}

A vest embroider'd, glorious to behold,
And two rich bridles, with their bits of gold,
Which my son's coursers in obedience hold.
The league you ask, I offer, as your right;
And, when to-morrow's sun reveals the light,
With swift supplies you shall be sent away.
Now celebrate with us, this solemn day,
Whose holy rites admit no long delay.
Honour our annual feast; and take your seat,
With friendly welcome, at a homely treat."
Thus having said, the bowls (removed for fear)
The youths replaced, and soon restored the cheer.
On sods of turf he set the soldiers round:

A maple throne, raised higher from the ground,
Received the Trojan chief; and, o'er the bed,
A lion's shaggy hide, for ornament, they spread.
The loaves were served in canisters; the wine
In bowls; the priest renew'd the rites divine:
Broil'd entrails are their food, and beef's conti-
nued chine.

}

But, when the rage of hunger was repress'd,
Thus spoke Evander to his royal guest :-
"These rites, these altars, and this feast, O king,
From no vain fears or superstition spring,
Or blind devotion, or from blinder chance,
Or heady zeal, or brutal ignorance:

But, saved from danger, with a grateful sense,
The labours of a god we recompense.

See, from afar, yon rock that mates the sky,
About whose feet such heaps of rubbish lie;
Such indigested ruin; bleak and bare,
How desert now it stands, exposed in air!
'Twas once a robber's den, enclosed around
With living stone, and deep beneath the ground.
The monster Cacus, more than half a beast,
This hold, impervious to the sun, possess'd.

The pavement ever foul with human gore;
Heads, and their mangled members, hung the door.
Vulcan this plague begot; and, like his sire,
Black clouds he belch'd, and flakes of livid fire.
Time, long expected, eased us of our load,
And brought the needful presence of a god.
The avenging force of Hercules, from Spain,
Arrived in triumph, from Geryon slain :-
Thrice lived the giant, and thrice lived in vain.
His prize, the lowing herds, Alcides drove
Near Tyber's banks, to graze the shady grove.
Allured with hope of plunder, and intent
By force to rob, by fraud to circumvent,
The brutal Cacus, as by chance they stray'd,
Four oxen thence, and four fair kine, convey'd.
And, lest the printed footsteps might be seen,
He dragg'd them backwards to his rocky den.
The tracks averse a lying notice gave,
And led the searcher backward from the cave.
Meantime the herdsman hero shifts his place,
To find fresh pasture and untrodden grass.
The beasts, who miss'd their mates, fill'd all around
With bellowings, and the rocks restored the sound.
One heifer, who had heard her love complain,
Roar'd from the cave, and made the project vain.
Alcides found the fraud; with rage he shook,
And toss'd about his head his knotted oak.
Swift as the winds, or Scythian arrows' flight,
He clomb, with eager haste, the aërial height.
Then first we saw the monster mend his pace;
Fear in his eyes, and paleness in his face,
Confess'd thegod's approach. Trembling he springs,
As terror had increased his feet with wings;
Nor stay'd for stairs; but down the depth he threw
His body, on his back the door he drew:
(The door, a rib of living rock; with pains
His father hew'd it out, and bound with iron chains,)

He broke the heavy links, the mountain closed,
And bars and levers to his foe opposed.

The wretch had hardly made his dungeon fast;
The fierce avenger came with bounding haste;
Survey'd the mouth of the forbidden hold,
And here and there his raging eyes he roll'd.
He gnash'd his teeth; and thrice he compass'd round
With winged speed the circuit of the ground.
Thrice at the cavern's mouth he pull'd in vain,
And, panting, thrice desisted from his pain.
A pointed flinty rock, all bare and black,
Grew gibbous from behind the mountain's back;
Owls, ravens, all ill omens of the night,
Here built their nests, and hither wing'd their flight.
The leaning head hung threat'ning o'er the flood,
And nodded to the left. The hero stood

Averse, with planted feet, and, from the right,
Tugg'd at the solid stone with all his might.
Thus heaved, the fix'd foundations of the rock
Gave way; heaven echo'd at the rattling shock.
Tumbling, it choked the flood: on either side
The banks leap backward, and the streams divide;
The sky shrunk upward with unusual dread,
And trembling Tyber dived beneath his bed.
The court of Cacus stands reveal'd to sight;
The cavern glares with new-admitted light.
So the pent vapours, with a rumbling sound,
Heave from below, and rend the hollow ground;
A sounding flaw succeeds; and, from on high,
The gods with hate behold the nether sky:
The ghosts repine at violated night,

And curse the invading sun, and sicken at the sight.
The graceless monster, caught in open day,
Enclosed, and in despair to fly away,

* Early editions, beheld.

Howls horrible from underneath, and fills
His hollow palace with unmanly yells.

The hero stands above, and from afar

Plies him with darts, and stones, and distant war.
He, from his nostrils and huge mouth, expires
Black clouds of smoke, amidst his father's fires,
Gathering, with each repeated blast, the night,
To make uncertain aim, and erring sight.
The wrathful god then plunges from above,
And, where in thickest waves the sparkles drove,
There lights; and wades through fumes, and gropes
his way,

;

Half singed, half stifled, till he grasps his prey.
The monster, spewing fruitless flames, he found
He squeezed his throat; he writhed his neck around,
And in a knot his crippled members bound;
Then, from their sockets, tore his burning eyes.
Roll'd on a heap, the breathless robber lies.
The doors, unbarr'd, receive the rushing day,
And thorough lights disclose the ravish'd prey.
The bulls, redeem'd, breathe open air agen.
Next, by the feet, they drag him from his den.
The wondering neighbourhood, with glad surprise,
Beheld his shaggy breast, his giant size,
His mouth that flames no more, and his extin-
guish'd eyes.

From that auspicious day, with rites divine,
We worship at the hero's holy shrine.

Potitius first ordain'd these annual vows:
As priests, were added the Pinarian house,
Who raised this altar in the sacred shade,
Where honours, ever due, for ever shall be paid.
For these deserts, and this high virtue shown,
Ye warlike youths, your heads with garlands crown:
Fill high the goblets with a sparkling flood,

And with deep draughts invoke our common god."

This said, a double wreath Evander twined,
And poplars black and white his temples bind.
Then brims his ample bowl. With like design
The rest invoke the gods, with sprinkled wine.
Meantime the sun descended from the skies,
And the bright evening-star began to rise.
And now the priests, Potitius at their head,
In skins of beasts involved, the long procession led;
Held high the flaming tapers in their hands,
As custom had prescribed their holy bands;
Then with a second course the tables load,
And with full chargers offer to the god.
The Salii sing, and 'cense his altars round
With Saban smoke, their heads with poplar bound—
One choir of old, another of the young,
To dance, and bear the burden of the song.
The lay records the labours, and the praise,
And all the immortal acts of Hercules:

First, how the mighty babe, when swathed in bands,
The serpents strangled with his infant hands;
Then, as in years and matchless force he grew,
The Echalian walls, and Trojan, overthrew.
Besides, a thousand hazards they relate,
Procured by Juno's and Eurystheus' hate.
“Thy hands, unconquer'd hero, could subdue
The cloud-born Centaurs, and the monster crew:
Nor thy resistless arm the bull withstood,
Nor he, the roaring terror of the wood.
The triple porter of the Stygian seat,

With lolling tongue, lay fawning at thy feet,
And, seized with fear, forgot his mangled meat.
The infernal waters trembled at thy sight;
Thee, god! no face of danger could affright;
Not huge Typhöeus, nor the unnumbered snake,
Increased with hissing heads, in Lerna's lake.
Hail, Jove's undoubted son! an added grace
To heaven and the great author of thy race!