In various shapes thus to deceive the eyes,
Without a settled stint of her disguise,
Rash Erisichthon’s daughter had the power,
And brought it to Autolycus in dower.
Her atheist sire the slighted gods defied,
And ritual honours to their shrines denied.
As fame reports, his hand an axe sustain’d,
Which Ceres’ consecrated grove profaned;
Which durst the venerable gloom invade,
And violate with light the awful shade.
An ancient oak in the dark centre stood,
The covert’s glory, and itself a wood:
Garlands embraced its shaft, and from the boughs
Hung tablets, monuments of prosp’rous vows.
In the cool dusk its unpierced verdure spread,
The dryads oft their hallow’d dances led;
And oft, when round their gauging arms they cast,
Full fifteen ells it measured in the waist:
Its height all under-standards did surpass,
As they aspired above the humbler grass.
These motives, which would gentler minds restrain,
Could not make Triope’s bold son abstain;
He sternly charged his slaves with strict decree
To fell with gashing steel the sacred tree.
But while they, lingering, his commands delay’d,
He snatch’d an axe, and thus blaspheming said:
“Was this no oak, nor Ceres’ favourite care,
But Ceres’ self, this arm, unawed, should dare
Its leafy honours in the dust to spread,
And level with the earth its airy head.”
He spoke, and as he poised a slanting stroke,
Sighs heaved, and tremblings shook the frighted oak:
Its leaves look’d sickly, pale its acorns grew,
And its long branches sweat a chilly dew.
But when his impious hand a wound bestow’d,
Blood from the mangled bark in currents flow’d.
When a devoted bull of mighty size,
A sinning nation’s grand atonement, dies,
With such a plenty from the spouting veins,
A crimson stream the turfy altars stains.
The wonder all amazed; yet one more bold,
The fact dissuading, strove his axe to hold.
But the Thessalian, obstinately bent,
Too proud to change, too harden’d to repent,
On his kind monitor his eyes, which burn’d
With rage, and with his eyes his weapon turn’d:
“Take the reward,” says he, “of pious dread:”
Then with a blow lopp’d off his parted head.
No longer check’d, the wretch his crime pursu’d,
Doubled his strokes, and sacrilege renew’d;
When from the groaning trunk a voice was heard:
“A dryad I, by Ceres’ love preferr’d,
Within the circle of this clasping rind
Coeval grew, and now in ruin join’d:
But instant vengeance shall thy sin pursue,
And death is cheer’d with this prophetic view.”
At last the oak with cords enforced to bow,
Strain’d from the top, and sapp’d with wounds be low,
The humbler wood, partaker of its fate,
Crush’d with its fall, and shiver’d with its weight.
The grove destroy’d, the sister dryads moan,
Grieved at its loss, and frighted at their own.
Straight suppliants for revenge to Ceres go,
In sable weeds, expressive of their wo.
The beauteous goddess with a graceful air
Bow’d in consent, and nodded to their prayer.
The awful motion shook the fruitful ground,
And waved the fields with golden harvests crown’d.
Soon she contrived in her projecting mind
A plague severe, and piteous in its kind
(If plagues for crimes of such presumptuous height
Could pity in the softest breast create);
With pinching want, and hunger’s keenest smart,
To tear his vitals, and corrode his heart.
But since her near approach by Fate’s denied
To Famine, and broad climes their powers divide,
A nymph, the mountain’s ranger, she address’d,
And, thus resolved, her high commands express’d.