Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/176

48 What art thou, stranger? What the line you boast? What chance has cast thee panting on our coast? With strictest truth let all thy words agree, Nor let me find a faithless mouse in thee. If worthy friendship, proffer'd friendship take, And entering view the pleasurable lake: Range o'er my palace, in my bounty share, And glad return from hospitable fare. This silver realm extends beneath my sway, And me, their monarch, all its frogs obey. Great Physignathus I, from Peleus' race, Begot in fair Hydromeduse' embrace, Where by the nuptial bank that paints his side, The swift Eridanus delights to glide. Thee too, thy form, thy strength, and port proclaim A sceptred king ; a son of martial fame; Then trace thy line, and aid my guessing eyes. Thus ceas'd the frog, and thus the mouse replies.

Known to the gods, the men, the birds that fly Through wild expanses of the midway sky, My name resounds; and if unknown to thee, The soul of great Psycarpax lives in me, Of brave Troxartes' line, whose sleeky down In love compress'd Lychomile the brown. My mother she, and princess of the plains Where'er her father Pternotroctes reigns: Born where a cabin lifts its airy shed, With figs, with nuts, with varied dainties fed. But since our natures nought in common know