“Doth Cianfa lurk?” I, for a sign my guide
Should stand attentive, plac’d against my lips
The finger lifted.  If, O reader! now
Thou be not apt to credit what I tell,
No marvel; for myself do scarce allow
The witness of mine eyes.  But as I looked
Toward them, lo! a serpent with six feet
Springs forth on one, and fastens full upon him: 
His midmost grasp’d the belly, a forefoot
Seiz’d on each arm (while deep in either cheek
He flesh’d his fangs); the hinder on the thighs
Were spread, ’twixt which the tail inserted curl’d
Upon the reins behind.  Ivy ne’er clasp’d
A dodder’d oak, as round the other’s limbs
The hideous monster intertwin’d his own. 
Then, as they both had been of burning wax,
Each melted into other, mingling hues,
That which was either now was seen no more. 
Thus up the shrinking paper, ere it burns,
A brown tint glides, not turning yet to black,
And the clean white expires.  The other two
Look’d on exclaiming:  “Ah, how dost thou change,
Agnello!  See!  Thou art nor double now,

“Nor only one.”  The two heads now became
One, and two figures blended in one form
Appear’d, where both were lost.  Of the four lengths
Two arms were made:  the belly and the chest
The thighs and legs into such members chang’d,
As never eye hath seen.  Of former shape
All trace was vanish’d.  Two yet neither seem’d
That image miscreate, and so pass’d on
With tardy steps.  As underneath the scourge
Of the fierce dog-star, that lays bare the fields,
Shifting from brake to brake, the lizard seems
A flash of lightning, if he thwart the road,
So toward th’ entrails of the other two
Approaching seem’d, an adder all on fire,
As the dark pepper-grain, livid and swart. 
In that part, whence our life is nourish’d first,
One he transpierc’d; then down before him fell
Stretch’d out.  The pierced spirit look’d on him
But spake not; yea stood motionless and yawn’d,
As if by sleep or fev’rous fit assail’d. 
He ey’d the serpent, and the serpent him. 
One from the wound, the other from the mouth
Breath’d a thick smoke, whose vap’ry columns join’d.

Lucan in mute attention now may hear,
Nor thy disastrous fate, Sabellus! tell,
Nor shine, Nasidius!  Ovid now be mute. 
What if in warbling fiction he record
Cadmus and Arethusa, to a snake
Him chang’d, and her into a fountain clear,
I envy not; for never face to face
Two natures thus transmuted did he sing,
Wherein both shapes were ready to assume
The other’s substance.  They in mutual guise
So answer’d, that the serpent split his train
Divided to a fork, and the pierc’d spirit
Drew close his steps together, legs and thighs
Compacted, that no sign of juncture soon
Was visible:  the tail disparted took
The figure which the spirit lost, its skin
Soft’ning, his indurated to a rind.