From fide to fide their empty urns rebound,
And roufe the fleepy ferpent with the found.
Straight he beftirs him, and is seen to rise;
And now with dreadful hiffings fills the skies,
And darts his forky tongue, and rolls his glaring eyes.
The Tyrians drop their veffels in the fright,
All pale and trembling at the hideous fight.
Spire above spire uprear'd in air he stood,
And, gazing round him, over-look'd the wood:
Then floating on the ground, in circles roll'd;
Then leap'd upon them in a mighty fold.
Of fuch a bulk, and fuch a monstrous size,
The ferpent in the polar circle lies,

That ftretches over half the northern skies.
In vain the Tyrians on their arms rely,
In vain attempt to fight, in vain to fly :
All their endeavours and their hopes are vain;
Some die entangled in the winding train;
Some are devour'd; or feel a loathfome death,
Swoln up with blasts of pestilential breath.

And now the scorching fun was mounted high,
In all its luftre, to the noon-day sky;

When, anxious for his friends, and fill'd with cares,
To fearch the woods th' impatient chief prepares.
A lion's hide around his loins he wore,
The well-pois'd javelin to the field he bore
Inur'd to blood; the far-deftroying dart,
And, the best weapon, an undaunted heart.
Soon as the youth approach'd the fatal place,
He faw his fervants breathlefs on the grafs;
The fcaly foe amid their corpfe he view'd,
Basking at ease, and feasting in their blood.

Such

“Such friends, he cries, deserv'd a longer date :
"But Cadmus will revenge, or share their fate."
Then heav'd a stone, and, rising to the throw,
He fent it in a whirlwind at the foe :
A tower, affaulted by fo rude a stroke,
With all its lofty battlements had shook;
But nothing here th' unwieldy rock avails,
Rebounding harmlefs from the plaited fcales,
That, firmly join'd, preferv'd him from a wound,
With native armour crusted all around.
With more fuccefs the dart unerring flew,
Which at his back the raging warrior threw;
Amid the plaited scales it took its course,
And in the spinal marrow spent its force.
The monster hifs'd aloud, and rag'd in vain,
And writh'd his body to and fro with pain;
And bit the spear, and wrench'd the wood away :
The point ftill buried in the marrow lay.
And now his rage, increafing with his pain,
Reddens his eyes, and beats in every vein;
Churn'd in his teeth the foamy venom rofe,
Whilft from his mouth a blast of vapours flows,
Such as th' infernal Stygian waters cast:
The plants around him wither in the blast.
Now in a maze of rings he lies enroll'd,
Now all unravel'd, and without a fold;
Now, like a torrent, with a mighty force
Bears down the foreft in his boisterous courfe.
Cadmus gave back, and on the lion's spoil
Suftain'd the shock, then forc'd him to recoil;

The pointed javelin warded off his rage:
Mad with his pains, and furious to engage,
The ferpent champs the steel, and bites the spear,
Till blood and venom all the point befmear.
But ftill the hurt he yet receiv'd was flight;
For, whilst the champion with redoubled might
Strikes home the javelin, his retiring foe
Shrinks from the wound, and disappoints the blow.
The dauntless hero ftill pursues his stroke,
And preffes forward, till a knotty oak
Retards his foe, and stops him in the rear;
Full in his throat he plung'd the fatal spear,
'That in th' extended neck a passage found,
And pierc'd the folid timber through the wound.
Fix'd to the reeling trunk, with many a stroke
Of his huge tail, he lash'd the sturdy oak;
Till, spent with toil, and labouring hard for breath,
He now lay twisting in the pangs of death.
Cadmus beheld him wallow in a flood
Of swimming poison, intermix'd with blood;
When fuddenly a speech was heard from high,
(The speech was heard, nor was the speaker nigh)
"Why dost thou thus with fecret pleasure see,
"Infulting man! what thou thyself shalt be?"
Aftonish'd at the voice, he ftood amaz'd,
And all around with inward horror gaz'd:
When Pallas fwift descending from the skies,
Pallas, the guardian of the bold and wise,
Bids him plow up the field, and scatter round
The dragon's teeth o'er all the furrow'd ground;

Then

Then tells the youth how to his wondering eyes
Embattled armies from the field should rife.

He fows the teeth at Pallas's command,
And flings the future people from his hand.
The clods grow warm, and crumble where he fows:
And now the pointed spears advance in rows;
Now nodding plumes appear, and shining crefts,
Now the broad fhoulders and the rifing breasts:
O'er all the field the breathing harvest swarms,
A growing host, a crop of men and arms.
So through the parting stage a figure rears
Its body up, and limb by limb appears.
By juft degrees; till all the man arise,
And in his full proportion ftrikes the eyes.
Cadmus, furpriz'd, and startled at the fight
Of his new foes, prepar'd himself for fight:
When one cry'd out, "Forbear, fond man, forbear
"To mingle in a blind promifcuous war."
This faid, he struck his brother to the ground,
Himself expiring by another's wound;
Nor did the third his conquest long furvive,
Dying ere scarce he had begun to live.

The dire example ran through all the field,
Till heaps of brothers were by brothers kill'd;
The furrows fwam in blood: and only five
Of all the vaft increase were left alive.
Echion one, at Pallas's command,

Let fall the guiltlefs weapon from his hand;
And with the rest a peaceful treaty makes,
Whom Cadmus as his friends and partners takes;

So founds a city on the promis'd earth,

And gives his new Boeotian empire birth.

Here Cadmus reign'd; and now one would have guess'd The royal founder in his exile bleft:

Long did he live within his new abodes,
Ally'd by marriage to the deathless gods;
And, in a fruitful wife's embraces old,
A long increase of children's children told
But no frail man, however great or high,
Can be concluded bleft before he die.

:

Acteon was the first of all his race,
Who griev'd his grandfire in his borrow'd face
Condemn'd by ftern Diana to bemoan

The branching horns, and visage not his own;.,
To fhun his once-lov'd dogs, to bound away,
And from their huntsman to become their prey,
And yet confider why the change was wrought,
You'll find it his misfortune, not his fault;
Or if a fault, it was the fault of chance:
For how can guilt proceed from ignorance?

THE TRANSFORMATION OF ACTON
INTO A STAG.

IN a fair chace a fhady mountain stood,

Well ftor'd with game, and mark'd with trails of blood,
Here did the huntfinen till the heat of day

Pursue the ftag, and load themselves with prey ;;
When thus Acteon calling to the rest:

"My friends, fays he, our fport is at the best.

"The