Her lips, that once could tempt a god, begin
To grow distorted in an ugly grin.

And, lest the supplicating brute might reach
The ears of Jove, she was deprived of speech:
Her surly voice through a hoarse passage came
In savage sounds: her mind was still the same.
The furry monster fixed her eyes above,

And heaved her new unwieldy paws to Jove,
And begged his aid with inward groans; and though
She could not call him false, she thought him so.
How did she fear to lodge in woods alone,
And haunt the fields and meadows once her own!
How often would the deep-mouthed dogs pursue,
Whilst from her hounds the frighted huntress flew !
How did she fear her fellow-brutes, and shun
The shaggy bear, though now herself was one!
How from the sight of rugged wolves retire,
Although the grim Lycaon was her sire!

But now her son had fifteen summers told,
Fierce at the chase, and in the forest bold;
When, as he beat the woods in quest of prey,
He chanced to rouse his mother where she lay.
She knew her son, and kept him in her sight,
And fondly gazed: the boy was in a fright,
And aimed a pointed arrow at her breast,
And would have slain his mother in the beast;
But Jove forbad, and snatched 'em through the air
In whirlwinds up to heaven, and fixed 'em there:
Where the new constellations nightly rise,
And add a lustre to the northern skies.

When Juno saw the rival in her height, Spangled with stars, and circled round with light, . She sought old Ocean in his deep abodes,

And Tethys; both revered among the gods.

They ask what brings her there: "Ne'er ask," says she,
"What brings me here, heaven is no place for me.
You'll see, when night has covered all things o'er,
Jove's starry bastard and triumphant whore
Usurp the heavens; you'll see 'em proudly roll
In their new orbs, and brighten all the pole.
And who shall now on Juno's altars wait,
When those she hates grow greater by her hate?

I on the nymph a brutal form impressed,
Jove to a goddess has transformed the beast;
This, this was all my weak revenge could do:
But let the god his chaste amours pursue,
And, as he acted after Io's rape,

Restore the adulteress to her former shape,
Then may he cast his Juno off, and lead
The great Lycaon's offspring to his bed.
But you, ye venerable powers, be kind,
And, if my wrongs a due resentment find,
Receive not in your waves their setting beams,
Nor let the glaring strumpet taint your streams."
The goddess ended, and her wish was given.
Back she returned in triumph up to heaven;
Her gaudy peacocks drew her through the skies,
Their tails were spotted with a thousand eyes;
The eyes of Argus on their tails were ranged,
At the same time the raven's colour changed.

THE STORY OF CORONIS, AND BIRTH OF ESCULAPIUS.

The raven once in snowy plumes was drest, White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast, Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,

Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl;

His tongue, his prating tongue, had changed him quite To sooty blackness from the purest white.

The story of his change shall here be told:

In Thessaly there lived a nymph of old,
Coronis named; a peerless maid she shined,
Confest the fairest of the fairer kind.

Apollo loved her, till her guilt he knew,

While true she was, or whilst he thought her true.
But his own bird, the raven, chanced to find,
The false one with a secret rival joined.
Coronis begged him to suppress the tale,
But could not with repeated prayers prevail.
His milk-white pinions to the god he plied;
The busy daw flew with him, side by side,
And by a thousand teasing questions drew
The important secret from him as they flew.
The daw gave honest counsel, though despised,
And, tedious in her tattle, thus advised:

"Stay, silly bird, the ill-natured task refuse,
Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news.
Be warned by my example: you discern
What now I am, and what I was shall learn.
My foolish honesty was all my crime;
Then hear my story. Once upon a time,
The two-shaped Ericthonius had his birth
(Without a mother) from the teeming earth;
Minerva nursed him, and the infant laid
Within a chest, of twining osiers made.
The daughters of King Cecrops undertook
To guard the chest, commanded not to look
On what was hid within. I stood to see
The charge obeyed, perched on a neighbouring tree.
The sisters Pandrosos and Hersè keep

