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They felt themselves now changing. Down their arms, Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast, And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form Catched, by contagion, like in punishment, As in their crime. Thus the applause they meant, Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame, Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change, His will who reigns above, to aggravate Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve Used by the tempter. On that prospect strange Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining For one forbidden tree a multitude Now risen, to work them further woe or shame. Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce, Though to delude them sent, could not abstain; But on they rolled in heaps, and up the trees Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curled Megæra.1 Greedily they plucked The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed; This more delusive, not the touch, but taste Deceived. They, fondly thinking to allay Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste With spattering noise rejected. Oft they assayed, Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft, With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws, With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell Into the same illusion, not as Man Whom they triumphed once lapsed. Thus they were plagued And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss, Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed,

This said, they both betook them several ways.

Book X., line 610.

Snaky locks that curled Megara.—A name given to the avenging deities—the Furies.