The wife self-murder’d from a beam depends,

And her foul soul to blackest hell descends;

Thence to her son the choicest plagues she brings,

And the fiends haunt him with a thousand stings.


“And now the beauteous Chloris I descry,

A lovely shade, Amphion’s youngest joy!

With gifts unnumber’d Neleus sought her arms,

Nor paid too dearly for unequall’d charms;

Great in Orchomenos, in Pylos great,

He sway’d the sceptre with imperial state.

Three gallant sons the joyful monarch told,

Sage Nestor, Periclimenus the bold,

And Chromius last; but of the softer race,

One nymph alone, a myracle of grace.

Kings on their thrones for lovely Pero burn;

The sire denies, and kings rejected mourn.

To him alone the beauteous prize he yields,

Whose arm should ravish from Phylacian fields

The herds of Iphyclus, detain’d in wrong;

Wild, furious herds, unconquerably strong!

This dares a seer, but nought the seer prevails,

In beauty’s cause illustriously he fails;

Twelve moons the foe the captive youth detains

In painful dungeons, and coercive chains;

The foe at last from durance where he lay,

His heart revering, give him back to day;

Won by prophetic knowledge, to fulfil

The steadfast purpose of the Almighty will.


“With graceful port advancing now I spied,

Leda the fair, the godlike Tyndar’s bride:

Hence Pollux sprung, who wields the furious sway

The deathful gauntlet, matchless in the fray;

And Castor, glorious on the embattled plain,

Curbs the proud steeds, reluctant to the rein:

By turns they visit this ethereal sky,

And live alternate, and alternate die:

In hell beneath, on earth, in heaven above,

Reign the twin-gods, the favourite sons of Jove.


“There Ephimedia trod the gloomy plain,

Who charm’d the monarch of the boundless main:

Hence Ephialtes, hence stern Otus sprung,

More fierce than giants, more than giants strong;

The earth o’erburden’d groan’d beneath their weight,