Georgics

Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind

That he may all the cause of sickness show,

And grant a prosperous end. For save by force

No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend

His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply

With rigorous force and fetters; against these

His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain.

I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires,

When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade,

Myself will guide thee to the old man's haunt,

Whither he hies him weary from the waves,

That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep.

But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve,

Then divers forms and bestial semblances

Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change

To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled,

And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth

A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of

The fetters, or in showery drops anon

Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts

His endless transformations, thou, my son,

More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until

His body's shape return to that thou sawest,

When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep.”

So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew

She sheds around, and all his frame therewith

Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks

Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt

Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast

Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave

By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up

Its inmost creeks—safe anchorage from of old

For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin,

Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides.

Here in close covert out of the sun's eye

The youth she places, and herself the while

Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof.

And now the ravening dog-star that burns up

The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course

The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades

Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws

Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray,

When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave

Strode from the billows: round him frolicking

The watery folk that people the waste sea

Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide.

Along the shore in scattered groups to feed

The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself,

Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids

The steers from pasture to their stall repair,

And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves,

Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale.

But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch,

Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs,

With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose

Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless,

All unforgetful of his ancient craft,

Transforms himself to every wondrous thing,

Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream.

But when no trickery found a path for flight,

Baffled at length, to his own shape returned,

With human lips he spake, “Who bade thee, then,

So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront

Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?”—But he,

“Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest;

For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou

To practise upon me: at heaven's behest

I for my fainting fortunes hither come

An oracle to ask thee.” There he ceased.

Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained,

Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes

Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth

Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:

“Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus,

Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self,

Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his,

So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires,

Yet madly raging for his ravished bride.

She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit

Along the stream, saw not the coming death,

Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank

In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake.

But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers

Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks:

Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope,

And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars,

The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less

With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept,

Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self,

Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell,

Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone,

Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang.

Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,

Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove

Grim with a horror of great darkness—came,

Entered, and faced the Manes and the King

Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame.

Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus,

Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades

Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms