The assassinating wife, the household fiend; And, far the blackest there, the traitor-friend. On t'other side there stood Destruction bare, Unpunished Rapine, and a waste of war; Contest, with sharpened knives, in cloisters drawn, And all with blood bespread the holy lawn. Loud menaces were heard, and foul disgrace, } And bawling infamy, in language base; } Till sense was lost in sound, and silence fled the place. } The slayer of himself yet saw I there, The gore congealed was clotted in his hair; With eyes half-closed, and gaping mouth he lay, And grim, as when he breathed his sullen soul away. In midst of all the dome, Misfortune sat, And gloomy Discontent, and fell Debate, And Madness laughing in his ireful mood; And armed complaint on theft; and cries of blood. There was the murdered corpse in covert laid, And violent death in thousand shapes displayed; The city to the soldier's rage resigned; Successless wars, and poverty behind: 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 faulchions, or the scythe. The scarlet conquest on a tower was placed, With shouts, and soldiers' acclamations graced: A pointed sword hung threat'ning 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 Cæsar'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,[156] } One when direct, and one when retrograde.[157] } 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 in 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 Acteon in the stream had spied The naked huntress, and for seeing died;