Perhaps he said, My daughter, cease thy fears,-- Because the title suited with her years; And, Father,--she might whisper him again, That names might not be wanting to the sin. Full of her sire, she left the incestuous bed, And carried in her womb the crime she bred. Another, and another night she came; For frequent sin had left no sense of shame; Till Cinyras desired to see her face, Whose body he had held in close embrace, And brought a taper; the revealer, light, Exposed both crime, and criminal, to sight. Grief, rage, amazement, could no speech afford, But from the sheath he drew the avenging sword; The guilty fled; the benefit of night, That favoured first the sin, secured the flight. Long wandering through the spacious fields, she bent Her voyage to the Arabian continent; Then passed the region which Panchæa joined, And flying left the palmy plains behind. Nine times the moon had mewed her horns; at length With travel weary, unsupplied with strength, And with the burden of her womb oppressed, Sabæan fields afford her needful rest; There, loathing life, and yet of death afraid, In anguish of her spirit, thus she prayed:-- Ye powers, if any so propitious are To accept my penitence, and hear my prayer, Your judgments, I confess, are justly sent; Great sins deserve as great a punishment: Yet, since my life the living will profane, And since my death the happy dead will stain, A middle state your mercy may bestow, Betwixt the realms above, and those below; Some other form to wretched Myrrha give, Nor let her wholly die, nor wholly live.-- The prayers of penitents are never vain; At least, she did her last request obtain; For, while she spoke, the ground began to rise, And gathered round her feet, her legs, and thighs; Her toes in roots descend, and, spreading wide, A firm foundation for the trunk provide; Her solid bones convert to solid wood, To pith her marrow, and to sap her blood; Her arms are boughs, her fingers change their kind, Her tender skin is hardened into rind. And now the rising tree her womb invests, Now, shooting upwards still, invades her breasts, And shades the neck; and, weary with delay, She sunk her head within, and met it half the way. And though with outward shape she lost her sense, With bitter tears she wept her last offence; And still she weeps, nor sheds her tears in vain; For still the precious drops her name retain. Mean time the misbegotten infant grows, And, ripe for birth, distends with deadly throes The swelling rind, with unavailing strife, To leave the wooden womb, and pushes into life. The mother-tree, as if oppressed with pain, Writhes here and there, to break the bark, in vain; And, like a labouring woman, would have prayed,