The youth o’er Europe and o’er Asia drives, + 

Till at the court of Lyncus he arrives: + 

The tyrant Scythia’s barb’rous empire sway’d; + 

And when he saw Triptolemus, he said: + 

“How camest thou, stranger, to our court, and why? + 

Thy country, and thy name?” The youth did thus reply: + 

“Triptolemus my name; my country’s known + 

O’er all the world, Minerva’s fav’rite town, + 

Athens, the first of cities in renown: + 

By land I neither walk’d, nor sail’d by sea, + 

But hither through the ether made my way; + 

By me the goddess who the fields befriends, + 

These gifts, the greatest of all blessings, sends; + 

The grain she gives if in your soil you sow, + 

Thence wholesome food in golden crops shall grow.” + 

Soon as the secret to the king was known, + 

He grudged the glory of the service done, + 

And wickedly resolved to make it all his own. + 

To hide his purpose, he invites his guest, + 

The friend of Ceres, to a royal feast, + 

And when sweet sleep his heavy eves had seized. + 

The tyrant with his steel attempts his breast: + 

Him straight a lynx’s shape the goddess gives, + 

And home the youth her sacred dragons drives. + 