With coverings of Sidonian purple spread.

The feast of Venus came, a solemn day, To which the Cypriots due devotion pay; With gilded horns the milk-white heifers led, Slaughter’d before the sacred altars bled.

Pygmalion offering, first approach’d the shrine, And then with prayers implored the powers divine: Almighty gods, if all we mortals want, If all we can require, be yours to grant, Make this fair statue mine, he would have said, But changed his words for shame, and only pray’d, “Give me the likeness of my ivory maid.”