orrows of my heart relieve.
Oh, might the visionary youth survive,
I should with joy my latest breath resign!
_90
But oh! I see his fate involved in mine.'
This said, the weeping youth again returned
To the clear fountain, where again he burned;
His tears defaced the surface of the well
With circle after circle, as they fell:
And now the lovely face but half appears,
O'errun with wrinkles, and deformed with tears.
'All whither,' cries Narcissus, 'dost thou fly?
Let me still feed the flame by which I die;
Let me still see, though I'm no further blessed.'
_100
Then rends his garment off, and beats his breast:
His naked bosom reddened with the blow,
In such a blush as purple clusters show,
Ere yet the sun's autumnal heats refine
Their sprightly juice, and mellow it to wine.
The glowing beauties of his breast he spies,
And with a new redoubled passion dies.
As wax dissolves, as ice begins to run,
And trickle into drops before the sun;
So melts the youth, and languishes away,
_110
His beauty withers, and his limbs decay;
And none of those attractive charms remain,
To which the slighted Echo sued in vain.
She saw him in his present misery,
Whom, spite of all her wrongs, she grieved to see.
She answered sadly to the lover's moan,
Sighed back his sighs, and groaned to every groan:
'Ah youth! beloved in vain,' Narcissus cries;
'Ah youth! beloved in vain,' the nymph replies.
'Farewell,' says he; the parting sound scarce fell
_120
From his faint lips, but she replied, 'Farewell.'
Then on the unwholesome earth he gasping lies,
Till death shuts up those self-admiring eyes.
To the cold shades his flitting ghost retires,
And in the Stygian waves itself admires.
For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn,
Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn;
And now the sister-nymphs prepare his urn:
When, looking for his corpse, they only found
A rising stalk, with yellow blossoms crowned.
_130

THE STORY OF PENTHEUS.

This sad event gave blind Tiresias fame,
Through Greece established in a prophet's name.
The unhallowed Pentheus only durst deride
The cheated people, and their eyeless guide,
To whom the prophet in his fury said,
Shaking the hoary honours of his head;
'Twere well, presumptuous man, 'twere well for thee
If thou wert eyeless too, and blind, like me:
For the time comes, nay, 'tis already here,
When