“A while they whisper; then to Jove address’d,
Philemon thus prefers their joint request:
‘We crave to serve before your sacred shrine,
And offer at your altar rites divine:
And since not any action of our life
Has been polluted with domestic strife,
We beg one hour of death, that neither she
With widow’s tears may live to bury me,
Nor weeping I, with wither’d arms, may bear
My breathless Baucis to the sepulchre.’
The godheads sign their suit. They run the race
In the same tenor all the appointed space:
Then, when their hour was come, while they relate
These past adventures at the temple gate,
Old Baucis is by old Philemon seen
Sprouting with sudden leaves of sprightly green:
Old Baucis look’d where old Philemon stood,
And saw his lengthen’d arms a sprouting wood:
New roots their fasten’d feet begin to bind,
Their bodies stiffen in a rising rind:
Then, ere the bark above their shoulders grew,
They give and take at once their last adieu.
‘At once farewell, O faithful spouse,’ they said;
At once the encroaching rinds their closing lips invade.
Ev’n yet, an ancient Tyanaean shows
A spreading oak, that near a linden grows;
The neighbourhood confirm the prodigy,
Grave men, not vain of tongue, or like to lie.
I saw myself the garlands on their boughs,
And tablets hung for gifts of granted vows;
And offering fresher up, with pious prayer,
‘The good,’ said I, ‘are God’s peculiar care,
And such as honour Heaven shall heavenly honour share.’ ”
Changes of Proteus
Achelous relates to his guest the various transformations of Proteus.
He ceased in his relation to proceed,
While all admired the author and the deed;
But Theseus most, inquisitive to know
From gods what wondrous alterations grow.
Whom thus the Calydonian stream address’d,
Raised high to speak, the couch his elbow press’d.
“Some, when transform’d, fix in the lasting change;
Some, with more right, through various figures range.
Proteus, thus large thy privilege was found,
Thou inmate of the seas, which earth surround.
Sometimes a blooming youth you graced the shore;
Oft a fierce lion or a furious boar:
With glist’ring spires now seem’d a hissing snake.
The bold would tremble in his hands to take:
With horns assumed a bull; sometimes you proved
A tree by roots, a stone by weight unmoved:
Sometimes two wav’ring contraries became,
Flow’d down in water, or aspired in flame.”
Story of Erisichthon
Erisichthon impiously derides the worship of Ceres, whose groves he destroys.
In various shapes thus to deceive the eyes,
Without a settled stint of her disguise,
Rash Erisichthon’s daughter had the power,
And brought it to Autolycus in dower.
Her atheist sire the slighted gods defied,
And ritual honours to their shrines denied.
As fame reports, his hand an axe sustain’d,
Which Ceres’ consecrated grove profaned;
Which durst the venerable gloom invade,
And violate with light the awful shade.
An ancient oak in the dark centre stood,
The covert’s glory, and itself a wood:
Garlands embraced its shaft, and from the boughs
Hung tablets, monuments of prosp’rous vows.
In the cool dusk its unpierced verdure spread,
The dryads oft their hallow’d dances led;
And oft, when round their gauging arms they cast,
Full fifteen ells it measured in the waist:
Its height all under-standards did surpass,
As they aspired above the humbler grass.
These motives, which would gentler minds restrain,
Could not make Triope’s bold son abstain;
He sternly charged his slaves with strict decree
To fell with gashing steel the sacred tree.
But while they, lingering, his commands delay’d,
He snatch’d an axe, and thus blaspheming said:
“Was this no oak, nor Ceres’ favourite care,
But Ceres’ self, this arm, unawed, should dare
Its leafy honours in the dust to spread,
And level with the earth its airy head.”
He spoke, and as he poised a slanting stroke,
Sighs heaved, and tremblings shook the frighted oak:
Its leaves look’d sickly, pale its acorns grew,
And its long branches sweat a chilly dew.
But when his impious hand a wound bestow’d,
Blood from the mangled bark in currents flow’d.
When a devoted bull of mighty size,
A sinning nation’s grand atonement, dies,
With such a plenty from the spouting veins,
A crimson stream the turfy altars stains.
The wonder all amazed; yet one more bold,
The fact dissuading, strove his axe to hold.
But the Thessalian, obstinately bent,
Too proud to change, too harden’d to repent,
On his kind monitor his eyes, which burn’d
With rage, and with his eyes his weapon turn’d:
“Take the reward,” says he, “of pious dread:”
Then with a blow lopp’d off his parted head.
No longer check’d, the wretch his crime pursu’d,
Doubled his strokes, and sacrilege renew’d;
When from the groaning trunk a voice was heard:
“A dryad I, by Ceres’ love preferr’d,
Within the circle of this clasping rind
Coeval grew, and now in ruin join’d:
But instant vengeance shall thy sin pursue,
And death is cheer’d with this prophetic view.”
At last the oak with cords enforced to bow,
Strain’d from the top, and sapp’d with wounds be low,
The humbler wood, partaker of its fate,
Crush’d with its fall, and shiver’d with its weight.
The grove destroy’d, the sister dryads moan,
Grieved at its loss, and frighted at their own.
Straight suppliants for revenge to Ceres go,
In sable weeds, expressive of their wo.
The beauteous goddess with a graceful air
Bow’d in consent, and nodded to their prayer.
The awful motion shook the fruitful ground,
And waved the fields with golden harvests crown’d.
Soon she contrived in her projecting mind
A plague severe, and piteous in its kind
(If plagues for crimes of such presumptuous height
Could pity in the softest breast create);
With pinching want, and hunger’s keenest smart,
To tear his vitals, and corrode his heart.
But since her near approach by Fate’s denied
To Famine, and broad climes their powers divide,
A nymph, the mountain’s ranger, she address’d,
And, thus resolved, her high commands express’d.
Description of Famine
The goddess afflicts Erisichthon with continual hunger.
“Where frozen Scythia’s utmost bound is placed,
A desert lies, a melancholy waste:
In yellow crops there Nature never smiled,
No fruitful tree to shade the barren wild.
There sluggish cold its icy station makes,
There paleness frights, and anguish trembling shakes.
Of pining Famine this the fated seat,
To whom my orders in these words repeat:
‘Bid her this miscreant with her sharpest pains
Chastise, and sheath herself into his veins;
Be unsubdued by plenty’s baffled store,
Reject my empire, and defeat my power;
And lest the distance, and the tedious way,
Should with the toil and long fatigue dismay,
Ascend my chariot, and, convey’d on high,
Guide the rein’d dragons through the parting sky.’
The nymph, accepting of the
