While Hermes piped, and sung, and told his tale, The keeper’s winking eyes began to fail, And drowsy slumber on the lids to creep, Till all the watchman was at length asleep. Then soon the god his voice and song suppress’d, And with his powerful rod confirm’d his rest; Without delay his crooked falchion drew, And at one fatal stroke the keeper slew. Down from the rock fell the dissever’d head, Opening its eyes in death, and falling, bled, And mark’d the passage with a crimson trail: Thus Argus lies in pieces, cold and pale, And all his hundred eyes, with all their light, Are closed at once in one perpetual night. These Juno takes, that they no more way fail, And spreads them in her peacock’s gaudy tail.