Metamorphoses

“ Thus he spoke; still Ceres is now resolved to fetch away her daughter; but not so do the Fates permit. For the damsel had broke her fast; and, while in her innocence she was walking about the finely-cultivated garden, she had plucked a pomegranate from the bending tree, and had chewed in her mouth seven grains taken from the pale rind. Ascalaphus alone, of all persons, had seen this, whom Orphne, by no means the most obscure among the Nymphs of Avernus, is said once to have borne to her own Acheron within his dusky caves. He beheld this , and cruelly prevented her return by his discovery. The Queen of Erebus grieved, and changed the informer into an accursed bird, and turned his head, sprinkled with the waters of Phlegethon, into a beak, and feathers, and great eyes. He, thus robbed of his own shape , is clothed with tawny wings, his head becomes larger, his long nails bend inwards, and with difficulty can he move the wings that spring through his sluggish arms. He becomes an obscene bird, the foreboder of approaching woe, a lazy owl, a direful omen to mortals.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 5

Book 5, Line 27ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-5-27