Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/192

 Before the Altars. Then with charmes she cast him in so deepe A slumber, that upon the herbes he lay for dead asleepe. Which done she willed Jason thence a great way off to go And likewise all the Ministers that served hir as tho: And not presume those secretes with unhallowed eyes to see. They did as she commaunded them. When all were voyded, shee With scattred haire about hir eares like one of Bacchus froes Devoutly by and by about the burning Altars goes: And dipping in the pits of bloud a sort of clifted brandes Upon the Altars kindled them that were on both hir handes. And thrise with brimstone, thrise with fire, and thrise with water pure She purged Aesons aged corse that slept and slumbred sure. The medicine seething all the while a wallop in a pan Of brasse, to spirt and leape aloft and gather froth began. There boyled she the rootes, seedes, flowres, leaves, stalkes and juice togither Which from the fieldes of Thessalie she late had gathered thither. She cast in also precious stones fetcht from the furthest East And, which the ebbing Ocean washt, fine gravell from the West. She put thereto the deaw that fell upon a Monday night: And flesh and feathers of a Witch, a cursed odious wight Which in the likenesse of an Owle abrode a nightes did flie, And Infants in their cradels chaunge or sucke them that they die. The singles also of a Wolfe which when he list could take The shape of man, and when he list the same againe forsake. And from the River Cyniphis which is in Lybie lande She had the fine sheere scaled filmes of water snayles at hand. And of an endlesselived hart the liver had she got, To which she added of a Crowe that then had lived not So little as nine hundred yeares the head and Bill also. Now when Medea had with these and with a thousand mo Such other kinde of namelesse things bestead hir purpose through For lengthning of the old mans life, she tooke a withered bough Cut lately from an Olyf tree, and jumbling all togither Did raise the bottome to the brim: and as she stirred hither And thither with the withered sticke, behold it waxed greene. Anon the leaves came budding out: and sodenly were seene As many berries dangling downe as well the bough could beare.