Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/498

486 And the shrill whistle of the boatswain's pipe Seemed as a whisper in the ear of death ;— Born when her mother died! That fatal hour Must still live with me.—O you gracious gods! Why do you make us love your goodly gifts, And snatch them straight away? The waves received My queen. A sea-mate's chest coffined her corpse; In which she silent lies 'midst groves of coral, Or in a glittering bed of shining shells. The air-fed lamps of heaven, the spouting whale, And dashing waters that roll o'er her head, Compose a monument to hide her bones, Spacious as heaven, and lasting as the frame Of universal nature."

When Pericles is informed of the death of his child, the mutability of human affairs rushes upou his mind.


 * "Once, princes sat, like stars, about my throne,

And veiled their crowns to my supremacy: Then, like the sun, all paid me reverence For what I was; and all the grateful loved me