In stillest calms, she bids the waves run high; And smooths the deep, tho’ Boreas shakes the sky: When winds are hushed, her potent breath prevails, Wafts on the bark, and fills the flagging sails. Streams have run back at murmurs of her tongue, And torrents from the rock suspended hung: No more the Nile his wonted seasons knows, And in a line the straight Mæander flows. The ponderous earth, by magic numbers struck, Down to her inmost centre deep has shook; Then, rending with a yawn, at once made way, To join the upper and the nether day: While wondering eyes, the dreadful cleft between, Another starry firmament have seen. Each deadly kind, by nature formed to kill, Fears the dire hags, and executes their will: Lions to them their nobler rage submit, And fawning tigers crouch beneath their feet: For them the snake foregoes her wintry hold, And on the hoary frost untwines her fold; The poisonous race they strike with stronger death, And blasted vipers die by human breath. But these, as arts too gentle and too good, Nor yet with death or guilt enough imbrued, With haughty scorn the fierce Erichtho viewed. New mischief she, new monsters, durst explore; And dealt in horrors never known before. From towns and hospitable roofs she flies, And every dwelling of mankind defies; Through unfrequented deserts lonely roams, Drives out the dead, and dwells within their tombs. Grateful to hell the living hag descends, And sits in black assemblies of the fiends. Dark matted elf-locks dangling on her brow, Filthy and foul, a loathsome burden grow: Ghastly, and frightful pale, her face is seen; Unknown to cheerful day and skies serene; But, when the stars are veiled, when storms arise, And the blue forky flame at midnight flies, Then, forth from graves she takes her wicked way, And thwarts the glancing lightnings as they play: Where’er she breathes blue poisons round her spread, The withering grass avows her fatal tread. Oft in the grave the living has she laid, And bid reviving bodies leave the dead: Oft at the funeral pile she seeks her prey, And bears the smoking ashes warm away; Snatches some burning bone, or flaming brand, And tears the torch from the sad father’s hand. Her teeth from gibbets gnaw the strangling noose, And from the cross dead murderers unloose: Her charms the use of sun-dried marrow find, And husky entrails withered in the wind.