’Gainst the capacious targe. The blue-eyed maid [277]Stoop’d from the chariot, and the javelin’s force Turn’d wide. Sore torment seiz’d the breast of Mars: He bared his keen-edged falchion, and at once Rush’d on the dauntless Hercules: but he, The war-insatiate, as the God approach’d, Beneath the well-wrought shield the thigh exposed Wounded with all his strength, and thrusting rived The shield’s large disk, and cleft it with his lance, And in the middle-way threw him to earth Prostrate. But Fear and Consternation swift Urged nigh his well-wheel’d chariot: from the face Of broad-track’d earth they raised him on the car Variously framed: thence lash’d with scourge the steeds, And bounding up the vast Olympus flew. But now Alcmena’s son and his compeer, The glorious Ioläus, having stripp’d From Cygnus’ shoulders the fair armour’s spoil, Retraced their way direct, and instant reach’d The city Trachys with their fleet-hoof’d steeds: While pass’d the goddess of the azure eyes To great Olympus, and her father’s towers. But Ceyx o’er the corse of Cygnus raised A tomb. Innumerable people graced His obsequies: both they who dwelt hard by The city of the illustrious king, and they Of Anthe, of Iolchos wide-renown’d, Of Arne, of the Myrmidonian towers, And Helice. So gather’d there around A numerous people: honouring duteous thus Ceyx, beloved of the blessed gods. But [278]the huge mount and monumental stone Anaurus, foaming high with wintry rains, Swept from the sight away: Apollo this Commanded: for that Cygnus ambush’d spoil’d In violence the Delphic hecatombs. FOOTNOTES [252] _In height surpass’d._] Aristotle observes that persons of small stature may be elegantly and justly formed, but cannot be styled beautiful, Ethics, iv. 7. Xenophon in his Cyropædia, ii. 5, describes the beautiful Panthea as “of surpassing height and vigour.” Theocritus mentions a fulness of form as equally characteristic of beauty: So bloom’d the charming Helen in our eyes With full voluptuous limbs and towering size: In shape, in height, in stately presence fair, Straight as a furrow gliding from the share: A cypress of the gardens, spiring high, A courser in the cars of Thessaly. Idyl, xviii. It is remarkable that Chaucer appears to glance at this comparison: Winsing she was, as is a jollie colt, Long as a maste and upright as a bolt. _The Miller’s Tale._ [253] _From the darkening lashes of her eyes_ _She breathed enamouring odour._]