As thus the boy in wild distress Bewail’d, of bulla stripp’d and dress, So fair, that ruthless breasts of Thrace Had melted to behold his face, Canidia, with dishevell’d hair And short crisp vipers coiling there, Beside a fire of Colchos stands, And her attendant hag commands To feed the flames with fig-trees torn From dead men’s sepulchres forlorn, With dismal cypress, eggs rubb’d o’er With filthy toads’ unvenom’d gore, With screech-owl’s plumes, and herbs of bane, From far Iolchos fetch’d and Spain, And fleshless bones by beldam witch Snatch’d from the jaws of famish’d bitch. And Sagana, the while, with gown Tucked to the knees, stalks up and down, Sprinkling in room and hall and stair Her magic hell-drops, with her hair Bristling on end, like furious boar, Or some sea-urchins wash’d on shore; Whilst Veia, by remorse unstay’d, Groans at her toil, as she with spade That flags not digs a pit, wherein The boy imbedded to his chin, With nothing seen save head and throat, Like those who in the water float, Shall dainties see before him set, A maddening appetite to whet, Then snatch’d away before his eyes, Till famish’d in despair he dies; That when his glazing eyeballs should Have closed on the untasted food, His sapless marrow and dry spleen May drug a philtre-draught obscene. Nor were these all the hideous crew, But Ariminian Folia, too, Who with unsatiate lewdness swells, And drags by her Thessalian spells The moon and stars down from the sky, Ease-loving Naples’ vows, was by; And every hamlet round about Declares she was, beyond a doubt. Now forth the fierce Canidia sprang, And still she gnawed with rotten fang Her long sharp unpared thumb-nail. What Then said she? Yea, what said she not? “O Night and Dian, who with true And friendly eyes my purpose view, And guardian silence keep, whilst I My secret orgies safely ply, Assist me now, now on my foes With all your wrath celestial close! Whilst, stretch’d in soothing sleep, amid Their forests grim the beasts lie hid, May all Suburra’s mongrels bark At yon old wretch, who through the dark Doth to his lewd encounters crawl, And on him draw the jeers of all! He’s with an ointment smear’d, that is