Book 10
to help him cross the River Styx again,
1
but was denied the very hope of death.
Seven days he sat upon Death's river bank,
in squalid misery and without all food—
nourished by grief, anxiety, and tears—
complaining that the Gods of Erebus
were pitiless, at last he wandered back,
until he came to lofty Rhodope
and Haemus, beaten by the strong north wind.
Three times the Sun completed his full course
to watery Pisces, and in all that time,
shunning all women, Orpheus still believed
his love-pledge was forever. So he kept
away from women, though so many grieved,
because he took no notice of their love.
The only friendship he enjoyed was given
to the young men of Thrace.
which rose up to a level plateau, high
and beautiful with green grass; and there was
not any shade for comfort on the top
and there on that luxuriant grass the bard,
while heaven-inspired reclined, and struck
such harmonies on his sweet lyre that shade
most grateful to the hill was spread around.
Strong trees came up there—the Chaonian oak
the Heliads' poplar, and the lofty-branched
deep mast-tree, the soft linden and the beech,
the brittle hazel, and the virgin laurel-tree,
the ash for strong spears, the smooth silver-fir,
the flex bent with acorns and the plane,
the various tinted maple and with those,
the lotus and green willows from their streams,
evergreen box and slender tamarisks,
rich myrtles of two colors and the tine,
bending with green-blue berries: and you, too,
the pliant-footed ivy, came along
with tendril-branching grape-vines, and the elm
all covered with twist-vines, the mountain-ash,
pitch-trees and arbute-trees of blushing fruit,
