Then all, reclaim’d by this example, show’d
A due regard for each peculiar god:
Both men and women their devoirs express’d,
And great Latona’s awful power confess’d.
Then, tracing instances of older time,
To suit the nature of the present crime,
Thus one begins his tale:—“Where Lycia yields
A golden harvest from its fertile fields,
Some churlish peasants, in the days of yore,
Provoked the goddess to exert her power.
The thing, indeed, the meanness of the place
Has made obscure, surprising as it was;
But I myself once happen’d to behold
This famous lake, of which the story’s told.
My father, then, worn out by length of days,
Nor able to sustain the tedious ways,
Me with a guide had sent the plains to roam,
And drive his well-fed straggling heifers home.
Here, as we saunter’d through the verdant meads,
We spied a lake o’ergrown with trembling reeds,
Whose wavy tops an op’ning scene disclose,
From which an antique smoky altar rose.
I, as my superstitious guide had done,
Stopp’d short, and bless’d myself, and then went on
Yet I inquired to whom the altar stood,
Faunus, the Naiads, or some native god?
‘No sylvan deity,’ my friend replies,
‘Enshrined within this hallow’d altar lies:
For this, O youth, to that famed goddess stands,
Whom, at the imperial Juno’s rough commands,
Of ev’ry quarter of the earth bereaved,
Delos, the floating isle, at length received;
Who there, in spite of enemies, brought forth,
Beneath an olive shade, her great twin birth.
“ ‘Hence too she fled the furious stepdame’s power
And in her arms a double godhead bore;
And now the borders of fair Lycia gain’d,
Just when the summer solstice parch’d the land.
With thirst the goddess languishing, no more
Her emptied breast would yield its milky store,
When, from below, the smiling valley show’d
A silver lake that in its bottom flow’d:
A sort of clowns were reaping, near the bank,
The bending osier, and the bulrush dank,
The cress, and water-lily, fragrant weed,
Whose juicy stalk the liquid fountains feed:
The goddess came, and kneeling on the brink,
Stoop’d at the fresh repast, prepared to drink.
Then thus, being hinder’d by the rabble race,
In accents mild, expostulates the case:
“Water I only ask, and sure ’tis hard
From Nature’s common rights to be debarr’d:
This, as the genial sun, and vital air,
Should flow alike to ev’ry creature’s share.
Yet still I ask, and as a favour crave,
That which a public bounty nature gave:
Nor do I seek my weary limbs to drench,
Only, with one cool draught, my thirst I’d quench.
Now from my throat the usual moisture dries,
And ev’n my voice in broken accents dies:
One draught as dear as life I should esteem,
And water, now I thirst, would nectar seem:
O! let my little babes your pity move,
And melt your hearts to charitable love;
They (as by chance they did) extend to you
Their little hands, and my request pursue.” ’
“Whom would these soft persuasions not subdue,
Though the most rustic and unmanner’d crew?
Yet they the goddess’s request refuse,
And with rude words reproachfully abuse.
Nay, more, with spiteful feet the villains trode
O’er the soft bottom of the marshy flood,
And blacken’d all the lake with clouds of rising mud.
“Her thirst, by indignation, was suppress’d;
Bent on revenge, the goddess stood confess’d.
Her suppliant hands uplifting to the skies,
For a redress to heaven she now applies:
‘And may you live,’ she passionately cried,
‘Doom’d in that pool for ever to abide.’
“The goddess has her wish: for now they choose
To plunge and dive among the watery ooze;
Sometimes they show their head above the brim,
And on the glassy surface spread to swim;
Often upon the bank their station take,
Then spring and leap into the cooly lake.
Still, void of shame, they lead a clam’rous life.
And, croaking, still scold on in endless strife;
Compell’d to live beneath the liquid stream,
Where still they quarrel, and attempt to scream.
Now, from their bloated throat, their voice puts on
Imperfect murmurs in a hoarser tone;
Their noisy jaws, with bawling now grown wide,
An ugly sight! extend on either side;
Their motley back, streak’d with a list of green,
Join’d to their head, without a neck, is seen;
And, with a belly broad and white, they look
Mere frogs, and still frequent the muddy brook.”