Metamorphoses

“ Not far from the walls of Henna there is a lake of deep water, Pergus by name; Cayster does not hear more songs of swans, in his running streams, than that. A wood skirts the lake, surrounding it on every side, and with its foliage, as though with an awning, keeps out the rays of the sun. The boughs produce a coolness, the moist ground flowers of Tyrian hue. There the spring is perpetual. In this grove, while Proserpina is amusing herself, and is plucking either violets or white lilies, and while, with childlike eagerness, she is filling her baskets and her bosom, and is striving to outdo her companions of the same age in gathering, almost at the same instant she is beheld, beloved, and seized by Pluto; in such great haste is love. The Goddess, affrighted, with lamenting lips calls both her mother and her companions, but more frequently her mother; and as she has torn her garment from the upper edge, the collected flowers fall from her loosened robes. So great, too, is the innocence of her childish years, this loss excites the maiden’s grief as well. The ravisher drives on his chariot, and encourages his horses, called, each by his name, along whose necks and manes he shakes the reins, dyed with swarthy rust. He is borne through deep lakes, and the pools of the Palici, smelling strong of sulphur, and boiling fresh from out of the burst earth; and where the Bacchiadæ, a race sprung from Corinth, with its two seas, built a city between unequal harbors.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 5

Book 5, Line 19ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-5-19