Metamorphoses

Ovid

Ovid. Metamorphoses. More, Brookes, translator. Boston: Cornhill Publishing Co., 1922.

  1. An old man saw the two birds fly across
  2. the wide extended sea and praised their love,
  3. undying to the end. His old friend who
  4. stood near him, said, “There is another bird,
  5. which you can see skimming above the waves
  6. with folded legs drawn up;” and as he spoke,
  7. he pointed at a divedapper, which had
  8. a long throat, and continued, “It was first
  9. the son of a great king, as Ceyx, was:
  10. and if you wish to know his ancestry,
  11. I can assure you he descended from
  12. Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede—
  13. taken by Jupiter, and old Laomedon,
  14. and Priam, ruler at the fall of Troy.
  15. “Aesacus was the brother of the great
  16. illustrious Hector; and, if he had not
  17. been victimized by a strange fate in youth,
  18. he would have equalled Hector's glorious fame,
  19. Hector was child of Hecuba, who was
  20. daughter of Dymas. Alexirhoe,
  21. the daughter of the two-horned Granicus,
  22. so rumor has it, secretly brought forth
  23. Aesacus, hidden under Ida's shade.
  24. “He loathed the city and away from court,
  25. frequented lonely mountains and the fields
  26. of unambitious peasants. Rarely he
  27. was seen among the throngs of Ilium.—
  28. yet, neither churlish nor impregnable
  29. to love's appeal, he saw Hesperia,
  30. the daughter of Cebrenus, while she was
  31. once resting on the velvet-shaded banks
  32. of her sire's cherished stream. Aesacus had
  33. so often sought for her throughout the woods.
  34. “Just when he saw her, while she rested there,
  35. her hair spread on her shoulders to the sun,
  36. she saw him, and without delay she fled,
  37. even as the frightened deer runs from the wolf
  38. or as the water-duck, when she has left
  39. her favored stream, surprised, flies from the hawk.
  40. Aesacus followed her, as swift with love
  41. as she was swift with fear. But in the grass
  42. a lurking snake struck at her rosy heel
  43. and left its venom in her flesh.—And so,
  44. her flight was ended by untimely death.
  45. “Oh, frantic, he embraced her breathless form,
  46. and cried: ‘Alas, alas, that I pursued!
  47. I did not dream of such a dreadful fate!
  48. Success was not worth such a price
  49. I and the snake together caused your death—
  50. the serpent gave the wound, I was the cause.
  51. Mine is the greater guilt, and by my death
  52. I'll give you consolation for your death!’ ”
  53. “He said those words and leaped on a high rock,
  54. which years of sounding waves had undermined,
  55. and hurled himself into the sea below.
  56. “Tethys was moved with pity for his fall,
  57. received him softly, and then covered him
  58. with feathers, as he swam among the waves.
  59. The death he sought for was not granted him.
  60. At this the lover was wroth. Against his will,
  61. he was obliged to live in his distress,
  62. with opposition to his spirit that desired
  63. departure from the wretched pain of life.
  64. “As he assumed upon his shoulders wings
  65. newformed, he flew aloft and from that height
  66. again he plunged his body in the waves
  67. his feathers broke all danger of that fall—
  68. and this new bird, Aesacus, plunged headlong
  69. into the deep, and tried incessantly
  70. that method of destruction. His great love
  71. unsatisfied, made his sad body lean,
  72. till even the spaces fixed between the joints
  73. of his legs have grown long; his neck is long;
  74. so that his head is far away from his
  75. lean body. Still he hunts the sea
  76. and takes his name from diving in the waves.