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Are fled: we gaze, and search around, and soon
We light on Cyane, in deadly swoon,
With blacken'd garland—who, too rashly near,
Had cross'd the path of that dread charioteer.
We ask, 'The horses—what resembled they?
And who their guider?' She can nothing say;
The poison melts her very soul away.
Her hair and all her frame soft dews distil;
She bathes our feet, dissolved into a rill!
The rest disperse: upborne on rapid wings,
The Siren band around Pelorus clings;
Inflamed henceforward with a baleful fire,
Adapts to wicked ends the dulcet lyre;
Arrests the progress of the passing oar,
And chains the seaman to that fatal shore.
I to my age and grief am left alone!"
The Goddess hears—but seems, as senseless grown,
Yet more to fear than feel her misery:
At length—with mind resolved, and flashing eye,
She burns to rush against the Powers on high.
So fierce the tigress makes Niphates ring,
Whose whelps for pastime to the Persian King
Some trembling horseman bears: she darts behind,
More rapid than her mate—the Western Wind:
