Again the dreadful Cycons him dismay,
And black Læstrigones, a people stout.
Then greedy Scilla, under whom there bay
Many great bandogs, which her gird about:
Then do th' Ætnean Cyclops him affray,
And deep Charybdis, gulphing in and out:
Lastly, the squalid lakes of Tartary,
And griesly fiends of hell him terrify.
There also goodly Agamemnon boasts
The glory of the stock of Tantalus,
And famous light of all the Greekish hosts,
Under whose conduct most victorious,
The Dorick flames consum'd the Iliack posts.
Ah! but the Greeks themselves, more dolorous
To thee, O Troy ! paid penance for thy fall,
In the Hellespont being nigh drowned all.
Well may appear by proof of their mischance,
The changefull turning of mens slippery state,
That none whom Fortune freely doth advance,
Himself therefore to heaven should elevate;
For lofty type of honour, through the glance
Of envy's dart, is down in dust prostrate;
And all that vaunts in worldly vanity
Shall fall through Fortune's mutability.
Th' Argolick power returning home again,
Enrich'd with spoils of th' Ericthonian towre,
Did happy wind and weather entertain,
And with good speed the foamy billows scour :
No sign of storm, no fear of future pain,
Which soon ensued them with heavy stoure;
Nereis to the seas a token gave,
The whiles their crooked keels the surges clave.
Suddenly, whether through the god's decree,
Or hapless rising of some froward star,
The heavens on every side enclouded be:
Black storms and fogs are blowen up from far,
That now the pilot can no load-star see,
But skies and seas do make most dreadful war
The billows striving to the heavens to reach,
And th' heavens striving them for to empeach.
And in avengement of their bold attempt,
Both sun and stars, and all the heavenly powres,
Conspire in one to wreak their rash contempt,
And down on them to fall from highest towres ;
The sky in pieces seeming to be rent, [showres.
Throws lightning forth, and hail, and harmful
That death on every side to them appears
In thousand forms, to work more ghastly fears:
Some in the greedy floods are sunk and drent,
Some on the rocks of Caphareus are thrown;
Some on th' Euboick cliffs in pieces rent,
Some scatter'd on the Hercæan shores unknown;
And many lost, of whom no moniment
Remains, nor memory is to be shown;
Whilst all the purchase of the Phrygian prey,
Tost on salt billows, round about doth stray.
Here many other like heroes be,
Equal in honour to the former crue,
Whom ye in goodly seats may placed see,
Descended all from Rome by linage due;
From Rome, that holds the world in sovereignty,
And doth all nations unto her subdue:
Here Fabij and Decij do dwell,
Horatij, that in vertue did excel.
And here the antique fame of stout Camill,
Doth ever live, and constant Curtius,
Who, stifly bent his vowed life to spill
For country's health, a gulf most hideous
Amidst the town with his own corps did fill,
T' appease the powers; and prudent Mutius,
Who in his flesh endur'd the scorching flame,
To daunt his foe by ensample of the same.
And here wise Curius, his companion
Of noble vertues, lives in endless rest,
And stout Flaminius, whose devotion
Taught him the fire's scorn'd fury to detest;
And here the praise of either Scipion
Abides in highest place above the best,
To whom the ruin'd walls of Carthage vow'd;
Trembling, their forces sound their praises loud.
Live they for ever through their lasting praise;
But I, poor Wretch am forced to return
To the sad lakes that Phoebus' sunny rays
Do never see, where souls do always mourn,
And by the wailing shores to waste my days,
Where Phlegeton with quenchless flames doth burn,
By which just Minos righteous souls doth sever
From wicked ones, to live in bliss for ever.
Me therefore thus the cruel fiends of hell,
Girt with long snakes and thousand yron chains,
Through doom of that their cruel judge, compel
With bitter torture and impatient pains,
Cause of my death, and just complaint to tell :
For thou art he whom my poor ghost complains
To be the author of her ill unwares,
That careless hear'st my intollerable cares.
Them therefore, as bequeathing to the wind,
I now depart, returning to thee never,
And leave this lamentable plaint behind;
But do thou haunt the soft down-rolling river,
And wild green woods, and fruitful pastures mind,
And let the flitting air my vain words sever."
Thus having said, he heavily departed
With piteous cry, that any would have smarted.
Now when the sloathful fit of life's sweet rest
Had left the heavy shepherd, wondrous cares
His inly greived mind full sore opprest,
That baleful sorrow he no longer bears
For that Gnat's death, which deeply was imprest,
But bends whatever power his aged years
Him lent, yet being such, as though their might
He lately slew his dreadful for in fight,
By that same river lurking under green.
Eftsoons he 'gins to fashion forth a place,
And squaring it in compass well beseen,
There plotteth out a tomb by measured space:
His yron-headed spade tho' making clean,
To dig up sods out of the flowrie grass,
His work he shortly to good purpose brought,
Like as he had conceiv'd it in his thought.
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