HKB
whom once made captive, ply With rigorous force and fetters; against these His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain. I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires, When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade, Myself will guide thee to the old man's haunt, Whither he hies him weary from the waves, That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep. But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve, Then divers forms and bestial semblances Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled, And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of The fetters, or in showery drops anon Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts His endless transformations, thou, my son, More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until His body's shape return to that thou sawest, When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep." So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew She sheds around, and all his frame therewith Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up Its inmost creeks- safe anchorage from of old For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin, Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides. Here in close covert out of the sun's eye The youth she places, and herself the while Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof. And now the ravening dog-star that burns up The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray, When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave Strode from the billows: round him frolicking The watery folk that people the waste sea Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide. Along the shore in scattered groups to feed The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself, Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids The steers from pasture to their stall repair, And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves, Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale. But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch, Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs, With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless, All unforgetful of his ancient craft, Transforms himself to every wondrous thing, Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream. But when no trickery found a path for flight, Baffled at length, to his own shape returned, With human lips he spake, "Who bade thee, then, So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?"- But he, "Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest; For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou To practise upon me: at heaven's behest I for my fainting fortunes hither come An oracle to ask thee." There he ceased.