Their woof was of the gold which Tagus brings
From the proud mountains in his flow divine,
Well sifted from the sands wherewith it springs,
Of all admixture purified and fine;
And of the green flax fashioned into strings,
Subtile and lithe to follow and combine
With the bright vein of gold, by force of fire
Already drawn into resplendent wire.
The subtile yarn their skill before had stained
With dyes pellucid as the brightest found
On the smooth shells of the blue sea, engrained
By sunbeams in their warm and radiant round:
Each nymph for skill in what her fingers feigned,
Equalled the works of painters most renowned,—
Apelles' Venus, or the famous piece
Wherein Timanthes veils the grief of Greece.
Phyllodoce, who of that beauteous band
Was for her majesty considered queen,
Had figured with a bold and dexterous hand
The river Strymon: on one side were seen
Green plains, on the reverse, a mountain grand
And savage, where no human foot had been,
Until the sweet, sad melodist of Thrace
Charmed with his lyre the' inhospitable place.
Beauteous Eurydice was pictured, stung
In her white foot by the small snake that lay
Collecting venom, closely coiled among
The herbs and flowers that blossomed in her way;
She was discoloured as the rose, yet young,
Plucked out of season, waning to decay:
And in her rolling eyes the soul divine
Seemed on the wing to quit its charming shrine.
Broidered at length the history was told
Of her fond lord; how, daring to descend
To the pale king of ghosts, by love made bold,
He the lost lady by his lyre regained;
How, mad once more her aspect to behold,
He turned, again to lose her, and arraigned—
Ever arraigned to mountain, cave, and spring,
The cruel terms, and unrelenting king.
Dynamene with no less skill and grace
Adorned the tale her fancy had designed;
She drew robust Apollo, to the chase
In echoing woods exclusively resigned;
But soon revengeful Love, reproached as base,
Changed the blythe scene; with grief Apollo pined;
The God had pierced him with his gold-tipt shaft,
And clapped his wings, and at his victim laughed.
Daphne with long dishevelled hair was hieing
So without pity to her tender feet,
O'er briers and rocks, that fond Apollo, sighing,
Seemed in the chase to move with steps less fleet,
For her sweet sake; he following, she still flying,
Thus the race held; he, flushed with amorous heat;
She, cold as though she froze beneath the dart
Of hatred lodged in her disdainful heart.
But at the last her arms increase and shoot
Into stiff boughs; those tresses turn to leaves,
That wont the palm of splendour to dispute
With the fine gold, whilst to the mountain cleaves
In thousand tortuous roots each lily foot;
Her frantic lover the swift change perceives;
Looks her late features in the tree to find,
And clasps and kisses the yet panting rind.
Blending the radiant threads and sparkling wire
With the most exquisite address and skill,
Of beeches, oaks, and caverns hung with brier,
Rapt Clymene pourtrayed a mighty hill,
Where ran a boar whose red eye darted fire,
With gnashing teeth—all eagerness to kill
A youth who in his hand a boar-spear shook,
Handsome in form, and spirited in look.
Anon the boar was dying of a wound
From the too valiant and adventurous youth,
And he himself lay stretched upon the ground,
Gored by the outrageous brute's avenging tooth;
His sunbeam-tinted tresses drooped unbound,
Sweeping the earth in negligence uncouth;
The white anemonies that near him blew
Felt his red blood, and red for ever grew.