The muse yet spoke, when they began to hear A noise of wings that flutter’d in the air; And straight a voice, from some high-spreading bough, Seem’d to salute the company below. The goddess wonder’d, and inquired from whence That tongue was heard, that spoke so plainly sense. (It seem’d to her a human voice to be, But proved a bird’s; for in a shady tree Nine magpies perch’d, lament their alter’d state, And what they hear are skilful to repeat.)

The challengers select the rebellion of the giants, and the various transformations of the gods to avoid their rage, as the subject of their song.

“Then rises one of the presumptuous throng, Steps rudely forth, and first begins the song; = With vain address describes the giants’ wars, And to the gods their fabled acts prefers. She sings from earth’s dark womb how Typhon rose, And struck with mortal fear his heavenly foes; How the gods fled to Egypt’s slimy soil, And hid their heads beneath the banks of Nile; How Typhon from the conquer’d skies pursued Their routed godheads to the seven-mouth’d flood: Forced every god, his fury to escape, Some beastly form to take, or earthly shape. Jove (so she sung) was changed into a ram, From whence the horns of Lybian Ammon came: Bacchus a goat; Apollo was a crow; Phoebe a cat; the wife of Jove a cow, Whose hue was whiter than the falling snow; Mercury to a nasty ibis turn’d, The change obscene, afraid of Typhon mourn’d; While Venus from a fish protection craves, And once more plunges in her native waves.

“She sung, and to her harp her voice applied: Then us again to match her they defied: But our poor song, perhaps, for you to hear, Nor leisure serves, nor is it worth your ear.” “That causeless doubt remove, O muse; rehearse,” The goddess cried, “your ever-grateful verse:” Beneath a checker’d shade she takes her seat, And bids the sister her whole song repeat. The sister thus: “Calliope we chose For the performance.” The sweet virgin rose, With ivy crown’d; she tunes her golden strings, And to her harp this composition sings:

The Muses commence their song with describing the arts of Venus and Cupid to inflame the god Pluto with a passion for Proserpine.

“First Ceres taught the labouring hind to plough The pregnant earth, and quick’ning seed to sow; She first for man did wholesome food provide, And with just laws the wicked world supplied: All good from her derived, to her belong The grateful tributes of the muse’s song; Her more than worthy of our verse we deem; Oh! were our verse more worthy of the theme!