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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Rais'd o'er the borders with unusual rains. Prepar'd to plunge into the stream, he fears, Not for himself, but for the charge he bears. Anxious, he stops a while, and thinks in haste; Then, desp'rate in distress, resolves at last. A knotty lance of well-boil'd oak he bore; The middle part with cork he cover'd o'er: He clos'd the child within the hollow space; With twigs of bending osier bound the case; Then pois'd the spear, heavy with human weight, And thus invok'd my favor for the freight: 'Accept, great goddess of the woods,' he said, 'Sent by her sire, this dedicated maid! Thro' air she flies a suppliant to thy shrine; And the first weapons that she knows, are thine.' He said; and with full force the spear he threw: Above the sounding waves Camilla flew. Then, press'd by foes, he stemm'd the stormy tide, And gain'd, by stress of arms, the farther side. His fasten'd spear he pull'd from out the ground, And, victor of his vows, his infant nymph unbound; Nor, after that, in towns which walls inclose, Would trust his hunted life amidst his foes; But, rough, in open air he chose to lie; Earth was his couch, his cov'ring was the sky. On hills unshorn, or in a desart den, He shunn'd the dire society of men. A shepherd's solitary life he led; His daughter with the milk of mares he fed. The dugs of bears, and ev'ry salvage beast, He drew, and thro' her lips the liquor press'd. The little Amazon could scarcely go: He loads her with a quiver and a bow; And, that she might her stagg'ring steps command, He with a slender jav'lin fills her hand. Her flowing hair no golden fillet bound; Nor swept her trailing robe the dusty ground. Instead of these, a tiger's hide o'erspread Her back and shoulders, fasten'd to her head. The flying dart she first attempts to fling, And round her tender temples toss'd the sling; Then, as her strength with years increas'd, began To pierce aloft in air the soaring swan, And from the clouds to fetch the heron and the crane. The Tuscan matrons with each other vied, |
