Preserved from death by Alcumena's son. Then to his kinsman God his vows he pays, And cuts with prosperous gales the Ionian seas; He leaves Tarentum, favoured by the wind, And Thurine bays, and Temises, behind; Soft Sibaris, and all the capes that stand Along the shore, he makes in sight of land; Still doubling, and still coasting, till he found The mouth of Æsaris, and promised ground; Then saw where, on the margin of the flood, The tomb that held the bones of Croton stood; Here, by the God's command, he built and walled The place predicted, and Crotona called. Thus fame, from time to time, delivers down The sure tradition of the Italian town. Here dwelt the man divine whom Samos bore, But now self-banished from his native shore, Because he hated tyrants, nor could bear The chains which none but servile souls will wear. He, though from heaven remote, to heaven could move, With strength of mind, and tread the abyss above; And penetrate, with his interior light, Those upper depths, which Nature hid from sight; And what he had observed, and learnt from thence, Loved in familiar language to dispense. The crowd with silent admiration stand, And heard him, as they heard their god's command; While he discoursed of heaven's mysterious laws, The world's original, and nature's cause; And what was God, and why the fleecy snows In silence fell, and rattling winds arose; What shook the stedfast earth, and whence begun The dance of planets round the radiant sun; If thunder was the voice of angry Jove, Or clouds, with nitre pregnant, burst above; Of these, and things beyond the common reach, He spoke, and charmed his audience with his speech. He first the taste of flesh from tables drove, And argued well, if arguments could move.-- O mortals! from your fellows' blood abstain, Nor taint your bodies with a food profane; While corn and pulse by nature are bestowed, And planted orchards bend their willing load; While laboured gardens wholsome herbs produce, And teeming vines afford their generous juice; Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost, But tamed with fire, or mellowed by the frost; While kine to pails distended udders bring, And bees their honey, redolent of spring; While earth not only can your needs supply, But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury; A guiltless feast administers with ease, And without blood is prodigal to please. Wild beasts their maws with their slain brethren fill, And yet not all, for some refuse to kill; Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed, On browz, and corn, the flowery meadows feed. Bears, tigers, wolves, the lion's angry brood, Whom heaven endued with principles of blood, He wisely sundered from the rest, to yell In forests, and in lonely caves to dwell,