Meantime the wretched Cadmus mourns, nor knows
That they who mortal fell, immortal rose.
With a long series of new ills oppress’d,
He droops, and all the man forsakes his breast:
Strange prodigies confound his frighted eyes;
From the fair city, which he raised, he flies;
As it misfortune not pursued his race,
But only hung o’er that devoted place.
Resolved by sea to seek some distant land,
At last he safely gain’d the Illyrian strand.
Cheerless himself, his consort still he cheers,
Hoary, and laden both with woes and years.
Then to recount past sorrows they begin,
And trace them to the gloomy origin.
“That serpent sure was hallow’d,” Cadmus cried,
“Which once my spear transfix’d with foolish pride;
When the big teeth, a seed before unknown,
By me along the wond’ring glebe were sown,
And sprouting armies by themselves o’erthrown.
If thence the wrath of heaven on me is bent,
May heaven conclude it with one sad event;
To an extended serpent change the man;”
And, while he spoke, the wish’d-for change began.
His skin with sea-green spots was varied round,
And on his belly prone he press’d the ground;
He glitter’d soon with many a golden scale,
And his shrunk legs closed in a spiry tail;
Arms yet remain’d, remaining arms he spread
To his loved wife, and human tears yet shed.
“Come, my Harmonia, come, thy face recline
Down to my face; still touch what still is mine.
O! let these hands, while hands, be gently press’d,
While yet the serpent has not all possess’d.”
More he had spoke, but strove to speak in vain,
The forky tongue refused to tell his pain,
And learn’d in hissings only to complain.
Then shriek’d Harmonia: “Stay, my Cadmus, stay,
Glide not in such a monstrous shape away!
Destruction, like impetuous waves, rolls on.
Where are thy feet, thy legs, thy shoulders, gone?
Changed is thy visage, changed is all thy frame,
Cadmus is only Cadmus now in name.
Ye gods, my Cadmus to himself restore,
Or me like him transform; I ask no more.”
The husband serpent show’d he still had thought,
With wonted fondness an embrace he sought,
Play’d round her neck in many a harmless twist,
And lick’d that bosom which, a man, he kiss’d.
The lookers-on (for lookers-on there were),
Shock’d at the sight, half died away with fear.
The transformation was again renew’d,
And, like the husband, changed the wife they view’d.
Both serpents now, with fold involved in fold,
To the next covert amicably roll’d.
There curl’d they lie, or wave along the green,
Fearless see men, by men are fearless seen,
Still mild, and conscious what they once have been.