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 undeservëd 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.