Metamorphoses

“The Lemnian God immediately threw open the folding doors of ivory, and admitted the Deities. There they lay disgracefully bound. And yet many a one of the Gods, not the serious ones, could fain wish thus to become disgraced. The Gods of heaven laughed, and for a long time was this the most noted story in all heaven. The Cytherean goddess exacts satisfaction of the Sun, in remembrance of this betrayal; and, in her turn, disturbs him with the like passion, who had disturbed her secret amours. What now, son of Hyperion, does thy beauty, thy heat, and thy radiant light avail thee? For thou, who dost burn all lands with thy flames, art now burnt with a new flame; and thou, who oughtst to be looking at everything, art gazing on Leucothoë, and on one maiden art fixing those eyes which thou oughtst to be fixing on the universe. At one time thou art rising earlier in the Eastern sky; at another thou art setting late in the waves; and in taking time to gaze on her , thou art lengthening the hours of mid-winter. Sometimes thou art eclipsed, and the trouble of thy mind affects thy light, and, darkened, thou fillest with terror the breasts of mortals. Nor art thou pale, because the form of the moon, nearer to the earth, stands in thy way. It is that passion which occasions this complexion. Thou lovest her alone, neither does Clymene, nor Rhodos, nor the most beauteous mother of the Ææan Circe engage thee, nor yet Clytie, who, though despised, was longing for thy embraces; at that very time thou wast suffering these grievous pangs. Leucothoë occasioned the forgetting of many a damsel; she, whom Eurynome, the most beauteous of the perfume-bearing nation produced. But after her daughter grew up, as much as the mother excelled all other Nymphs , so much did the daughter excel the mother. Her father, Orchamus, ruled over the Achæmenian cities, and he is reckoned the seventh in descent from the ancient Belus.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 4

Book 4, Line 11ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-4-11