The Thracian monarch from the table flings, While with his cries the vaulted parlour rings: His imprecations echo down to hell, And rouse the snaky furies from their Stygian cell. One while he labours to disgorge his breast, And free his stomach from the cursed feast; Then, weeping o’er his lamentable doom, He styles himself his son’s sepulchral tomb. Now, with drawn sabre and impetuous speed, In close pursuit he drives Pandion’s breed, Whose nimble feet spring with so swift a force Across the fields, they seem to wing their course. And now on real wings themselves they raise, And steer their airy flight by different ways; One to the woodland’s shady covert hies, Around the smoky roof the other flies, Whose feathers yet the marks of murder stain, Where, stamp’d upon her breast, the crimson spots remain. Tereus, through grief, and haste to be revenged, Shares the like fate, and to a bird is changed: Fix’d on his head the crested plumes appear, Long is his beak, and sharpen’d like a spear: Thus arm’d, his looks his inward mind display, And, to a lapwing turn’d, he fans his way.