To wasps and hornets of the warrior kind. Cut from a crab his crooked claws, and hide The rest in earth, a scorpion thence will glide, And shoot his sting; his tail, in circles tossed, Refers[42] the limbs his backward father lost; And worms, that stretch on leaves their filmy loom, Crawl from their bags, and butterflies become. Even slime begets the frogs' loquacious race; Short of their feet at first, in little space With arms and legs endued, long leaps they take, Raised on their hinder part, and swim the lake, And waves repel: for nature gives their kind, To that intent, a length of legs behind. The cubs of bears a living lump appear, When whelped, and no determined figure wear. Their mother licks them into shape, and gives As much of form, as she herself receives. The grubs from their sexangular abode Crawl out unfinished, like the maggots' brood, Trunks without limbs; till time at leisure brings The thighs they wanted, and their tardy wings. The bird who draws the car of Juno, vain Of her crowned head, and of her starry train; And he that bears the artillery of Jove, The strong-pounced eagle, and the billing dove, And all the feathered kind;--who could suppose } (But that from sight, the surest sense, he knows) } They from the included yolk, not ambient white, arose? } There are who think the marrow of a man, Which in the spine, while he was living, ran; When dead, the pith corrupted, will become A snake, and hiss within the hollow tomb. All these receive their birth from other things, But from himself the phœnix only springs: Self-born, begotten by the parent flame In which he burned, another and the same: Who not by corn or herbs his life sustains, But the sweet essence of Amomum drains; And watches the rich gums Arabia bears, While yet in tender dew they drop their tears. He, (his five centuries of life fulfilled) His nest on oaken boughs begins to build, Or trembling tops of palm: and first he draws The plan with his broad bill, and crooked claws, Nature's artificers; on this the pile Is formed, and rises round; then with the spoil Of Casia, Cynamon, and stems of Nard, (For softness strewed beneath,) his funeral bed is reared, Funeral and bridal both; and all around The borders with corruptless myrrh are crowned: On this incumbent, till ætherial flame First catches, then consumes, the costly frame; Consumes him too, as on the pile he lies; He lived on odours, and in odours dies. An infant-phœnix from the former springs, His father's heir, and from his tender wings Shakes off his parent dust; his method he pursues, And the same lease of life on the same terms renews. When, grown to manhood, he begins his reign, And with stiff pinions can his flight sustain,