Then one replies: “O goddess, fit to guide Our humble works, and in our choir preside, Who sure would wisely to these fields repair, To taste our pleasures, and our labours share, Were not your virtue and superior mind, To higher arts and nobler deeds inclined; Justly you praise our works, and pleasing seat, Which all might envy in this soft retreat, Were we secured from dangers and from harms; But maids are frighten’d with the least alarms, And none are safe in this licentious time: Still fierce Pyreneus, and his daring crime, With lasting horror strikes my feeble sight, Nor is my mind recover’d from the fright. With Thracian arms this bold usurper gain’d Daulis and Phocis, where he proudly reign’d. It happen’d once, as through his lands we went, For the bright temple of Parnassus bent, He met us there, and, in his artful mind, Hiding the faithless action he design’d, Conferr’d on us (whom, O too well he knew!) All honours that to goddesses are due. ‘Stop, stop, ye muses, ’tis your friend who calls,’ The tyrant said; ‘behold the rain that falls