ODE XI.

TO MERCURY.


O Mercury, for under thy instruction the ingenious Amphion moved rocks
by his voice, you being his tutor; and though my harp, skilled in
sounding, with seven strings, formerly neither vocal nor pleasing, but
now agreeable both to the tables of the wealthy and the temples [of the
gods]; dictate measures to which Lyde may incline her obstinate ears,
who, like a filly of three years old, plays and frisks about in the
spacious fields, inexperienced in nuptial loves, and hitherto unripe for
a brisk husband. You are able to draw after your tigers and attendant
woods, and to retard rapid rivers. To your blandishments the enormous
porter of the [infernal] palace yielded, though a hundred serpents
fortify his head, and a pestilential steam and an infectious poison
issue from his triple-tongued mouth. Moreover, Ixion and Tityus smiled
with a reluctant aspect: while you soothe the daughters of Danaus with
your delightful harmony, their vessel for some time remained dry. Let
Lyde hear of the crime, and the well-known punishment of the virgins,
and the cask emptied by the water streaming through the bottom, and what
lasting fates await their misdeeds even beyond the grave. Impious! (for
what greater impiety could they have committed?) Impious! who could
destroy their bridegrooms with the cruel sword! One out of the many,
worthy of the nuptial torch, was nobly false to her perjured parent, and
a maiden illustrious to all posterity; she, who said to her youthful
husband, "Arise! arise! lest an eternal sleep be given to you from a
hand you have no suspicion of; disappoint your father-in-law and my