Here ceased the nymph; the fair assembly broke,
The sea-green nereids to the waves betook;
While Scylla, fearful of the wide-spread main,
Swift to the safer shore returns again;
There o’er the sandy margin, unarray’d,
With printless footsteps, flies the bounding maid;
Or in some winding creek’s secure retreat
She bathes her weary limbs, and shuns the noonday heat.
Her, Glaucus saw, as o’er the deep he rode,
New to the seas, and late received a god.
He saw, and languish’d for the virgin’s love.
With many an artful blandishment he strove
Her flight to hinder, and her fears remove.
The more he sues, the more she wings her flight.
And nimbly gains a neighbouring mountain’s height
Steep shelving to the margin of the flood,
A neighbouring mountain bare and woodless stood.
Here, by the place secured, her steps she stay’d,
And, trembling still, her lover’s form survey’d.
His shape, his hue, her troubled sense appal,
And drooping locks, that o’er his shoulders fall;
She sees his face divine, and manly brow,
End in a fish’s writhy tail below;
She sees, and doubts within her anxious mind,
Whether he comes of god or monster kind.
This Glaucus soon perceived, and, “Oh, forbear!”
His hand supporting on a rock lay near,
“Forbear,” he cried, “fond maid, this needless fear;
Nor fish am I, nor monster of the main,
But equal with the watery gods I reign;
Nor Proteus, nor Palaemon me excel,
Nor he whose breath inspires the sounding shell.
My birth, ’tis true, I owe to mortal race,
And I myself but late a mortal was:
Ev’n then, in seas, and seas alone, I joy’d,
The seas my hours and all my cares employ’d.
In meshes now the twinkling prey I drew;
Now skilfully the slender line I threw,
And silent sat the moving float to view.
Not far from shore there lies a verdant mead,
With herbage half, and half with water spread:
There nor the horned heifers browsing stray,
Nor shaggy kids, nor wanton lambkins play:
There nor the sounding bees their nectar cull,
Nor rural swains their genial chaplets pull,
Nor flocks, nor herds, nor mowers, haunt the place,
To crop the flowers, or cut the bushy grass:
Thither sure first of living race came I,
And sat, by chance, my drooping nets to dry.
My scaly prize, in order all display’d,
By number on the greensward there I laid
My captives, which or in my nets I took,
Or hung unwary on my wily hook.
Strange to behold! yet what avails a lie?
I saw them bite the grass as I sat by,
Then sudden darting o’er the verdant plain,
They spread their fins, as in their native main;
I paused, with wonder’struck, while all my prey
Left their new master, and regain’d the sea.
Amazed, within my secret self I sought,
What god, what herb, the miracle had wrought.
“But sure no herbs have power like this,” I cried,
And straight I pluck’d some neighbouring herbs and tried.
Scarce had I bit, and proved the wondrous taste,
When strong convulsions shook my troubled breast,
I felt my heart grow fond of something strange,
And my whole nature labouring with a change.
Restless I grew, and ev’ry place forsook,
And still upon the seas I bent my look.
“Farewell for ever! farewell, land!” I said,
And plunged among the waves my sinking head.
The gentle powers, who that low empire keep,
Received me as a brother of the deep:
To Tethys, and to Ocean old they pray
To purge my mortal earthy parts away.
The watery parents to their suit agreed,
And thrice nine times a secret charm they read,
Then with lustrations purify my limbs,
And bid me bathe beneath a hundred streams:
A hundred streams from various fountains run,
And on my head at once come rushing down.
Thus far each passage I remember well,
And faithfully thus far the tale I tell;
But then oblivion dark on all my senses fell.
Again, at length, my thoughts reviving came,
When I no longer found myself the same;
Then first this sea-green beard I felt to grow,
And these large honours on my spreading brow,
My long descending locks the billows sweep,
And my broad shoulders cleave the yielding deep;
My fishy tail, my arms of azure hue,
And every part divinely changed, I view.
But what avails these useless honours now?
What joys can immortality bestow?
What, though our Nereids all my form approve?
What boots it, while fair Scylla scorns my love?”
Thus far the god; and more he would have said;
When from his presence flew the ruthless maid.
Stung with repulse, in such disdainful sort,
He seeks Titanian Circe’s horrid court.