The strict command; Aglauros needs would peep,
And saw the monstrous infant in a fright,
And called her sisters to the hideous sight
A boy's soft shape did to the waist prevail,
But the boy ended in a dragon's tail.
I told the stern Minerva all that passed,
But for my pains, discarded and disgraced,
The frowning goddess drove me from her sight,
And for her favourite chose the bird of night.
Be then no tell-tale; for I think my wrong
Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue.
"But you, perhaps, may think I was removed,
As never by the heavenly maid beloved:
But I was loved; ask Pallas if I lie;
Though Pallas hate me now, she won't deny :
For I, whom in a feathered shape you view,
Was once a maid, (by heaven the story's true,)
A blooming maid, and a king's daughter too.
A crowd of lovers owned my beauty's charms;
My beauty was the cause of all my harms;
Neptune, as on his shores I went to rove,
Observed me in my walks, and fell in love.
He made his courtship, he confest his pain,
And offered force when all his arts were vain;
Swift he pursued: I ran along the strand,
Till, spent and wearied on the sinking sand,

I shrieked aloud, with cries I filled the air
To gods and men; nor god nor man was there:
A virgin goddess heard a virgin's prayer.
For, as my arms I lifted to the skies,

I saw black feathers from my fingers rise;
I strove to fling my garment to the ground;
My garment turned to plumes, and girt me round:
My hands to beat my naked bosom try;
Nor naked bosom now nor hands had I.
Lightly I tript, nor weary as before

Sunk in the sand, but skimmed along the shore:
Till, rising on my wings, I was preferred
To be the chaste Minerva's virgin bird:
Preferred in vain! I now am in disgrace:
Nyctimene, the owl, enjoys my place.

"On her incestuous life I need not dwell,
(In Lesbos still the horrid tale they tell,)
And of her dire amours you must have heard,
For which she now does penance in a bird,
That, conscious of her shame, avoids the light,
And loves the gloomy covering of the night;
The birds, where'er she flutters, scare away
The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day."
The raven, urged by such impertinence,
Grew passionate, it seems, and took offence,
And curst the harmless daw; the daw withdrew :
The raven to her injured patron flew,

And found him out, and told the fatal truth
Of false Coronis and the favoured youth.

The god was wroth; the colour left his look,
The wreath his head, the harp his hand forsook:
His silver bow and feathered shafts he took,
And lodged an arrow in the tender breast,
That had so often to his own been prest.
Down fell the wounded nymph, and sadly groaned,
And pulled his arrow reeking from the wound;
And weltering in her blood, thus faintly cried,
"Ah, cruel god! though I have justly died,
What has, alas! my unborn infant done,
That he should fall, and two expire in one ?"
This said, in agonies she fetched her breath.

The god dissolves in pity at her death;

He hates the bird that made her falsehood known,
And hates himself for what himself had done;
The feathered shaft, that sent her to the fates,
And his own hand that sent the shaft he hates.
Fain would he heal the wound, and ease her pain,
And tries the compass of his art in vain.
Soon as he saw the lovely nymph expire,
The pile made ready, and the kindling fire,
With sighs and groans her obsequies he kept,
And, if a god could weep, the god had wept.
Her corpse he kissed, and heavenly incense brought,
And solemnized the death himself had wrought.
But, lest his offspring should her fate partake,
Spite of the immortal mixture in his make,
He ript her womb, and set the child at large,
And gave him to the centaur Chiron's charge:
Then in his fury blacked the raven o'er,

And bid him prate in his white plumes no more.

OCYRRHOĘ TRANSFORMED TO A MARE.

Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Chariclo to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevelled on her shoulders came
To see the child, Ocyrrhöe was her name;
She knew her father's arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
Once, as the sacred infant she survey'd,
The god was kindled in the raving maid,
And thus she uttered her prophetic tale;
Hail, great physician of the world, all hail;
Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations and defraud the tomb;
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfined!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
Then shalt thou die; but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a god.
And thou, my sire, not destined by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,