Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/232

Have wrought this feate, my selfe to you resort in person shall.
This sed, she turnde away hir face, and with a trembling hand
Did cast the deathfull brand amid the burning fire. The brand
Did eyther sigh, or seeme to sigh in burning in the flame,
Which sorie and unwilling was to fasten on the same.
Meleager being absent and not knowing ought at all
Was burned with this flame: and felt his bowels to appall
With secret fire. He bare out long the paine with courage stout.
But yet it grieved him to die so cowardly without
The shedding of his bloud. He thought Anceus for to be
A happie man that dide of wound. With sighing called he
Upon his aged father, and his sisters, and his brother,
And lastly on his wife too, and by chaunce upon his mother.
His paine encreased with the fire, and fell therewith againe:
And at the selfe same instant quight extinguisht were both twaine.
And as the ashes soft and hore by leysure overgrew
The glowing coales: so leysurly his spirit from him drew.
Then drouped stately Calydon. Both yong and olde did mourne,
The Lords and Commons did lament, and maried wives with tome
And tattred haire did crie alas. His father did beray
His horie head and face with dust, and on the earth flat lay,
Lamenting that he lived had to see that wofull day
For now his mothers giltie hand had for that cursed crime
Done execution on hir selfe by sword before hir time.
If God to me a hundred mouthes with sounding tongues should send,
And reason able to conceyve, and thereunto should lend
Me all the grace of eloquence that ere the Muses had,
I could not shew the wo wherewith his sisters were bestad.
Unmindfull of their high estate, their naked brests they smit,
Untill they made them blacke and blew. And while his bodie yit
Remained, they did cherish it, and cherish it againe.
They kist his bodie: yea they kist the chist that did containe
His corse. And after that the corse was burnt to ashes, they
Did presse his ashes with their brests: and downe along they lay
Upon his tumb, and there embraste his name upon the stone,
And filde the letters of the same with teares that from them gone.
At length Diana satisfide with slaughter brought upon