What lands, what seas, the goddess wander’d o’er, Were long to tell; for there remain’d no more; Searching all round, her fruitless toil she mourns, And with regret to Sicily returns. At length, where Cyane now flows she came, Who could have told her, were she still the same As when she saw her daughter sink to hell; But what she knows she wants a tongue to tell; Yet this plain signal manifestly gave; The virgin’s girdle floating on a wave, As late she dropp’d it from her slender waist, When with her uncle through the deep she pass’d. Ceres the token by her grief confess’d, And tore her golden hair, and beat her breast: She knows not on what land her curse should fall, But, as ingrate, alike upbraids them all, Unworthy of her gifts; Trinacria most, Where the last steps she found of what she lost. The plough for this the vengeful goddess broke, And with one death the ox and owner struck. In vain the fallow fields the peasant tills, The seed, corrupted ere ’tis sown, she kills; The fruitful soil, that once such harvests bore, Now mocks the farmer’s care, and teems no more,