Accursed snake! yet I more cursed than he! He gave the wound; the cause was given by me. Yet none shall say, that unrevenged you died.-- } He spoke; then climbed a cliff's o'er-hanging side, } And, resolute, leaped on the foaming tide. } Tethys received him gently on the wave; The death he sought denied, and feathers gave. Debarred the surest remedy of grief, And forced to live, he curst the unasked relief; Then on his airy pinions upward flies, } And at a second fall successless tries, } The downy plume a quick descent denies. } Enraged, he often dives beneath the wave, And there in vain expects to find a grave. His ceaseless sorrow for the unhappy maid Meager'd his look, and on his spirits preyed. Still near the sounding deep he lives; his name From frequent diving and emerging came. THE TWELFTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES, WHOLLY TRANSLATED. CONNECTION TO THE END OF THE ELEVENTH BOOK. _Æsacus, the son of Priam, loving a country life, forsakes the court; living obscurely, he falls in love with a nymph, who, flying from him, was killed by a serpent; for grief of this, he would have drowned himself; but, by the pity of the gods, is turned into a Cormorant. Priam, not hearing of Æsacus, believes him to be dead, and raises a tomb to preserve his memory. By this transition, which is one of the finest in all Ovid, the poet naturally falls into the story of the Trojan war, which is summed up in the present book; but so very briefly in many places, that Ovid seems more short than Virgil, contrary to his usual style. Yet the House of Fame, which is here described, is one of the most beautiful pieces in the whole Metamorphoses. The fight of Achilles and Cygnus, and the fray betwixt the Lapithæ and Centaurs, yield to no other part of this poet; and particularly the loves and death of Cyllarus and Hylonome, the male and female Centaur, are wonderfully moving._