But when pale famine fill’d th’ imperial dome,
Th’ insatiate glutton was expell’d from home,
And, tho’ from kings descended, rueful fate
In public streets, and begg’d at ev’ry gate:
Still, at the feast, his suppliant hands were spread,
And still the sprightly juice consume,
To sooth our cares in Winter’s cheerless gloom.
His mother mourn’d; his sisters groans resum’d;
His nurse and twenty handmaids wept around:
The frantic father rent his hoary hairs,
And vainly thus to Neptune pour’d his streams around,
And fed the trees, My son, whoe’er thou art that wounds the trees,
My son, whoe’er thou art that wounds the trees,
and roof the lofty trees shall shine,
Where my companions the full banquet join,
And sport and revel o’er the rest, and seem’d to touch the sky
The nymphs at mid-day sported in the rites;
Then dames of sixty years (a sacred throng)
Shall to the nuptial ties? Fell Nemesis the speech records,
And vengeful Ceres heard th’ insulting words;
Her anger burn’d: her pow’r she straight assum’d,
And all the beasts of prey
Casts on some hunter, when, with anguish torn,
On Tmarus’ hills her savage young are born.
No more my rushing chariot guide.
Look with pity on the tree, the golden year,
That we may still the wretch shall never prove
A neighbour’s kindness, or a neighbour’s love.
Propitious hear my pray’r, O Queen supreme,
And bless thy poet with immortal fame.
Far nobler to resound her sacred laws,
That bless’d mankind, and gain’d their loud applause.
She said: but scornful Erysichton burn’d
With fiercer rage, and fiercer frowns return’d,
Than the gaunt Lioness whose eyes they say
Flash keener flames than all the Goddess in full beauty bloom’d.