Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/150

 Ye might have seene hir limmes wex lithe, ye might have bent hir bones. Hir nayles wext soft: and first of all did melt the smallest ones: As haire and fingars, legges and feete: for these same slender parts Doe quickly into water turne, and afterward converts To water, shoulder, backe, brest, side: and finally in stead Of lively bloud, within hir veynes corrupted there was spred Thinne water: so that nothing now remained whereupon Ye might take holde, to water all consumed was anon. The carefull mother in the while did seeke hir daughter deare Through all the world both Sea and Land, and yet was nere the neare. The Morning with hir deawy haire hir slugging never found, Nor yet the Evening star that brings the night upon the ground. Two seasoned Pynetrees at the mount of Aetna did she light And bare them restlesse in hir handes through all the dankish night. Againe as soone as chierfull day did dim the starres, she sought Hir daughter still from East to West. And being overwrought She caught a thirst: no liquor yet had come within hir throte. By chaunce she spied nere at hand a pelting thatched Cote Wyth peevish doores: she knockt thereat, and out there commes a trot. The Goddesse asked hir some drinke and she denide it not: But out she brought hir by and by a draught of merrie go downe And therewithall a Hotchpotch made of steeped Barlie browne And Flaxe and Coriander seede and other simples more The which she in an Earthen pot together sod before. While Ceres was a eating this, before hir gazing stood A hard faaste boy, a shrewde pert wag, that could no maners good: He laughed at hir and in scorne did call hir greedie gut. The Goddesse being wroth therewith, did on the Hotchpotch put The liquor ere that all was eate, and in his face it threw. Immediatly the skinne thereof became of speckled hew, And into legs his armes did turne: and in his altred hide A wrigling tayle streight to his limmes was added more beside. And to th'intent he should not have much powre to worken scathe, His bodie in a little roume togither knit she hathe. For as with pretie Lucerts he in facion doth agree: So than the Lucert somewhat lesse in every poynt is he. The poore old woman was amazde: and bitterly she wept: