slain,
  Lay overthrown on the Phlegraean plain. 
  Twas of a lesser mould, and lighter weight;
  They call it thunder of a second-rate.
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  For the rough Cyclops, who by Jove’s command
  Tempered the bolt, and turned it to his hand,
  Worked up less flame and fury in its make,
  And quenched it sooner in the standing lake. 
  Thus dreadfully adorned, with horror bright,
  The illustrious god, descending from his height,
  Came rushing on her in a storm of light. 
     The mortal dame, too feeble to engage
  The lightning’s flashes and the thunder’s rage,
  Consumed amidst the glories she desired,
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  And in the terrible embrace expired. 
     But, to preserve his offspring from the tomb,
  Jove took him smoking from the blasted womb;
  And, if on ancient tales we may rely,
  Enclosed the abortive infant in his thigh. 
  Here, when the babe had all his time fulfilled,
  Ino first took him for her foster-child;
  Then the Niseans, in their dark abode,
  Nursed secretly with milk the thriving god.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF TIRESIAS.

     ’Twas now, while these transactions passed on earth,
  And Bacchus thus procured a second birth,
  When Jove, disposed to lay aside the weight
  Of public empire and the cares of state,
  As to his queen in nectar bowls he quaffed,
  ‘In troth,’ says he, and as he spoke he laughed,
  ’The sense of pleasure in the male is far
  More dull and dead than what you females share.’ 
  Juno the truth of what was said denied;
  Tiresias therefore must the cause decide;
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  For he the pleasure of each sex had tried. 
     It happened once, within a shady wood,
  Two twisted snakes he in conjunction viewed;
  When with his staff their slimy folds he broke,
  And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke. 
  But, after seven revolving years, he viewed
  The self-same serpents in the self-same wood;
  ‘And if,’ says he, ’such virtue in you lie,
  That he who dares your slimy folds untie
  Must change his kind, a second stroke I’ll try.’
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  Again he struck the snakes, and stood again
  New-sexed, and straight recovered into man. 
  Him therefore both the deities create
  The sovereign umpire in their grand debate;
  And he declared for Jove; when Juno, fired
  More than so trivial an affair required,
  Deprived him, in her fury, of his sight,
  And left him groping round in sudden night. 
  But Jove (for so it is in heaven decreed,
  That no one god repeal another’s deed)
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  Irradiates all his soul with inward light,
  And with the prophet’s art relieves the want of sight.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF ECHO.