending thicket grows,
Or different reeds the rural pipe compose.
Along the middle runs a twine of flax,
The bottom stems are join’d by pliant wax:
Thus, well compact, a hollow bending brings
The fine composure into real wings.
His boy, young Icarus, that near him stood,
Unthinking of his fate, with smiles pursued
The floating feathers, which the moving air
Bore loosely from the ground, and wafted here and there:
Or with the wax impertinently play’d,
And, with his childish tricks, the great design de lay’d.
The final master-stroke at last imposed,
And now the neat machine completely closed;
Fitting his pinions on, a flight he tries,
And hung, self-balanced, in the beaten skies.
Then thus instructs his child: “My boy, take care
To wing your course along the middle air:
If low, the surges wet your flagging plumes;
If high, the sun the melting wax consumes.
Steer between both; nor to the northern skies,
Nor south Orion, turn your giddy eyes,
But follow me: let me before you lay
Rules for the flight, and mark the pathless way.”
Then, teaching, with a fond concern, his son,
He took the untried wings and fix’d them on;
But fix’d with trembling hands; and, as he speaks,
The tears roll gently down his aged cheeks:
Then kiss’d, and in his arms embraced him fast,
But knew not this embrace must be the last;
And, mounting upward, as he wings his flight,
Back on his charge he turns his aching sight;
As parent birds, when first their callow care
Leave the high nest to tempt the liquid air:
Then cheers him on, and oft, with fatal art,
Reminds the stripling to perform his part.
These, as the angler at the silent brook,
Or mountain shepherd leaning on his crook,
Or gaping ploughman, from the vale descries,
They stare and view them with religious eyes,
And straight conclude them gods; since none but they
Through their own azure skies could find a way.
Now Delos, Paros, on the left are seen,
And Samos, favour’d by Jove’s haughty queen;
Upon the right, the isle Lebynthos named,
And fair Calymne, for its honey famed.
When now the boy, whose childish thoughts aspire
To loftier aims, and make him ramble higher,
Grown wild and wanton, more imbolden’d, flies
Far from his guide, and soars among the skies.
The softening wax, that felt a nearer sun,
Dissolved apace, and soon began to run;
The youth in vain his melting pinions shakes,
His feathers gone, no longer air he takes;
O! father, father! as he strove to cry,
Down to the sea he tumbled from on high,
And found his fate; yet still subsists by fame
Among those waters that retain his name.
The father, now no more a father, cries:
“Ho, Icarus! where are you?” as he flies;
“Where shall I seek my boy?” he cries again,
And saw his feathers scatter’d on the main.
Then cursed his art; and funeral rites conferr’d,
Naming the country from the youth interr’d.
A partridge, from a neighbouring stump, beheld
The sire his monumental marble build;
Who, with peculiar call and fluttering wing,
Chirp’d joyful, and malicious seem’d to sing;
The only bird of all its kind, and late
Transform’d in pity to a feather’d state:
From whence, Daedalus, thy guilt we date.
His sister’s son, when not twelve years were pass’d,
Was, with his uncle, as a scholar placed;
The unsuspecting mother saw his parts
And genius fitted for the finest arts.
This soon appear’d; for when the spiny bone
In fishes’ backs was by the stripling known,
A rare invention thence he learn’d to draw,
Filed teeth in iron, and made the grating saw.
He was the first, that from a knob of brass
Made two straight arms with widening stretch to pass;
That, while one stood upon the centre’s place,
The other round it drew a circling space.
Daedalus envied this, and from the top
Of fair Minerva’s temple let him drop;
Feigning, that, as he lean’d upon the tower,
Careless he stoop’d too much, and tumbled o’er.
The goddess, who the ingenious still befriends,
On this occasion her assistance lends;
His arms with feathers, as he fell, she veils,
And in the air a
