s high-favor'd, unto me
"Still shalt thou as a deity appear.
"My life I own thy gift, who hast me given
"To view the realms of death: who hast me brought,
"The realms of death beheld, to life again.
"For these high favors, when to air restor'd
"Statues to thee I'll raise, and incense burn."
Backward the prophetess, to him her eyes
Directs, and heaves a sigh; as thus she speaks:
"No goddess I; deem not my mortal frame
"The sacred incense' honors can deserve:
"Err not through ignorance. Eternal youth
"Had I possess'd, if on Apollo's love
"My virgin purity had been bestow'd.
"This while he hop'd, and while he strove to tempt
"With gifts,--O, chuse--he said,--Cumaean maid!
"Whate'er thou would'st--whate'er thou would'st is thine.
"I, pointing to an heap of gather'd dust,
"With thoughtless mind, besought so many years
"I might exist, as grains of sand were there:
"Mindless to ask for years of constant youth.
"The years he granted, and had granted too
"Eternal youth, had I his passion quench'd.
"A virgin I remain; Apollo's gift
"Despis'd: but now the age of joy is fled;
"Decrepitude with trembling steps has come,
"Which long I must endure. Seven ages now
"I have existed; ere the number'd grains
"Are equall'd, thrice an hundred harvests I,
"And thrice an hundred vintages must see.
"The time will come, my body, shrunk with age,
"And wither'd limbs, shall to small substance waste;
"Nor shall it seem that e'er an amorous god
"With me was smitten. Phoebus then himself
"Or me will know not, or deny that e'er
"He sought my love. Till quite complete my change,
"To all invisible, by words alone
"I shall be known. Fate still my voice will leave."

On the steep journey thus the Sybil spoke:
And from the Stygian shades AEneaes rose,
At Cuma's town; there sacrific'd as wont,
And to the shores proceeded, which as yet
His nurse's name not bore. Here rested too,
After long toil, Macareus, the constant friend
Of wise Ulysses: Achaemenides,
Erst left amid Etnaean rocks, he knows:
Astonish'd there, his former friend to find,
In life unhop'd, he cry'd; "What chance? What god
"O Achaemenides! has thee preserv'd?
"How does a Greek a foreign vessel bear?
"And to what shores is now this vessel bound?"

Then Achaemenides, not ragged now,
In robes with thorns united, but all free,
Thus answer'd his enquiries. "May I view
"On