IO. Ill wou'd excuse become me, or denial;
Take then the plain unornamented tale
Ye wish to hear; tho' sad the task enjoin'd,
And hard : for how relate the heav'n-sent tempest
That burst upon my head, my form thus chang'd,
And all the weight of woe that overwhelms me?
Still, when retir'd to rest, air-bodied forms[1]
Visit my slumber nightly, soothing me
With gentle speech, "Blest maid, why hoard for ever
Thy virgin treasure, when the highest nuptials
Await thy choice; the flames of soft desire
Have touch'd the heart of Jove; he burns with love:
Disdain not, gentle virgin, ah disdain not
The couch of Jove; to Lerna's deep recess,
Where graze thy father's herds the meads along,
Go, gentle virgin, crown the god's desires."
The night returns, the visionary forms
Return again, and haunt my troubled soul
Forbidding rest, till to my father's ear
I dar'd disclose the visions of the night.
To Pytho, to Dodona's vocal grove
He sent his seers, anxious to know what best
Was pleasing to the gods. Return'd they bring
Dark-utter'd answers of ambiguous sense.
At length one oracle distinct and plain
Pronounc'd its mandates, charging Inachus
- ↑ Iö tells her tale with great propriety, and by preserving the decorum of their own character, consults the dignity of her illustrious descendants. The circumstance of the vision, and the influence of the god over her slumbers, is a fine stroke of nature, embellished with a rich poetical imagination;
These are the day-dreams of a maid in love.
Ovid, who had no prejudice of high-descended ancestry to flatter, has taken the liberty to depart from this bienseance; Pellicis argolicæ is a coarse appellation, and his poem is so much the worse for it.
