e waves
"Possess to thwart the heating vinous juice,
"Or, as the natives tell, with herbs and charms
"When the mad Praetides Melampus cur'd,
"He in the stream the mental medicine flung;
"And hate of wine the fountain still retains.
"Lyncestius' river flows with different power;
"Of this who swallows but the smallest draught
"Staggers, as charg'd with plenteous cups of wine.
"A dangerous place Arcadia holds (of yore
"Call'd Pheneos) for its waters' two-fold force:
"Dreaded by night: for drank by night they harm,
"But guiltless of all mischief drank by day.
"Thus lakes and rivers now these powers possess;
"Now those. Time was Ortygia on the waves
"Floated, now firm she rests. Argo, first ship
"Dreaded the isles Cyanean scatter'd round
"And clashing oft amid the roaring waves;
"Which rest unmov'd now, and the winds despise.
"Nor Etna whose sulphureous furnace flames
"Will always burn; time was it burn'd not yet:
"For let earth be an animated mass,
"Which lives, and breathing holes in various parts
"Exhaling flame, possesses, she may change,
"Each time she moves, those passages of air;
"These caverns close, and others open throw.
"Or whether wind, confin'd in those deep caves,
"Hurls rocks on rocks, and what the seeds of fire
"Contain; and flames from the concussion burst;
"The winds appeas'd, cold will the caves be left.
"Or if the flame be by bitumen caught,
"Or by pale sulphur, fiercely will it burn
"To the last particle; but when the earth
"Fuel and oily nutriment no more
"The flame shall give; a tedious length of years
"Its force exhausting, and its nutriment
"By nature's tooth consum'd, the famish'd flames
"Will this desert, deserted by their food.
"Fame says, the men who in Pallene live,
"A northern clime, when nine times in the lake
"Tritonian plung'd, in plumage light are clad.
"This scarce can I believe. They also tell
"That Scythia's females, sprinkling on their limbs
"Rank poisons, such like transformation gain.
"Yet when well-try'd experience us instructs,
"Faith may be given. Do we not bodies see
"Decaying slow with moisture and with heat,
"To animalcules chang'd? Nay, go, inter
"A chosen slaughter'd steer, (well known the fact,
"And much in use;) lo! from the putrid paunch
"Swarms of the flower-collecting bee will rise,
"Which rove the meadows as their parent rov'd:
"And urge their toil and l