Now from my throat the usual moisture dries, And ev’n my voice in broken accents dies: One draught as dear as life I should esteem, And water, now I thirst, would nectar seem: O! let my little babes your pity move, And melt your hearts to charitable love; They (as by chance they did) extend to you Their little hands, and my request pursue.” ’

“Whom would these soft persuasions not subdue, Though the most rustic and unmanner’d crew? Yet they the goddess’s request refuse, And with rude words reproachfully abuse. Nay, more, with spiteful feet the villains trode O’er the soft bottom of the marshy flood, And blacken’d all the lake with clouds of rising mud.

“Her thirst, by indignation, was suppress’d; Bent on revenge, the goddess stood confess’d. Her suppliant hands uplifting to the skies, For a redress to heaven she now applies: ‘And may you live,’ she passionately cried, ‘Doom’d in that pool for ever to abide.’