“Nor could thy form, oh Cyllarus, foreslow
Thy fate: (if form to monsters men allow:)
Just bloom’d thy beard; thy beard of golden hue:
Thy locks in golden waves about thy shoulders flew:
Sprightly thy look! Thy shapes in every part
So clean, as might instruct the sculptor’s art,
As far as man extended: where began
The beast, the beast was equal to the man:
Add but a horse’s head and neck, and he,
Oh Castor, was a courser worthy thee:
So was his back proportion’d for the seat;
So rose his brawny chest; so swiftly moved his feet:
Coal black his colour, but like jet it shone;
His legs and flowing tail were white alone:
Beloved by many maidens of his kind;
But fair Hylonome possess’d his mind;
Hylonome, for features, and for face,
Excelling all the nymphs of double race:
Nor less her blandishments than beauty move;
At once both living, and confessing love.
For him she dress’d; for him, with female care,
She comb’d, and set in curl her auburn hair:
Of roses, violets, and lilies mix’d,
And sprigs of flowing rosemary betwixt,
She form’d the chaplet that adorn’d her front:
In waters of the Pegasaean fount,
And in the streams that from the fountain play,
She wash’d her face, and bathed her twice a day.
The scarf of furs, that hung below her side,
Was ermine, or the panther’s spotted pride:
Spoils of no common beast. With equal flame
They loved: their sylvan pleasures were the same.
“Uncertain from what hand, a flying dart
At Cyllarus was sent, which pierced his heart.
The javelin drawn from out the mortal wound,
He faints with stagg’ring steps, and seeks the ground:
The fair within her arms received his fall,
And strove his wandering spirits to recall;
And while her hand the streaming blood opposed,
Join’d face to face, his lips with hers she closed.
Stifled with kisses, a sweet death he dies:
She fills the fields with undistinguish’d cries;
At last her words were in her clamour drown’d;
For my stunn’d ears received no vocal sound.
In madness of her grief, she seized the dart
New drawn, and reeking from her lover’s heart;
To her bare bosom the sharp point applied,
And wounded fell; and falling by his side,
Embraced him in her arms; and thus embracing died.
“Ev’n still methinks I see Phaeocomes;
Strange was his habit, and as odd his dress:
Six lions’ hides, with thongs together fast,
His upper part defended to his waist:
And where man ended, the continued vest,
Spread on his back, the houss and trappings of a beast.
A stump too heavy for a team to draw,
(It seems a fable, though the fact I saw,)
He threw at Pholon; the descending blow
Divides the scull, and cleaves his head in two.
The brains, from nose, and mouth, and either ear,
Came issuing out, as through a colander
The curdled milk, or from the press the whey,
Driven down by weights above, is drain’d away.
“But him, while stooping down to spoil the slain,
Pierced through the paunch, I tumbled on the plain.
Then Chthonius and Teleboas I slew:
A fork the former arm’d; a dart his fellow threw.
The javelin wounded me; (behold the scar:
Then was my time to seek the Trojan war;
Then I was Hector’s match in open field;
But he was then unborn, at least a child:
Now I am nothing.) I forbear to tell
By Periphantas how Pyretus fell;
The centaur by the knight: nor will I stay
On Amphyx, or what deaths he dealt that day:
What honour, with a pointless lance, he won,
Stuck in the front of a four-footed man:
What fame young Macareus obtain’d in fight;
Or dwell on Nessus, now return’d from flight:
How Prophet Mopsus not alone divined,
Whose valour equall’d his foreseeing mind.”