Of every care they found at last15
A sweet and tranquil close,
A balm for every danger past,
A haven of repose.
And hence to fair Sicilia springs
Her long illustrious line of kings,20
Whose happy life and wealth their native virtues wait. 20
Oh Rhea's son, Saturnian Jove,
Lord of th' Olympic seats above,
Whose favouring power the victor gave
To triumph by Alpheus' wave,25
Still to their latest offspring bear
These gifts of thy paternal care.
Not Time himself, the sire of all,
By mortal or immortal power
The deed perform'd can e'er recall:30
But sweet oblivion of the gloomy hour
Succeeds when joy's enlivening train
Scatt'ring the melancholy gloom,
Bid the light heart its wonted ease resume,
And Heaven's o'erruling lord emits his bliss again. 38
Cadmus, thy daughters' wayward fate [1]36
This moral truth can prove,
Who changed their suffering mortal state
For happy thrones above.
Fair Semele, of flowing tresses vain,40
By the loud blast of thunder slain,
Her joyful recompense can boast,
- ↑ Cadmus was an ancestor of Theron, and therefore his daughters, Ino, who was married to Athamas, king of Thebes, and whose story is finely told by Ovid, in the fourth book of the Metamorphoses, and Semele, the concubine of Jove, are judiciously selected by the poet to illustrate the mutability of human fortune, while at the same time they show the antiquity and regal splendour of the monarch's descent.
