第22章 GEORGIC IV(5)

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 Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;Matrons and men, and great heroic frames Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls, Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.

Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed, Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast, Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.

Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides, Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined;Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape, And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.