shield,
  Nor the hacked helmet, nor the dusty field,
  But the soft joys of luxury and ease,
  The purple vests, and flowery garlands, please. 
  Stand then aside, I’ll make the counterfeit
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  Renounce his godhead, and confess the cheat. 
  Acrisius from the Grecian walls repelled
  This boasted power; why then should Pentheus yield? 
  Go quickly, drag the audacious boy to me;
  I’ll try the force of his divinity.’ 
  Thus did the audacious wretch those rites profane;
  His friends dissuade the audacious wretch in vain;
  In vain his grandsire urged him to give o’er
  His impious threats; the wretch but raves the more. 
     So have I seen a river gently glide,
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  In a smooth course and inoffensive tide;
  But if with dams its current we restrain,
  It bears down all, and foams along the plain. 
     But now his servants came besmeared with blood,
  Sent by their haughty prince to seize the god;
  The god they found not in the frantic throng
  But dragged a zealous votary along.

THE MARINERS TRANSFORMED TO DOLPHINS.

     Him Pentheus viewed with fury in his look,
  And scarce withheld his hands, while thus he spoke: 
  ’Vile slave! whom speedy vengeance shall pursue,
  And terrify thy base, seditious crew: 
  Thy country and thy parentage reveal,
  And why thou join’st in these mad orgies tell.’ 
     The captive views him with undaunted eyes,
  And, armed with inward innocence, replies. 
     ’From high Meonia’s rocky shores I came,
  Of poor descent, Acaetes is my name: 
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  My sire was meanly born; no oxen ploughed
  His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures lowed. 
  His whole estate within the waters lay;
  With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey. 
  His art was all his livelihood; which he
  Thus with his dying lips bequeathed to me: 
  In streams, my boy, and rivers, take thy chance;
  There swims,’ said he, ’thy whole inheritance. 
     ’Long did I live on this poor legacy;
  Till tired with rocks, and my own native sky,
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  To arts of navigation I inclined,
  Observed the turns and changes of the wind: 
  Learned the fit havens, and began to note
  The stormy Hyades, the rainy Goat,
  The bright Taeygete, and the shining Bears,
  With all the sailor’s catalogue of stars. 
     ’Once, as by chance for Delos I designed,
  My vessel, driven by a strong gust of wind,
  Moored in a Chian creek; ashore I went,
  And all the following night in Chios spent.
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  When morning rose, I sent my mates to bring
  Supplies of water from a neighbouring spring,
  Whilst I the motion of the winds explored;
  Then summoned in my crew, and went aboard. 
  Opheltes heard my summons, and with joy
  Brought to the shore a soft and lovely boy,
  With more than female sweetness in his