e hollow vault:
From side to side their empty urns rebound,
And rouse the sleepy serpent with the sound.
Straight he bestirs him, and is seen to rise;
And now with dreadful hissings fills the skies,
And darts his forky tongues, and rolls his glaring eyes.
_60
The Tyrians drop their vessels in their fright,
All pale and trembling at the hideous sight
Spire above spire upreared in air he stood,
And gazing round him, overlooked the wood:
Then floating on the ground, in circles rolled;
Then leaped upon them in a mighty fold.
Of such a bulk, and such a monstrous size,
The serpent in the polar circle lies,
That stretches over half the northern skies.
In vain the Tyrians on their arms rely,
_70
In vain attempt to fight, in vain to fly:
All their endeavours and their hopes are vain;
Some die entangled in the winding train;
Some are devoured; or feel a loathsome death,
Swoln up with blasts of pestilential breath.
And now the scorching sun was mounted high,
In all its lustre, to the noonday sky;
When, anxious for his friends, and filled with cares,
To search the woods the impatient chief prepares.
A lion's hide around his loins he wore,
_80
The well-poised javelin to the field he bore,
Inured to blood, the far-destroying dart,
And, the best weapon, an undaunted heart.
Soon as the youth approached the fatal place,
He saw his servants breathless on the grass;
The scaly foe amid their corps he viewed,
Basking at ease, and feasting in their blood,
'Such friends,' he cries, 'deserved a longer date;
But Cadmus will revenge, or share their fate.'
Then heaved a stone, and rising to the throw
_90
He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe:
A tower, assaulted by so rude a stroke,
With all its lofty battlements had shook;
But nothing here the unwieldy rock avails,
Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales,
That, firmly joined, preserved him from a wound,
With native armour crusted all around. 97
The pointed javelin more successful flew,
Which at his back the raging warrior threw;
Amid the plaited scales it took its course,
_100
And in the spinal marrow spent its force.
The monster hissed aloud, and raged in vain,
And writhed his body to and fro with pain;
And bit the spear, and wrenched the wood away;
The point still buried in the marrow lay.
And now his rage, increasing with his pain,
Reddens his eyes, and beats i