rs,
"High on her saffron car, and light restores,
"Then be our pleasing exercise resum'd.
"Now Phoebus, distant far from west and east,
"Cracks the parch'd ground with heat;--desist from toil,
"And fold your knotted snares." His words obey,
His men, and from their sportive labor cease.

Near stood a vale, where pointed cypress form'd
With gloomy pines a grateful shade, and nam'd
Gargaphie;--sacred to the girded maid:
Its deep recess a shrubby cavern held,
By nature modell'd,--but by nature, art
Seem'd equall'd, or excell'd. A native arch
Of pumice light, and tophus dry, was form'd;
And from the right a stream transparent flow'd,
Of trivial size, which spread a pool below;
With grassy margin circled. Dian' here,
The woodland goddess, weary'd with the chace,
Had oft rejoic'd to bathe her virgin limbs.
As wont she comes;--her quiver, and her dart,
And unstrung bow, her armour-bearing nymph
In charge receives. Disrob'd, another's arms
Sustain her vest. Two from her feet unloose
Her sandals. Crocale, Ismenian nymph,
Than others more expert, her tresses binds,
Loose o'er her shoulders floating, in a knot;
Her own wild flowing still. Five more the streams
In huge urns lifting; Hyale, and Niphe,
Phiale, Rhanis, Psecas, lave her limbs.
Here while the goddess in the limpid wave
Washes as 'custom'd,--lo! Actaeon comes;--
His sportive toil till morning dawn deferr'd:
And roving through the vale with random steps,
By hapless fate conducted, he arrives
Close to the sacred grove. Within the grot
Stream-pouring, when he stept, the naked nymphs,--
Then first by man beheld,--their bosoms beat;
Fill'd the deep grove with outcries loud; and round
Diana crowded, screening as they could
Her limbs with theirs. Yet high above them tower'd
The goddess, and her neck their heads o'erlook'd.
As blush the clouds by Phoebus' adverse rays
Deep ting'd;--or as Aurora in the morn;
So blush'd the virgin-goddess, seen unrob'd.
Sideway she stood, though closely hemm'd around
By clustering nymphs, and backward bent her face:
Then anxious praying she could reach her darts,
In vain,--she seiz'd the waters which she could,
And dash'd them o'er his features:--as his locks,
The vengeful drops besprinkled, thus in rage,
She cry'd,--"Now tell thou hast Diana seen
"Disrob'd;--go tell it, if thou canst,"--no more,
With threatenings storm'd, but o