While I was thus at prayers, an old woman, with her hair about her eyes, and disfigur’d with a mournful habit, coming in, disturb’d my devotions; when taking hold of me, she drew all fear out of the entry; and “what hag,” said she, “has devour’d your manhood? Or what ominous carcase have you stumbl’d over in your nightly walks? You have not acquitted your self above a boy; but faint, weak, and like a horse o’re-charg’d in a steep, tyr’d have lost your toyl and sweat; nor content to sin alone, but have unreveng’d against me, provokt the offended gods?”
When leading me, obedient to all her commands, a second time to the cell of a neighboring priestess of Priapus, she threw me upon the bed, and taking up a stick that fastened the door, reveng’d her self on me, that very patiently receiv’d her fury: and at the first stroak, if the breaking of the stick had not lessened its force, she might have broke my head and arm.
I groan’d, and hiding with my arm my head, in a flood of tears lean’d on the pillow: Nor did she then, less troubled, sit on the bed, and began in a shrill voice, to blame her age, till the priestess came in upon us; and “what,” said she, “do you do in my chappel, as if some funeral had lately been, rather than a holy-day, in which, even the mournful are merry?”
“Alas, my Enothea!” said she, “this youth was born under an ill star; for neither boy nor maid can raise him to a perfect appetite; you ne’re beheld a more unhappy man: In his garden the weak willow, not the lusty cedar grows; in short, you may guess what he is, that cou’d rise unblest from Circe’s bed.”
Upon this, Enothea fixt her self between us, and moving her head a while; “I,” said she, “am the only one that can give remedy for that disease; and not to delay it, let him sleep with me to-night; and next morning, examine how vigorous I shall have made him:
“All Nature’s work my magick powers obey,
The blooming earth shall wither and decay,
And when I please, agen be fresh and gay.
From rugged rocks, I make sweet waters flow,
And raging billows to me humbly bow.