Book 13
he swam towards her. His shape had been transformed
898
but lately for this watery life, while he
was living at Anthedon in Euboea.—
now he is lingering from desire for her
he saw there and speaks whatever words
he thought might stop her as she fled from him.
Yet still she fled from him, and swift through fear,
climbed to a mountain top above the sea.
Facing the waves, it rose in one huge peak,
parting the waters with a forest crown.
She stood on that high summit quite secure:
and, doubtful whether he might be a god
or monster, wondered at his flowing hair
which covered his broad shoulders and his back,—
and marvelled at the color of his skin
and at his waist merged into a twisted fish.
All this he noticed, and while leaning there
against a rock that stood near by, he said: —
“I am no monster, maiden, I am not
a savage beast; I am in truth a god
of waters, with such power upon the seas
as that of Proteus, Triton, or Palaemon—
reared on land the son of Athamas.
“Not long ago I was a mortal man,
yet even then my thought turned to the sea
and all my living came from waters deep,
for I would drag the nets that swept up fish,
or, seated on a rock, I flung the line
forth from the rod. The shore I loved was near
a verdant meadow. One side were the waves,
the other grass, which never had been touched
by horned, grazing cattle. Harmless sheep
and shaggy goats had never cropped it—no
industrious bee came there to harvest flowers;
no festive garlands had been gathered there,
adornments of the head; no mower's hands
had ever cut it. I was certainly
the first who ever sat upon that turf,—
while I was drying there the dripping nets.
And so that I might in due order count
