MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
Reading edition
VENUS AND ASTERY
A LEGEND OF THE GODS. (a)
Ah! hapless nymph! Doomed for a time to bear The badge which none but fickle lives should wear. How oft the envious tongue creates the dart That cleaves the saintly soul and breaks the heart: How oft the hasty ear full credence gives To words in which no grain of truth survives: Were Juno just, her heart would now delight Turning thy dappled wings to waxen white, Where jealous Venus and her envious train By falsehood fixed an undeserved stain.
(a) Astery, one of the most beautiful of Venus's nymphs, and, as Spenser says,
"Excelling all the crew In courteous usage and unstained hue,"
Is said to have been instructed "on a day" by her mistress to go forth with her companions gathering flowers with which to adorn her forehead. She did so, and being more industrious than the rest, gathered more flowers than any of them. On being praised by Venus, her companions, being envious of her, told the goddess that Astery had been assisted by Cupid, Venus's son, in culling the blossoms. For this supposed offence she was immediately turned by Venus into a butterfly, and her wings, which before were white, were stained with the colours of all the flowers she had gathered, "for memory of her pretended crime, though crime none were."—Spenser's "Muiopotmos", 1576.