A rock there stood, whose side the beating waves Had long consumed, and hollow’d into caves; The head shot forwards in a bending steep, And cast a dreadful covert o’er the deep. The wretched Ino, on destruction bent, Climb’d up the cliff, such strength her fury lent, Thence with her guiltless boy, who wept in vain, At one bold spring she plunged into the main.

Her niece’s fate touch’d Cytherea’s breast, And in soft sounds she Neptune thus address’d: “Great god of waters, whose extended sway Is next to his whom heaven and earth obey, Let not the suit of Venus thee displease, Pity the floaters on the Ionian seas. Increase thy subject-gods, nor yet disdain To add my kindred to that glorious train. If from the sea I may such honours claim, If ’tis desert that from the sea I came, As Grecian poets artfully have sung, And in the name confess’d from whence I sprung.”