While Hermes piped, and sung, and told his tale,
The keeper’s winking eyes began to fail,
And drowsy slumber on the lids to creep,
Till all the watchman was at length asleep.
Then soon the god his voice and song suppress’d,
And with his powerful rod confirm’d his rest;
Without delay his crooked falchion drew,
And at one fatal stroke the keeper slew.
Down from the rock fell the dissever’d head,
Opening its eyes in death, and falling, bled,
And mark’d the passage with a crimson trail:
Thus Argus lies in pieces, cold and pale,
And all his hundred eyes, with all their light,
Are closed at once in one perpetual night.
These Juno takes, that they no more way fail,
And spreads them in her peacock’s gaudy tail.
Impatient to revenge her injured bed,
She wreaks her anger on her rival’s head;
With furies frights her from her native home,
And drives her, gadding, round the world to roam;
Nor ceased her madness, and her flight, before
She touch’d the limits of the Pharian shore.
At length, arriving on the banks of Nile,
Wearied with length of ways, and worn with toil,
She laid her down, and, leaning on her knees,
Invoked the cause of all her miseries,
And cast her languishing regards above,
For help from Heaven and her ungrateful Jove.
She sigh’d, she wept, she low’d; ’twas all she could;
And with unkindness seem’d to tax the god:
Last, with an humble prayer, she begg’d repose,
Or death, at least, to finish all her woes.
Jove heard her vows, and, with a flattering look,
In her behalf to jealous Juno spoke.
He cast his arms about her neck, and said,
“Dame, rest secure; no more thy nuptial bed
This nymph shall violate; by Styx I swear,
And every oath that binds the Thunderer.”
The goddess was appeased; and at the word
Was Io to her former shape restored:
The rugged hair began to fall away;
The sweetness of her eyes did only stay;
Though not so large: her crooked horns decrease;
The wideness of her jaws and nostrils cease;
Her hoofs to hands return, in little space;
The five long taper fingers take their place;
And nothing of the heifer now is seen,
Beside the native whiteness of the skin.
Erected on her feet she walks again;
And two the duty of the four sustain.
She tries her tongue; her silence softly breaks,
And fears her former lowings when she speaks:
A goddess now, through all the Egyptian state,
And served by priests, who in white linen wait.
Her son was Epaphus, at length believed
The son of Jove, and as a god received;
With sacrifice adored, and public prayers,
He common temples with his mother shares.
Equal in years, and rival in renown,
With Epaphus, the youthful Phaeton
Like honour claims, and boasts his sire the sun.
His haughty looks, and his assuming air,
The son of Isis could no longer bear.
“Thou takest thy mother’s word too far,” said he,
“And hast usurp’d thy boasted pedigree:
Go, base pretender to a borrow’d name.”
Thus tax’d, he blush’d with anger and with shame:
But shame repressed his rage: the daunted youth
Soon seeks his mother, and inquires the truth.
“Mother,” said he, “this infamy was thrown
By Epaphus on you, and me your son.
He spoke in public, told it to my face,
Nor durst I vindicate the dire disgrace:
Even I, the bold, the sensible of wrong,
Restrain’d by shame, was forced to hold my tongue.
To hear an open slander is a curse;
But not to find an answer is a worse.
If I am heaven-begot, assert your son,
By some sure sign, and make my father known,
To right my honour, and redeem your own.”
He said, and saying, cast his arms about
Her neck, and begg’d her to resolve the doubt.
’Tis hard to judge if Clymene were moved
More by his prayer, whom she so dearly loved,
Or more with fury fired, to find her name
Traduced, and made the sport of common fame.
She stretch’d her arms to heaven, and fix’d her eyes
On that fair planet that adorns the skies.
“Now by those beams,” said she, “whose holy fires
Consume my breast, and kindle my desires;
By him who sees us both, and cheers our sight,
By him, the public minister of light,
I swear that sun begot thee; if I lie,
Let him his cheerful influence deny;
Let him no more this perjured creature see,
And shine on all the world but only me.
If still you doubt your mother’s innocence,
His eastern mansion is not far from hence;
With little pains you to his levee go,
And from himself your parentage may know.”
With joy the ambitious youth his mother heard,
And, eager for his journey, soon prepared.
He longs the world beneath him to survey,
To guide the chariot, and to give the day.
From Meroe’s burning sands he bends his course,
Nor less in India feels his father’s force;
His travel urging, till he came in sight,
And saw the palace by the purple light.
Book II
Story of Phaeton
Phaeton, the son of Apollo and Clymene, obtains from his fond father an oath that he will grant him whatever he requires, which is no sooner uttered than the rash youth demands the guidance of his chariot for one day—Phoebus represents the impropriety of such a request, and the dangers to which it will expose him, but in vain; and, as the oath is in violable, the youth is instructed how to proceed through the regions of the air—The advice, however, is disregarded; and the flying horses, becoming sensible of the incapacity of their driver, depart from their usual track; and the heavens and earth are threatened with a universal conflagration, when Jupiter strikes the charioteer with a thunderbolt, and hurls him headlong from heaven into the river Po.
The sun’s bright palace, on high columns raised,
With burnish’d gold and flaming jewels blazed;
The folding gates diffused a silver light,
And with a milder gleam refresh’d the sight;
Of polish’d ivory was the covering wrought;
The matter vied not with the sculptor’s thought;
For in the portal was display’d on high
(The work of Vulcan) a fictitious sky;
À waving sea the inferior earth embraced,
And gods and goddesses the waters graced.
Aegeon here a mighty whale bestrode;
Triton, and Proteus (the deceiving god),
With Doris here were carved, and all her train:
Some loosely swimming in the figured main,
While some on rocks their dropping hair divide,
And some on fishes through
