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Ovid - Metamorphoses: Book The Fifth
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                   How cam`st thou, stranger, to our court, and why?
                   Thy country, and thy name? The youth did thus
                       reply:
                   Triptolemus my name; my country`s known
                   O`er all the world, Minerva`s fav`rite town,
                   Athens, the first of cities in renown.
                   By land I neither walk`d, nor sail`d by sea,
                   But hither thro` the Aether made my way.
                   By me, the Goddess who the fields befriends,
                   These gifts, the greatest of all blessings, sends.
                   The grain she gives if in your soil you sow,
                   Thence wholsom food in golden crops shall grow.
                     Soon as the secret to the king was known,
                   He grudg`d the glory of the service done,
                   And wickedly resolv`d to make it all his own.
                   To hide his purpose, he invites his guest,
                   The friend of Ceres, to a royal feast,
                   And when sweet sleep his heavy eyes had seiz`d,
                   The tyrant with his steel attempts his breast.
                   Him strait a lynx`s shape the Goddess gives,
                   And home the youth her sacred dragons drives.
   The Pierides      The chosen Muse here ends her sacred lays;
  transform`d to   The nymphs unanimous decree the bays,
      Magpies      And give the Heliconian Goddesses the praise.
                   Then, far from vain that we shou`d thus prevail,
                   But much provok`d to hear the vanquish`d rail,
                   Calliope resumes: Too long we`ve born
                   Your daring taunts, and your affronting scorn;
                   Your challenge justly merited a curse,
                   And this unmanner`d railing makes it worse.
                   Since you refuse us calmly to enjoy
                   Our patience, next our passions we`ll employ;
                   The dictates of a mind enrag`d pursue,
                   And, what our just resentment bids us, do.
                     The railers laugh, our threats and wrath despise,
                   And clap their hands, and make a scolding noise:
                   But in the fact they`re seiz`d; beneath their nails
                   Feathers they feel, and on their faces scales;
                   Their horny beaks at once each other scare,
                   Their arms are plum`d, and on their backs they bear
                   Py`d wings, and flutter in the fleeting air.
                   Chatt`ring, the scandal of the woods they fly,
                   And there continue still their clam`rous cry:
                   The same their eloquence, as maids, or birds,
                   Now only noise, and nothing then but words.

                              The End of the Fifth Book.
                             
                             
                Translated into English verse under the direction of
                Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
                William Congreve and other eminent hands
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