to our
woes. She, solicited by our supplications and laments, would condescend
either to give a remedy or to concede a grateful vengeance for the
cruelty of our enemy."

Hardly had he finished uttering these words than there became visible to
them a palace, which, whoever had knowledge of human things, could
easily comprehend that it was not the work of man, nor of nature; the
form and manner of it I will explain to thee another time. Whence,
filled with great wonder and touched by hope that some propitious deity,
who must have placed this before them, would explain their condition and
fortunes, they said with one accord they could meet with nothing worse
than death, which they considered a less evil than to live in so much
anguish. Therefore they entered, not finding any door that was shut
against them nor janitor who questioned them. They found themselves in a
very richly ornamented room, where with royal majesty, (as one may say,
Apollo was found again by Phaeton;) appears she, who is called his
daughter, and at whose appearance they saw vanish all the figures of
many other deities who ministered unto her. Then, received and comforted
by this gracious face, they advanced, and overcome by the splendour of
that majesty, they bent their knee to the earth, and altogether, with
the diversity of tones which their various genius suggested, they laid
open their vows to the goddess. By her finally, they were treated in
such a manner that, blind and homeless, with great labour having
ploughed the seas, passed over rivers, overcome mountains, traversed
plains for the space of ten years, and at the end of which time having
arrived under that temperate sky of the British Isles, and come into the
presence of the lovely, graceful nymphs of Father Thames, they (the
nine), having made humble obeisance, and the nymphs having received them
with acts of purest courtesy, one, the principal amongst them, who
later on will be named, with tragic and lamenting accents laid bare the
common cause in this manner:

Of those, oh gentle Dames, who with closed urn,
Present themselves, whose hearts are pierced
Not for a fault by nature caused,
But through a cruel fate,
That in a living death,
Does hold them fast, we each and all are blind.

Nine spirits are we, wandering many years,
Longing to know; and many lands
O'ertravelled, one day were surprised
By a sore accident,
To which if you attend,