Long was the nymph by numerous suitors woo’d,
Each with address his envied hopes pursued:
I join’d the loving band to gain the fair,
Reveal’d my passion to her father’s ear:
Their vain pretensions all the rest resign,
Alcides only strove to equal mine;
He boasts his birth from Jove, recounts his spoils,
His stepdame’s hate subdued, and finish’d toils.
“ ‘Can mortals then,’ said I, ‘with gods compare?
Behold a god! mine is the watery care:
Through your wide realms I take my mazy way,
Branch into streams, and o’er the region stray:
No foreign guest your daughter’s charms adores,
But one who rises in your native shores.
Let not his punishment your pity move:
Is Juno’s hate an argument for love?
Though you your life from fair Alcmena drew,
Jove’s a feign’d father, or by fraud a true.
Choose then, confess thy mother’s honour lost,
Or thy descent from Jove no longer boast.’
“While thus I spoke, he look’d with stern disdain,
Nor could the sallies of his wrath restrain,
Which thus break forth: ‘This arm decides our right,
Vanquish’d in words, be mine the prize in fight.’
“Bold he rush’d on. My honour to maintain,
I fling my verdant garments on the plain,
My arms stretch forth, my pliant limbs prepare,
And with bent hands expect the furious war.
O’er my sleek skin now gather’d dust he throws,
And yellow sand his mighty muscles strows:
Oft he my neck and nimble legs assails;
He seems to grasp me, but as often fails;
Each part he now invades with eager hand,
Safe in my bulk immoveable I stand;
So when loud storms break high, and foam and roar,
Against some mole that stretches from the shore,
The firm foundation lasting tempests braves,
Defies the warring winds and driving waves.
“Awhile we breathe, then forward rush amain,
Renew the combat, and our ground maintain;
Foot strove with foot, I, prone, extend my breast,
Hands war with hands, and forehead forehead press’d.
Thus have I seen two furious bulls engage,
Inflamed with equal love and equal rage,
Each claims the fairest heifer of the grove,
And conquest only can decide their love:
The trembling herds survey the fight from far,
Till victory decides the important war:
Three times, in vain, he strove my joints to wrest,
To force my hold, and throw me from his breast;
The fourth he broke my gripe, that clasp’d him round,
Then with new force he stretch’d me on the ground;
Close to my back the mighty burden clung,
As if a mountain o’er my limbs were flung;
Believe my tale; nor do I, boastful, aim
By feign’d narration to extol my fame;
No sooner from his arm I freedom get,
Unlock my arms, that flow’d with trickling sweat,
But quick he seized me, and renew’d the strife,
As my exhausted bosom pants for life;
My neck he gripes, my knee to earth he strains,
I fall, and bite the sand with shame and pains.
“O’ermatch’d in strength, to wiles and arts I take,
And slip his hold in form of speckled snake,
Who, when I writhed in spires my body round,
Or show’d my forky tongue with hissing sound,
Smiles at my threats: ‘Such foes my cradle knew,’
He cries; ‘dire snakes my infant hand o’erthrew:
A dragon’s form might other conquests gain;
To war with me you take that shape in vain:
Art thou proportion’d to the hydra’s length,
Who by his wounds received augmented strength?
He raised a hundred hissing heads in air;
When one I lopp’d, up sprung a dreadful pair:
By his wounds fertile, and with slaughter strong,
Singly I quell’d him, and stretch’d dead along.
What canst thou do, a form precarious, prone,
To rouse my rage with terrors not thy own?’
He said, and round my neck his hands he cast,
And with his straining fingers wrung me fast;
My throat he tortured close as pincers clasp;
In vain I strove to loose the forceful grasp.
“Thus vanquish’d too, a third form still remains,
Changed to a bull, my lowing fills the plains:
Straight on the left his nervous arms were thrown
Upon my brindled neck, and tugg’d it down;
Then deep he struck my horn into the sand,
And fell’d my bulk along the dusty land:
Nor yet his fury cool’d; ’twixt rage and scorn,
From my maim’d front he tore the stubborn horn;
This, heap’d with flowers and fruits, the Naiads bear,
Sacred to plenty, and the bounteous year.”
He spoke, when lo! a beauteous nymph appears,
Girt, like Diana’s train, with flowing hairs:
The horn she brings, in which all autumn’s stored,
And ruddy apples for the second board.
Now morn begins to dawn, the sun’s bright fire
Gilds the high mountains, and the youths retire;
Nor stay’d they till the troubled stream subsides,
And in its bounds with peaceful current glides;
But Achelous in his oosy bed
Deep hides his brow deform’d, and rustic head;
No real wound the victor’s triumph show’d,
But his lost honours grieved the watery god;
Yet ev’n that loss the willow’s leaves o’erspread,
And verdant reeds, in garlands, bind his head.
Death of Nessus the Centaur
The centaur Nessus, who offers violence to Dejanira, is killed by the shafts of Hercules—Before he expires, he presents a poisoned tunic to the woman he has injured, assuring her of its efficacy to recall the affections of a faithless husband.
This virgin too, thy love, O Nessus, found;
To her alone you owe the fatal wound.
As the strong son of Jove his bride conveys,
Where his paternal lands their bulwarks raise;
Where from her slopy urn Evenus pours
Her rapid current, swell’d by wintry showers,
He came. The frequent eddies whirl’d the tide,
And the deep rolling waves all pass denied.
As for himself, he stood unmoved by fears,
For now his bridal charge employ’d his cares.
The strong-limb’d Nessus thus officious cried
(For he the shallows of the stream had tried),
“Swim thou, Alcides, all thy strength prepare,
On yonder bank I’ll lodge thy nuptial care.”
The Aonian chief to Nessus trusts his wife,
All pale and trembling for her hero’s life.
Clothed as he stood in the fierce lion’s hide,
The laden quiver o’er his shoulder tied
(For cross the stream his bow and club were cast),
Swift he plunged in: “These billows shall be pass’d,”
He said, nor sought where smoother waters glide,
But stemm’d the rapid dangers of the tide.
The bank he reach’d, again the bow he bears,
When, hark! his bride’s known voice alarms his ears.
“Nessus, to thee I call,” aloud he cries,
“Vain is thy trust in flight, be timely wise:
Thou monster double-shaped, my right set free:
If thou no
