Book 3
though angry at his scorn, she only grieved.
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As often as the love-lore boy complained,
“Alas!” “Alas!” her echoing voice returned;
and as he struck his hands against his arms,
she ever answered with her echoing sounds.
And as he gazed upon the mirrored pool
he said at last, “Ah, youth beloved in vain!”
“In vain, in vain!” the spot returned his words;
and when he breathed a sad “farewell!” “Farewell!”
sighed Echo too. He laid his wearied head,
and rested on the verdant grass; and those
bright eyes, which had so loved to gaze, entranced,
on their own master's beauty, sad Night closed.
And now although among the nether shades
his sad sprite roams, he ever loves to gaze
on his reflection in the Stygian wave.
His Naiad sisters mourned, and having clipped
their shining tresses laid them on his corpse:
and all the Dryads mourned: and Echo made
lament anew. And these would have upraised
his funeral pyre, and waved the flaming torch,
and made his bier; but as they turned their eyes
where he had been, alas he was not there!
And in his body's place a sweet flower grew,
golden and white, the white around the gold.
Narcissus' fate, when known throughout the land
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and cities of Achaia, added fame
deserved, to blind Tiresias,—mighty seer.
Yet Pentheus, bold despiser of the Gods,
son of Echion, scoffed at all his praise,
and, sole of man deriding the great seer,
upbraided him his hapless loss of sight.
And shaking his white temples, hoar with age.
Tiresias of Pentheus prophesied,
“Oh glad the day to thee, if, light denied,
thine eyes, most fortunate, should not behold
the Bacchanalian rites! The day will come,
and soon the light will dawn, when Bacchus, born
of Semele, shall make his advent known—
all hail the new god Bacchus! Either thou