The Latian nymphs came round him, and amazed,
On the dead youth, transfix’d with thunder, gazed,
And, while yet smoking from the bolt he lay,
His shatter’d body to a tomb convey;
And o’er the tomb an epitaph devise:
“Here he who drove the sun’s bright chariot lies;
His father’s fiery steeds he could not guide,
But in the glorious enterprise he died.”
Apollo hid his face, and pined for grief,
And, if the story may deserve belief,
The space of one whole day is said to run,
From morn to wonted ev’n, without a sun;
The burning ruins, with a fainter ray,
Supply the sun, and counterfeit a day,
A day that still did Nature’s face disclose,
This comfort from the mighty mischief rose.
But Clymene, enraged with grief, laments,
And as her grief inspires her passion vents;
Wild for her son, and frantic in her woes,
With hair dishevell’d, round the world she goes
To seek where’er his body might be cast,
Till, on the borders of the Po, at last
The name inscribed on the new tomb appears
The dear, dear name she bathes in flowing tears,
Hangs o’er the tomb, unable to depart,
And hugs the marble to her throbbing heart.
Her daughters too lament, and sigh, and mourn
(A fruitless tribute to their brother’s urn),
And beat their naked bosoms, and complain,
And call aloud for Phaeton in vain;
All the long night their mournful watch they keep,
And all the day stand round the tomb and weep.
Four times, revolving, the full moon return’d,
So long the mother and the daughters mourn’d,
When now the eldest, Phaethusa, strove
To rest her weary limbs, but could not move;
Lampetia would have help’d her, but she found
Herself withheld and rooted to the ground;
A third, in wild affliction as she grieves,
Would rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves:
One sees her thighs transform’d, another views
Her arms slot out and branching into boughs,
And now their legs, and breasts, and bodies, stood
Crusted with bark, and harden’d into wood;
But still above were female heads display’d,
And mouths, that call’d the mother to their aid.
What could, alas! the weeping mother do?
From this to that with eager haste she flew,
And kiss’d her sprouting daughters as they grew;
She tears the bark that to each body cleaves;
And from their verdant fingers strips the leaves;
The blood came trickling where she tore away
The leaves and bark. The maids were heard to say
“Forbear, mistaken parent, O forbear!
A wounded daughter in each tree you tear;
Farewell for ever.” Here the bark increased,
Closed on their faces, and their words suppress’d.
The new-made trees in tears of amber run,
Which, harden’d into value by the sun,
Distil for ever on the stream below;
The limpid streams their radiant treasure show
Mix’d in the sand, whence the rich drops convey’d
Shine in the dress of the bright Latian maid.