Kitap 9
this infant from my branches to a nurse;
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and let him often play beneath his tree,—
his mother always. Let him drink his milk
beneath my shade. When he has learned to talk
let him salute me, and in sorrow say
“In this tree-trunk my mother is concealed.”
O, let him dread the fate that lurks in ponds,
and let him often play beneath his tree,—
and let him be persuaded every shrub
contains the body of a goddess. — Ah!
Farewell my husband,—sister, — and farewell
my father! If my love remain in you
remember to protect my life from harm,
so that the pruning-knife may never clip
my branches, and protect my foliage from
0h, if you love me, lift your lips to mine,
and let me kiss you, if but once again,
before this growing lotus covers me.
Lift up my darling infant to my lips.
How can I hope to say much more to you?
The new bark now is creeping up my neck,
and creeping downward from my covered brow!
Ah, do not close my live eyes with your hands;
there is no need of it, for growing bark
will spread and darken them before I die!’
Such were the last words her poor smothered lips
could utter; for she was so quickly changed;
and long thereafter the new branches kept
the warmth of her lost body, so transformed.”
And all the while that Iole told this,
tearful in sorrow for her sister's fate,
Alcmena weeping, tried to comfort her.
But as they wept together, suddenly
a wonderful event astonished them;
for, standing in the doorway, they beheld
the old man Iolaus, known to them,
but now transformed from age to youth, he seemed
almost a boy, with light down on his cheeks:
