Three times the ever-wheeling sun had come
to Pisces’ watery sign. Three years had gone;
and Orpheus, in all that time, had shunned
the love of women; this, for his misfortune,
or for his having pledged his heart to one—
and to no other—woman. That did not
prevent their wanting him; and many sought
the poet—all those women met repulse
and grief. Indeed, he was the one who taught
the Thracian men this practice: they bestow
their love on tender boys, and so enjoy
firstfruits, the brief springtime, the flowers of youth.
Latin [67–85]
There was a hill and, on that hill, a glade,
an ample span of meadow grass, a plain
that was endowed with green but had no shade.
Yet when the poet, heaven-born, would play
on his resounding lyre, shade on shade
would seek that glade. Together with the tree
of the Chaonians, these came to listen:
the tall and leafy oak, the tender linden;
the poplar, shape that suited Helios’ daughters;
the willow, most at home near flowing waters;
the virgin laurel, beech, and brittle hazel;
the ash, so fit for fashioning spear shafts;
the silver-fir with its smooth trunk, the myrtle
with its two hues, and the delightful platan;
the maple with its shifting colors, and
the water-loving lotus, evergreen
boxwood, as well as slender tamarisk;
and with its deep-blue berries, the viburnum;
and bent beneath its acorns’ weight, the ilex.
You, ivy, with your feet that twist and flex,
came, too; and at your side came tendrils rich
with clustered grapes, and elm trees draped with vines;
the mountain-ash, the pitch-pine, the arbutus
red with its fruits, the pliant palm, the prize
of victors; and that pine which tucks its boughs
up high to form its shaggy crown—the tree
dear to the mother of the gods, Cybele,
if it be true that Attis, for her sake,
shed his own human form, that he might take
the stiff trunk of that pine as his new shape.
The cone-shaped cypress joined this crowd of trees:
though now a tree, it once had been a boy—
the boy beloved by the god who makes
the bowstring and the lyre’s strings vibrate.
For, sacred to the nymphs who make their home
on the Carthaean plain, a stag once roamed—
Latin [86–110]
a stately stag whose antlers were so broad
that they provided ample shade for him.
Those antlers gleamed with gold; down to his chest,
a collar rich with gems hung from his neck;
upon his forehead, dangling from thin thongs,
there was a silver boss, one he had worn
from birth; against his hollow temples glowed
pearl earrings. And that stag forgot his own
timidity and, without fear, approached
the homes of men; he let his neck be stroked
by all—yes, even those he did not know.
But, Cyparissus, it was you to whom
he was most dear. You, handsomest of all
the Ceans, let him out to pastures new
and to the waters of the purest springs.
Now you weave varied garlands for his horns;
or, seated like a horseman on his back—
now here, now there—you ride him joyfully
with purple reins that guide his tender mouth.
But once, at high noon on a summer day,
when, heated by the sun’s most torrid rays,
the curving claws of the shore-loving Crab
were blazing on the grassy ground, the stag
lay down to rest, to seek cool woodland shade.
And it was then that, accidentally,
a javelin’s sharp shaft—it had been cast
by Cyparissus—pierced the stag; the wound
was fierce, the stag was dying: and at that,
the boy was set on dying, too. Oh, Phoebus
tried words that could console the boy: indeed
he urged him to restrain his grief, to keep
some sense of measure. But the boy did not
relent; he moaned still more; he begged the gods
to grant this greatest gift: to let him grieve
forever. As his lifeblood drained away
with never-ending tears, his limbs began
to take a greenish cast; and the soft hair
Latin [110–38]
that used to cluster on his snow-white brow
became a bristling crest. The boy was now
a rigid tree with frail and spiring crown
that gazes on the heavens and the stars.
The god, in sadness, groaned. He said: “I’ll mourn
for you, and you shall mourn for others—and
beside the mourners, you shall always stand.”