Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores, And the rash hunter strangled by the boars: The new-born babe by nurses overlaid; And the cook caught within the raging fire he made. All ills of Mars' his nature, flame and steel; The gasping charioteer beneath the wheel Of his own car; the ruined house that falls And intercepts her lord betwixt the walls: The whole division that to Mars pertains, All trades of death that deal in steel for gains Were there: the butcher, armourer, and smith, Who forges sharpened fauchions, or the scythe. The scarlet conquest on a tower was placed, With shouts and soldiers' acclamations graced: A pointed sword hung threatening o'er his head, Sustained but by a slender twine of thread. There saw I Mars his ides, the Capitol, The seer in vain foretelling Caesar's fall; The last Triumvirs, and the wars they move, And Antony, who lost the world for love. These, and a thousand more, the fane adorn; Their fates were painted ere the men were born, All copied from the heavens, and ruling force Of the red star, in his revolving course. The form of Mars high on a chariot stood, All sheathed in arms, and gruffly looked the god; Two geomantic figures were displayed Above his head, a warrior and a maid, One when direct, and one when retrograde. Tired with deformities of death, I haste To the third temple of Diana chaste. A sylvan scene with various greens was drawn, Shades on the sides, and on the midst a lawn; The silver Cynthia, with her nymphs around, Pursued the flying deer, the woods with horns resound: Calisto there stood manifest of shame, And, turned a bear, the northern star became: Her son was next, and, by peculiar grace, In the cold circle held the second place; The stag Actson in the stream had spied The naked huntress, and for seeing died; His hounds, unknowing of his change, pursue The chase, and their mistaken master slew. Peneian Daphne too, was there to see, Apollo's love before, and now his tree. The adjoining fane the assembled Greeks expressed, And hunting of the Calydonian beast. OEnides' valour, and his envied prize; The fatal power of Atalanta's eyes; Diana's vengeance on the victor shown, The murderess mother, and consuming son; The Volscian queen extended on the plain, The treason punished, and the traitor slain. The rest were various huntings, well designed, And savage beasts destroyed, of every kind. The graceful goddess was arrayed in green; About her feet were little beagles seen, That watched with upward eyes the motions of their Queen. Her legs were buskined, and the left before, In act to shoot; a silver bow she bore, And at her back a painted quiver wore. She trod a wexing moon, that soon would wane, And, drinking borrowed light, be filled again; With downcast eyes, as seeming to survey The dark dominions, her alternate sway.