The goddess gave (for she abhorred her sight)
  A short command:  ’To Athens speed thy flight;
  On cursed Aglauros try thy utmost art. 
  And fix thy rankest venoms in her heart.’ 
  This said, her spear she pushed against the ground,
  And mounting from it with an active bound,
  Flew off to heaven:  the hag with eyes askew
  Looked up, and muttered curses as she flew;
100
  For sore she fretted, and began to grieve
  At the success which she herself must give. 
  Then takes her staff, hung round with wreaths of thorn,
  And sails along, in a black whirlwind borne,
  O’er fields and flowery meadows:  where she steers
  Her baneful course, a mighty blast appears,
  Mildews and blights; the meadows are defaced,
  The fields, the flowers, and the whole year laid waste;
  On mortals next and peopled towns she falls,
  And breathes a burning plague among their walls,
110
     When Athens she beheld, for arts renowned,
  With peace made happy, and with plenty crowned,
  Scarce could the hideous fiend from tears forbear,
  To find out nothing that deserved a tear. 
  The apartment now she entered, where at rest
  Aglauros lay, with gentle sleep oppressed. 
  To execute Minerva’s dire command,
  She stroked the virgin with her cankered hand,
  Then prickly thorns into her breast conveyed,
  That stung to madness the devoted maid;
120
  Her subtle venom still improves the smart,
  Frets in the blood, and festers in the heart. 
     To make the work more sure, a scene she drew,
  And placed before the dreaming virgin’s view
  Her sister’s marriage, and her glorious fate: 
  The imaginary bride appears in state;
  The bridegroom with unwonted beauty glows,
  For Envy magnifies whate’er she shows. 
     Full of the dream, Aglauros pined away
  In tears all night, in darkness all the day;
130
  Consumed like ice, that just begins to run,
  When feebly smitten by the distant sun;
  Or like unwholesome weeds, that, set on fire,
  Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire. 
  Given up to Envy, (for in every thought,
  The thorns, the venom, and the vision wrought). 
  Oft did she call on death, as oft decreed,
  Rather than see her sister’s wish succeed,
  To tell her awful father what had passed: 
  At length before the door herself she cast;
140
  And, sitting on the ground with sullen pride,
  A passage to the love-sick god denied. 
  The god caressed, and for admission prayed,
  And soothed, in softest words, the envenomed maid. 
  In vain he soothed; ‘Begone!’ the maid replies,
  ‘Or here I keep my seat, and never rise.’ 
  ‘Then keep thy seat for ever!’ cries the god,
  And touched the door, wide-opening to his rod. 
  Fain would she rise, and stop him, but she found
  Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground;