She lifted up the charm: appealing groans
From their poor breasts went sueing to her ear
In vain; remorseless as an infant's bier
She whisk'd against their eyes the sooty oil.
Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil,
Increasing gradual to a tempest rage,
Shrieks, yells, and groans of torture-pilgrimage;
Until their grieved bodies 'gan to bloat
And puff from the tail's end to stifled throat:
Then was appalling silence: then a sight
More wildering than all that hoarse affright;
For the whole herd, as by a whirlwind writhen,
Went through the dismal air like one huge Python
Antagonizing Boreas,- and so vanish'd.
Yet there was not a breath of wind: she banish'd
These phantoms with a nod. Lo! from the dark
Came waggish fauns, and nymphs, and satyrs stark,
With dancing and loud revelry,- and went
Swifter than centaurs after rapine bent.-
Sighing an elephant appear'd and bow'd
Before the fierce witch, speaking thus aloud
In human accent: 'Potent goddess! chief
'Of pains resistless! make my being brief,
'Or let me from this heavy prison fly:
'Or give me to the air, or let me die!
'I sue not for my happy crown again;
'I sue not for my phalanx on the plain;
'I sue not for my lone, my widow'd wife;
'I sue not for my ruddy drops of life,
'My children fair, my lovely girls and boys!
'I will forget them; I will pass these joys;
'Ask nought so heavenward, so too- too high:
'Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die,
'Or be deliver'd from this cumbrous flesh,
'From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh,
'And merely given to the cold bleak air.
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