Famed far and near for knowing things to come,
From him the inquiring nations sought their doom.
The fair Liriope his answers tried,
And first the unerring prophet justified.
This nymph the god Cephisus had abused,
With all his winding waters circumfused,
And by the Nereid had a lovely boy,
Whom the soft maids ev’n then beheld with joy.
The tender dame, solicitous to know
Whether her child should reach old age or no,
Consults the sage Tiresias; who replies,
“If e’er he knows himself he surely dies.”
Long lived the dubious mother in suspense,
Till time unriddled all the prophet’s sense.
Narcissus now his sixteenth year began,
Just turn’d of boy, and on the verge of man;
Many a friend the blooming youth caress’d,
Many a lovesick maid in vain her flame confess’d,
Such was his pride, in vain the friend caress’d,
The lovesick maid in vain her flame confess’d.
Once, in the woods, as he pursued the chase,
The babbling Echo had descried his face,
She, who in other words her silence breaks,
Nor speaks herself but when another speaks.
Echo was then a maid of speech bereft,
Of wonted speech; for though her voice was left,
Juno a curse did on her tongue impose,
To sport with every sentence in the close.
Full often when the goddess might have caught
Jove and her rivals in the very fault,
This nymph with subtle stories would delay
Her coming, till the lovers slipp’d away.
The goddess found out the deceit in time,
And then she cried, “That tongue, for this thy crime,
Which could so many subtle tales produce,
Shall be hereafter but of little use.”
Hence ’tis she prattles in a fairer tone,
With mimic sounds and accents not her own.
This lovesick virgin, overjoy’d to find
The boy alone, still follow’d him behind;
When glowing warmly at her near approach,
As sulphur blazes at the taper’s touch,
She long’d her hidden passion to reveal
And tell her pains, but had not words to tell;
She can’t begin, but waits for the rebound
To catch his voice, and to return the sound.
The nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move,
Still dash’d with blushes for her slighted love,
Lived in the shady covert of the woods,
In solitary caves and dark abodes,
Where pining wander’d the rejected fair,
Till harass’d out and worn away with care,
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft,
Besides her bones and voice, had nothing left.
Her bones are petrified, her voice is found
In vaults, where still it doubles every sound.