“Ripe as the melting cluster,
No lily has such lustre.
Yet hard to tame
As raging flame,
And fierce as storms that bluster.”
In marked contrast with this declaration follows the plaintive tender song of Acis (“Love sounds the Alarm”). Galatea appeals to him to trust the gods, and then the three join in a trio (“The Flocks shall leave the Mountain”). Enraged at his discomfiture, the giant puts forth his power. He is no longer the lover piping to Galatea and dissembling his real nature, but a destructive raging force; and the fragment of mountain which he tears away buries poor Acis as effectually as Ætna sometimes does the plains beneath. The catastrophe accomplished, the work closes with the sad lament of Galatea for her lover (“Must I my Acis still bemoan?”) and the choral consolations of the shepherds and their swains:—
“Galatea, dry thy tears,
Acis now a god appears;
See how he rears him from his bed!
See the wreath that binds his head!