This heard, the goddess like a statue stood, Stupid with grief, and in that musing mood Continued long; new cares a while suppress’d The reigning powers of her immortal breast. At last to Jove, her daughter’s sire, she flies, And with her chariot cuts the crystal skies: She comes in clouds, and with dishevell’d hair, Standing before his throne, prefers her prayer:

Jove thus replies: “It equally belongs To both to guard our common pledge from wrongs: But if to things we proper names apply, This hardly can be call’d an injury: The theft is love; nor need we blush to own The thief, if I can judge, to be our son; Had you of his desert no other proof, To be Jove’s brother is, methinks, enough: Nor was my throne by worth superior got; Heaven fell to me, as hell to him, by lot: If you are still resolved her loss to mourn, And nothing less will serve than her return, Upon these terms she may again be yours (The irrevocable terms of fate, not ours); Of Stygian food if she did never taste, Hell’s bounds may then, and only then, be pass’d.”

When Ceres has obtained from Jupiter her daughter’s freedom and return to earth, provided she has eaten nothing in the kingdom of Pluto, the goddess hastens to the infernal regions, and finds that Proserpine has already partaken of the fruit of the pomegranate-tree by the testimony of Ascalaphus, whose loquacity is punished by his transformation into an owl.

The goddess now, resolving to succeed, Down to the gloomy shades descends with speed; But adverse fate had otherwise decreed; For, long before, her giddy, thoughtless child Had broke her fast, and all her projects spoil’d. As in the garden’s shady walk she stray’d, A fair pomegranate charm’d the simple maid, Hung in her way, and tempting her to taste, She pluck’d the fruit, and took a short repast. Seven times, a seed at once, she eat the food: The fact Ascalaphus had only view’d, Whom Acheron begot, in Stygian shades, On Orphne, famed among Avernal maids; He saw what pass’d, and, by discovering all, Detain’d the ravish’d nymph in cruel thrall.

But now a queen, she with resentment heard, And changed the vile informer to a bird. In Phlegethon’s black stream her hand she dips, Sprinkles his head, and wets his babbling lips. Soon on his face, bedropp’d with magic dew, A change appear’d, and gaudy feathers grew; A crooked beak the place of nose supplies; Rounder his head, and larger are his eyes; His arms and body waste, but are supplied With yellow pinions, flagging on each side; His nails grow crooked, and are turn’d to claws, And lazily along his heavy wings he draws: Ill-omen’d in his form, the unlucky fowl, Abhorr’d by men, and call’d a screeching owl.

The Sirens, daughters of Achelous and the Muse Melpomene, disconsolate at the abduction of Proserpine, entreat the gods to afford them wings, that they may seek her by sea as well as by land⁠—Jupiter, to appease the resentment of Ceres and sooth her grief, decrees that Proserpine shall remain six months in each year with her husband, and the remainder with her mother on earth.