Page:Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages.djvu/43

Rh The queen with faltering speech he thut addrest: "O, fill with gold thy true adorer's chest!"


 * "Behold, said she, and wav'd her powerful hand,

"Where yon rich hills in glittering order stand: "There load thy coffer with the golden store; "Then bear it full away, and ask no more."


 * With eager steps he took his hasty way,

Where the bright coin in heaps unnumber'd lay; Scoop'd the gay dross, and bent beneath the toil. But bitter was his anguish, to behold The coffer widen, and its sides unfold: And every time he heap'd the darling ore, His greedy chest grew larger than before; Till, silent with pain, and falling o'er his hoard. With his sharp steel his maddening breast he gor'd: On the lov'd heap he call his closing eye, Contented on a golden couch to die.

A stripling, with the fair adventure pleas'd,
 * Stepp'd forward, and the massy coffer seiz'd;

But