Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookrope; Begged hard for exile, and, by special grace, Obtained confinement in some desert place.-- To him your Tanaquil applies, in doubt 810 How long her jaundiced mother may hold out; But first, how long her husband: next, inquires, When she shall follow, to their funeral pyres, Her sisters, and her uncles; last, if fate Will kindly lengthen out the adulterer's date 815 Beyond her own;--content, if he but live, And sure that heaven has nothing more to give! Yet she may still be suffered; for, what woes The louring aspect of old Saturn shows; Or in what sign bright Venus ought to rise, 820 To shed her mildest influence from the skies; Or what fore-fated month to gain is given, And what to loss (the mysteries of heaven), She knows not, nor pretends to know: but flee The dame, whose Manual of Astrology 825 Still dangles at her side, smooth as chafed gum, And fretted by her everlasting thumb!-- Deep in the science now, she leaves her mate To go, or stay; but will not share his fate, Withheld by trines and sextiles; she will look, 830 Before her chair be ordered, in the book, For the fit hour; an itching eye endure, Nor, till her scheme be raised, attempt the cure; Nay, languishing in bed, receive no meat, Till Petosyris bid her rise and eat. 835 The curse is universal: high and low Are mad alike the future hour to know. The rich consult a Babylonian seer, Skilled in the mysteries of either sphere; Or a gray-headed priest, hired by the state, 840 To watch the lightning, and to expiate. The middle sort, a quack, at whose command They lift the forehead, and make bare the hand; While the sly lecher in the table pries, And claps it wantonly, with gloating eyes. 845 The poor apply to humbler cheats, still found Beside the Circus wall, or city mound; While she, whose neck no golden trinket bears, To the dry ditch, or dolphin's tower, repairs, And anxiously inquires which she shall choose, 850 The tapster, or old-clothes man? which refuse? Yet these the pangs of childbirth undergo, And all the yearnings of a mother know; These, urged by want, assume the nurse's care, And learn to breed the children which they bear. 855 Those shun both toil and danger; for, though sped, The wealthy dame is seldom brought to bed: Such the dire power of drugs, and such the skill They boast, to cause miscarriages at will! Weep'st thou? O fool! the blest invention hail, 860 And give the potion, if the gossips fail; For, should thy wife her nine months' burden bear, An Æthiop's offspring might thy fortunes heir; A sooty thing, fit only to affray, And, seen at morn, to poison all the day! 865 Supposititious breeds, the hope and joy Of fond, believing husbands, I pass by; The beggars' bantlings, spawned in open air, And left by some pond side, to perish there.-- From hence your Flamens, hence your Salians come; 870 Your Scauri, chiefs and magistrates of Rome! Fortune stands tittering by, in playful mood, And smiles, complacent, on the sprawling brood; Takes them all naked to her fostering arms, Feeds from her mouth, and in her bosom warms: 875 Then, to the mansions of the great she bears The precious brats, and, for herself, prepares A secret farce; adopts them for her own: And, when her nurslings are to manhood grown, She brings them forth, rejoiced to see them sped, 880 And wealth and honors dropping on their head! Some purchase charms, some, more pernicious still, Thessalian philters, to subdue the will Of an uxorious spouse, and make him bear Blows, insults, all a saucy wife can dare. 885 Hence that swift lapse to second childhood; hence Those vapors which envelop every sense; This strange forgetfulness from hour to hour; And well, if this be all:--more fatal power, More terrible effects, the dose may have, 890 And force you, like Caligula, to rave, When his Cæsonia squeezed into the bowl The dire excrescence of a new-dropp'd foal.-- Then Uproar rose; the universal chain Of Order snapped, and Anarchy's wild reign 895 Came on apace, as if the queen of heaven Had fired the Thunderer, and to madness driven. Thy mushroom, Agrippine! was innocent, To this accursed draught; that only sent One palsied, bedrid sot, with gummy eyes, 900 And slavering lips, heels foremost to the skies: This, to wild fury roused a bloody mind, And called for fire and sword; this potion joined In one promiscuous slaughter high and low, And leveled half the nation at a blow. 905 Such is the power of philters! such the ill, One sorceress can effect by wicked skill! They hate their husband's spurious issue:--this, If this were all, were not, perhaps, amiss: But they go farther; and 'tis now some time 910 Since poisoning sons-in-law scarce seemed a crime. Mark then, ye fatherless! what I advise, And trust, O, trust no dainties, if you're wise: Ye heirs to large estates! touch not that fare, Your mother's fingers have been busy there; 915 See! it looks livid, swollen:--O check your haste, And let your wary fosterfather taste, Whate'er she sets before you: fear her meat, And be the first to look, the last to eat. But this is fiction all! I pass the bound 920 Of Satire, and encroach on Tragic ground! Deserting truth, I choose a fabled theme, And, like the buskined bards of Greece, declaim, In deep-mouthed tones, in swelling strains, on crimes As yet unknown to our Rutulian climes! 925 Would it were so! but Pontia cries aloud, "No, I performed it." See! the fact's avowed-- "I mingled poison for my children, I; 'Twas found upon me, wherefore then deny?" What, two at once, most barbarous viper! two! 930 "Nay, seven, had seven been mine: believe it true!" Now let us credit what the tragic stage Displays of Progne and Medea's rage; Crimes of dire name, which, disbelieved of yore, Become familiar, and revolt no more; 935 Those ancient dames in scenes of blood were bold, And wrought fell deeds, but not, as ours, for gold:-- In every age, we view, with less surprise, Such horrors as from bursts of fury rise, When stormy passions, scorning all control, 940 Rend the mad bosom, and unseat the soul. As when impetuous winds, and driving rain, Mine some huge rock that overhangs the plain, The cumbrous mass descends with thundering force, And spreads resistless ruin in its course. 945 Curse on the woman, who reflects by fits, And in cold blood her cruelties commits!-- They see, upon the stage, the Grecian wife Redeeming with her own her husband's life; Yet, in her place, would willingly deprive 950 Their lords of breath to keep their dogs alive! Abroad, at home, the Belides you meet, And Clytemnestras swarm in every street; But here the difference lies:--those bungling wives, With a blunt axe hacked out their husbands' lives; 955 While now, the deed is done with dexterous art, And a drugged bowl performs the axe's part. Yet, if the husband, prescient of his fate, Have fortified his breast with mithr |