fate.’ 
  Then heaved a stone, and rising to the throw
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  He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe: 
  A tower, assaulted by so rude a stroke,
  With all its lofty battlements had shook;
  But nothing here the unwieldy rock avails,
  Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales,
  That, firmly joined, preserved him from a wound,
  With native armour crusted all around. 97
  The pointed javelin more successful flew,
  Which at his back the raging warrior threw;
  Amid the plaited scales it took its course,
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  And in the spinal marrow spent its force. 
  The monster hissed aloud, and raged in vain,
  And writhed his body to and fro with pain;
  And bit the spear, and wrenched the wood away;
  The point still buried in the marrow lay. 
  And now his rage, increasing with his pain,
  Reddens his eyes, and beats in every vein;
  Churned in his teeth the foamy venom rose,
  Whilst from his mouth a blast of vapours flows,
  Such as the infernal Stygian waters cast;
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  The plants around him wither in the blast. 
  Now in a maze of rings he lies enrolled,
  Now all unravelled, and without a fold;
  Now, like a torrent, with a mighty force,
  Bears down the forest in his boisterous course. 
  Cadmus gave back, and on the lion’s spoil
  Sustained the shock, then forced him to recoil;
  The pointed javelin warded off his rage: 
  Mad with his pains, and furious to engage,
  The serpent champs the steel, and bites the spear,
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  Till blood and venom all the point besmear. 
  But still the hurt he yet received was slight;
  For, whilst the champion with redoubled might
  Strikes home the javelin, his retiring foe
  Shrinks from the wound, and disappoints the blow. 
     The dauntless hero still pursues his stroke,
  And presses forward, till a knotty oak
  Retards his foe, and stops him in the rear;
  Full in his throat he plunged the fatal spear,
  That in the extended neck a passage found,
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  And pierced the solid timber through the wound. 
  Fixed to the reeling trunk, with many a stroke
  Of his huge tail, he lashed the sturdy oak;
  Till spent with toil, and labouring hard for breath,
  He now lay twisting in the pangs of death. 
     Cadmus beheld him wallow in a flood
  Of swimming poison, intermixed with blood;
  When suddenly a speech was heard from high,
  (The speech was heard, nor was the speaker nigh,)
  ’Why dost thou thus with secret pleasure see,
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  Insulting man! what thou thyself shalt be?’
  Astonished at the voice, he stood amazed,
  And all around with inward horror gazed: 
  When Pallas, swift descending from the skies,
  Pallas, the guardian of the bold and wise,
  Bids him plough up the field, and scatter round
  The dragon’s teeth o’er all the furrowed ground;