50
Her spots of glowing green reveal her ire;
Now on her foe she nigher springs and nigher—
Then stops—her mirror'd form arrested to admire.
E'en so the Mother round Olympus raves,
Proclaims her wrongs, and restitution craves.
"'Tis I, no daughter of a wandering Stream—
No vulgar Dryad: to the Lord supreme,
The mighty Saturn, me Cybelle bare.
But none may now the rights of Godhead share—
All law—all rule is ended: to be good
Avails not: Venus walks in hardihood,
Loosed from her Lemnian net, in sight of all:
But made more bold by that degrading fall!
And ye, whose virgin dignity disdains
Each thought and act that sensual passion stains,
Are ye, with fond and undiscerning mind,
Link'd to the shameless, to the robber join'd?
O worthy pair—to whom on Scythia's shore
Should barbarous altars reek with human gore—
Say when the victim of your wrath was heard
To speak against you but an idle word?
When sought she Dian from her woods to drive—
When in Minerva's battle fields to strive—
