Complete Poetical Works, Volume 2: Forest Poems (1729) - Page 10

Alas, beware, lest you revive Actaeon crying in vain:

A more noble story

Destined for the son of Cadmus.

In Greek mythology, Actaeon was the grandson of Cadmus. He was transformed into a stag and torn apart by his own dogs after seeing the goddess Diana bathing.

III.

The festive pursuit of stags in the water.

What if you should see a line of the antlered herd

Enter the watery homes of the NYMPHS?

Often a hundred swim across the lake, lifting their heads high.

You would think the thickets were creeping along.

A delightful procession of death swims by, and the timid

Victims are washed in a harsh sport.

When suddenly a flung bullet original: "glans torta," literally a twisted lead ball or bullet fired from a weapon. strikes the hollow temples of a stag

Struggling in the game park.

Before he stretches his fallen shoulders in the pond,

He is raised up tall and straight;

With a jump he flees death, and soon with his whole body

He beats against the bloody whirlpools.

The farmers rejoice that the thief of the harvest has been driven off

And has paid the penalty for his crimes.

Ceres The goddess of agriculture and the harvest. is appeased and breathes again,

And she greets the just Diana all the more joyfully.

ANTITHESIS

But let it be a pleasure to have seen these things once: if you persist

And repeat them too often, they belch out boredom.

He has seen stags swimming rivers too often.

It would be better to have entered a swamp!

The human MIND is a craftsman, and knows how to join

Different forms through the imagination of things.

It brings together into the center whatever wanders at the edges

And those things distant in the whole world.

At home, the mind sets whatever charming ranks of wild beasts it wishes

Into a famous arena.

Whenever the mind desires, the Indian elephant original: "barus... Indus." Barus is an ancient term for an elephant. is present;

And the ox about to scatter the sand with its hoof.

A parrot in its cage, or a long-tailed monkey in the hall,

And an ape playing with its nut.