Now the ninth day, and ninth successive night, Had wonder’d at the restless rover’s flight; Meanwhile her dragons, fed with no repast, But her exhaling simples’ od’rous blast, Their tarnish’d scales and wrinkled skins had cast. At last return’d before her palace gate, Quitting her chariot, on the ground she sate, The sky her only canopy of state. All conversation with her sex she fled, Shunn’d the caresses of the nuptial bed; Two altars next of grassy turf she rears, This Hecate’s name, that youth’s inscription bears; With forest boughs and vervain these she crown’d, Then delves a double trench in lower ground, And sticks a black-fleeced ram, that ready stood, And drench’d the ditches with devoted blood: New wine she pours, and milk from the udder warm, With mystic murmurs to complete the charm, And subterranean deities alarm. To the stern king of ghosts she next applied, And gentle Proserpine, his injured bride, That for old Aeson with the laws of fate They would dispense, and lengthen his short date. Thus with repeated prayers she long assails