One murder pay, or add one murder more,
And me to them who fell by thee restore.

I would, but cannot: my fon's image stands
Before my fight; and now their angry hands
My brothers hold, and vengeance these exact,
This pleads compaffion, and repents the fact.

He pleads in vain, and I pronounce his doom: My brothers, though unjustly, fhall o'ercome. But, having pay'd their injur'd ghosts their due, My fon requires my death, and mine fhall his pursue. At this for the last time fhe lifts her hand,

Averts her eyes, and half unwilling drops the brand. The brand, amid the flaming fuel thrown,

Or drew, or feem'd to draw, a dying groan;

The fires themfelves but faintly lick'd their prey, Then loath'd their impious food, and would have shrunk away.

Just then the hero cast a doleful cry,

And in those abfent flames began to fry :
The blind contagion rag`d within his veins;
But he with manly patience bore his pains:
He fear'd not fate, but only griev'd to die
Without an honest wound, and by a death so dry.
Happy Ancæus, thrice aloud he cry'd,
With what becoming fate in arms he dy'd!
Then call'd his brothers, fifters, fire, around,
And her to whom his nuptial vows were bound;
Perhaps his mother; a long figh he drew,
And, his voice failing, took his last adieu ;

For

For as the flames augment, and as they stay
At their full height, then languish to decay,
They rife, and fink by fits; at last they foar
In one bright blaze, and then descend no more;
Juft fo his inward heats, at height, impair,

Till the last burning breath fhoots out the foul in air.
Now lofty Calydon in ruins lies

All ages, all degrees, unfluice their eyes;

And heaven and earth refound with murmurs, groans, and cries.

Matrons and maidens beat their breafts, and tear
Their habits, and root up their scatter'd hair.
The wretched father, father now no more,
With forrow funk, lies proftrate on the floor,
Deforms his hoary locks with duft obfcene,

And curfes age, and loaths a life prolong'd with pain.
By fteel her stubborn foul his mother freed,
And punish'd on herself her impious deed.
Had I an hundred tongues, a wit fo large
As could their hundred offices discharge;
Had Phoebus all his Helicon bestow'd,
In all the streams inspiring all the God;

Thofe tongues, that wit, thofe ftreams, that God, in vain
Would offer to defcribe his fifters' pain:

They beat their breafts with many a bruifing blow,

Till they turn livid, and corrupt the snow.

The corpfe they cherish, while the corpfe remains,
And exercise and rub with fruitless pains;
And when to funeral flames 'tis borne away,
They kiss the bed on which the body lay :

And

And when those funeral flames no longer burn
(The duft compos'd within a pious urn),
Ev'n in that urn their brother they confefs,

And hug it in their arms, and to their bosoms press.
His tomb is rais'd; then, stretch'd along the ground,
Those living monuments his tomb surround:
Ev'n to his name, infcrib'd, their tears they pay,
Till tears and kifles wear his name away.
But Cynthia now had all her fury spent,
Not with lefs ruin, than a race, content:
Excepting Gorgé, perifh'd all the feed,
And her whom heaven for Hercules decreed.
Satiate at last, no longer fhe purfued

The weeping fifters; but, with wings endued,
And horny beaks, and fent to flit in air;

Who yearly round the tomb in feather'd flocks repair.

BAU

BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.

Out of the EIGHTH BOOK of

OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

The author, purfuing the deeds of Thefeus, relates how he, with his friend Pirithous, were invited by Achelous, the River-God, to ftay with him, till his waters were abated. Achelous entertains them with a relation of his own love to Perimele, who was changed into an island by Neptune, at his request. Pirithous, being an atheift, derides the legend, and denies the power of the Gods to work that miracle. Lelex, another companion of Thefeus, to confirm the flory of Achelous, relates another metamorphofis of Baucis and Philemon into trees: of which he was partly an eye-witness.

THUS Achelous ends: his audience hear
With admiration, and admiring fear

The powers of heaven; except Ixion's fon,
Who laugh'd at all the Gods, believ'd in none;
He fhook his impious head, and thus replies,
These legends are no more than pious lies:
You attribute too much to heavenly fway,
To think they give us forms, and take away.

The

The reft, of better minds, their fenfe declar'd Against this doctrine, and with horror heard.

Then Lelex rose, an old experienc'd man, And thus with fober gravity began :

Heaven's power is infinite earth, air, and fea,
The manufacture mafs, the making power obey:
By proof to clear your doubt; in Phrygian ground
Two neighbouring trees, with walls encompass'd round,
Stand on a moderate rife, with wonder fhown,

One a hard oak, a fofter linden one:

I faw the place and them, by Pittheus fent

To Phrygian realms, my grandfire's government.
Not far from thence is feen a lake, the haunt
Of coots, and of the fishing cormorant :
Here Jove with Hermes came, but in disguise
Of mortal men conceal'd their Deities:
One laid afide his thunder, one his rod;
And many toilfome fteps together trod;
For harbour at a thousand doors they knock'd,
Not one of all the thousand but was lock'd.
At last an hofpitable houfe they found,

A homely fhed; the roof, not far from gound,
Was thatch'd with reeds and ftraw together bound.
There Baucis and Philemon liv'd, and there
Had liv'd long married, and a happy pair:
Now old in love; though little was their ftore,
Inur'd to want, their poverty they bore,
Nor aim'd at wealth, profeffing to be poor.
For mafter or for fervant here to call,
Was all alike, where only two were all.

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