Whether the stile of Titan please thee more,
Whose purple rays th’ Achæmenes adore ;
Or great Ofiris, who first taught the fwain
In Pharian fields to low the golden grain ; 860
Or Mitra, to whose beams the Persian bows,
And pays, in hollow rocks, his awful vows;
Mitra, whose head the blaze of light adorns,
Who grasps the struggling heifer's lunar horns.

DR Y OP E

IN

ARB OR E M.

D

IXIT: et, admonitu veteris commota

miniftrae, Ingemuit; quam fic nurus eft adfata dolentem: Te tamen, o genitrix, alienae fanguine vestro Rapta movet facies. quid fi tibi mira fororis Fata meae referam? quamquam lacrymaeque do

lorque Impediunt, prohibentque loqui. fuit unica matri (Me pater ex alia genuit) notiffima forma Oechalidum Dryope: quam virginitate carentem, Vimque Dei passam, Delphos Delonque tenentis,

IO

NOTES

DRYOPE.) Upon occasion of the death of Mercules, his Mother Alcmena recounts her misfortunes to lole, who, an.

3

Τ Η Ε

F A B L E

OF

DR Y O P E.

S'When the fair Confort of her fon replies.

HE , ,

When . Since you a servant's ravish'd form bemoan, And kindly figh for sorrows not your own, Let me (if tears and grief permit) relate

5 A nearer woe, a sister's stranger fate. No nymph of all Oechalia could compare For beauteous form with Dryope the fair, Her tender mother's only hope and pride, (Myself the offspring of a second bride.) This Nymph compress’d by him who rules the day, Whom Delphi and the Delian isle obey,

NOTES.

(wers with a relation of those of her own family, in particu. lar the Transformation of her filter Dryope, which is the subject of the ensuing Fable. P.

Qa