"Lamia!" he cried-and no soft-toned reply. The many heard, and the loud revelry Grew hush the stately music no more breathes; And not a man but felt the terror in his hair. With its sad echo did the silence break. "Begone, foul dream!" he cried, gazing again Turn them aside, wretch! or the righteous ban Corinthians! look upon that gray-beard wretch! Around his demon eyes! Corinthians, see! moan From Lycius answer'd, as heart-struck and lost; Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly, round Supported him no pulse or breath they found, And, in its marriage robe, the heavy body wound.* * "Philostratus, in his fourth book, de Vita Apollonii, hath a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that, going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phan tasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which, taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she, being fair and lovely, would die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no substance, but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant; many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece."-BURTON's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 3, Sect. 2, Memb. I. Subs. I. |