Now Minos, landed on the Cretan shore,
Performs his vows to Jove’s protecting power:
A hundred bullocks, of the largest breed,
With flowerets crown’d, before his altar bleed;
While trophies of the vanquish’d, brought from far,
Adorn the palace with the spoils of war.
Meanwhile the monster of a human beast
His family’s reproach and stain increased.
His double kind the rumour swiftly spread,
And evidenced the mother’s beastly deed;
When Minos, willing to conceal the shame
That sprung from the reports of tattling Fame,
Resolves a dark enclosure to provide,
And far from sight the two-form’d creature hide.
Great Daedalus of Athens was the man
That made the draught, and form’d the wondrous plan;
Where rooms within themselves encircled lie,
With various windings, to deceive the eye.
As soft Maeander’s wanton current plays,
When through the Phrygian fields it loosely strays;
Backward and forward rolls the dimpled tide,
Seeming at once two different ways to glide:
While circling streams their former banks survey,
And waters past succeeding waters see;
Now floating to the sea with downward course,
Now pointing upward to its ancient source:
Such was the work, so intricate the place,
That scarce the workman all its turns could trace;
And Daedalus was puzzled how to find
The secret ways of what himself design’d.
These private walls the Minotaur include,
Who twice was glutted with Athenian blood;
But the third tribute more successful proved—
Slew the foul monster, and the plague removed.
When Theseus, aided by the virgin’s art,
Had traced the guiding thread through every part,
He took the gentle maid that set him free,
And, bound for Dias, cut the briny sea;
There, quickly cloy’d, ungrateful, and unkind,
Left his fair consort in the isle behind,
Whom Bacchus sees and loves; decrees the dame
Shall shine for ever in the rolls of fame;
And bids her crown among the stars be placed,
With an eternal constellation graced.
The golden circle mounts, and, as it flies,
Its diamonds twinkle in the distant skies;
There, in their pristine form, the gemmy rays
Between Alcides and the dragon blaze.