Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/150

Ye might have seene hir limmes wex lithe, ye might have bent hir bones.
Hir nayles wext soft: and first of all did melt the smallest ones:
As haire and fingars, legges and feete: for these same slender parts
Doe quickly into water turne, and afterward converts
To water, shoulder, backe, brest, side: and finally in stead
Of lively bloud, within hir veynes corrupted there was spred
Thinne water: so that nothing now remained whereupon
Ye might take holde, to water all consumed was anon.
The carefull mother in the while did seeke hir daughter deare
Through all the world both Sea and Land, and yet was nere the neare.
The Morning with hir deawy haire hir slugging never found,
Nor yet the Evening star that brings the night upon the ground.
Two seasoned Pynetrees at the mount of Aetna did she light
And bare them restlesse in hir handes through all the dankish night.
Againe as soone as chierfull day did dim the starres, she sought
Hir daughter still from East to West. And being overwrought
She caught a thirst: no liquor yet had come within hir throte.
By chaunce she spied nere at hand a pelting thatched Cote
Wyth peevish doores: she knockt thereat, and out there commes a trot.
The Goddesse asked hir some drinke and she denide it not:
But out she brought hir by and by a draught of merrie go downe
And therewithall a Hotchpotch made of steeped Barlie browne
And Flaxe and Coriander seede and other simples more
The which she in an Earthen pot together sod before.
While Ceres was a eating this, before hir gazing stood
A hard faaste boy, a shrewde pert wag, that could no maners good:
He laughed at hir and in scorne did call hir greedie gut.
The Goddesse being wroth therewith, did on the Hotchpotch put
The liquor ere that all was eate, and in his face it threw.
Immediatly the skinne thereof became of speckled hew,
And into legs his armes did turne: and in his altred hide
A wrigling tayle streight to his limmes was added more beside.
And to th'intent he should not have much powre to worken scathe,
His bodie in a little roume togither knit she hathe.
For as with pretie Lucerts he in facion doth agree:
So than the Lucert somewhat lesse in every poynt is he.
The poore old woman was amazde: and bitterly she wept: