with heavy sleep,
"He lay, hung o'er him, and directed thus.--
"Haste leave thy native land;--where distant flows
"The rocky stream of AEsaris, go seek.--
"And threaten'd much if disobedient found:
"Then disappear'd the god and sleep at once.
"Alemon's son arose; with silent care
"Revolv'd the new-seen vision in his soul,
"And undetermin'd waver'd long his mind.
"The god commands,--the laws forbid to go:
"Death is the punishment to him decreed
"Who would his country quit. Now glorious Sol
"Had in the ocean hid his glittering face,
"And densest night shew'd her star-studded head;
"Again the god was seen to come; again
"Admonish, and with threats more stern demand
"Obedience. Terror-struck he now prepar'd
"His property and household gods to move
"To this new seat. Quick through the city flies
"The rumor; as a slighter of the laws
"Is he denounc'd. The trial ends at once;
"Th' acknowledg'd crime without a witness prov'd.
"The wretched culprit lifts his eyes and hands
"To heaven, exclaiming;--Thou whose toils twice six
"Have given thee claim to glory, lend thy aid;
"Thou art the cause that I offence have given.--
"Sentence in old, by stones of white and black
"Was shewn: by these th' accus'd was clear'd, by those
"Condemn'd. Thus is the heavy doom now pass'd,
"And in the fatal urn each flings a stone
"Of sable hue. Inverted then to count
"The pebbles, lo! their color all is chang'd
"From black to white; and thus, the doom revers'd,
"Alemon's son by Hercules is freed.
"Thanks to Alcmena's son, his kinsman, given,
"He o'er th' Ionian sea with favoring winds
"Sail'd, and Tarentum, Sparta's city, pass'd,
"And Sybaris, Neaethus Salentine,
"The gulph of Thurium, and Japygia's fields,
"With Temeses; which shores at distance seen
"By him, were scarcely pass'd, when he beheld
"The mouth of AEsaris, the destin'd flood:
"And thence not far a lofty heap of earth,
"Where Croto's hallow'd bones were safe inhum'd.
"There he as bidden rais'd the walls, which took
"From the high sepulchre their lasting name.
"Plain then the city's origin appears
"By fame, thus built upon Italia's shores."

Here dwelt a sage whom Samos claim'd by birth,
But Samos and its masters he had fled;
A willing exile from tyrannic rule.
Though from celestial regions far remov'd
His mind to heaven could soar; with mental eyes
He things explor'd