Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/122

114 shalt hold him caught and fettered in thine hands, even then the form and visage of manifold wild beasts shall mock thee; for in a moment he will turn to a bristly boar or a black tiger, a scaly serpent and tawny-necked lioness, or will roar shrill in flame and so slip out of the fetters, or will melt into thin water and be gone. But the more he changes into endless shapes, the more do thou, my son, strain tight the grasp of his fetters, until his body change again into the likeness thou sawest when his eyes drooped and his sleep began.

So says she and sprinkles on him liquid scent of ambrosia, anointing with it all the body of her son: but his ranged curls breathed a sweet fragrance, and supple strength grew in his limbs. There is a vast cave in the hollowed mountain side, where countless waves are driven before the gale and break among the deep recesses: of old a sure anchorage for mariners caught by storm; within it Proteus takes shelter behind the barrier of a mighty rock. Here the Nymph places her son in hiding away from the light, and herself stands apart dim in a mist. Now fierce Sirius blazed from the sky, scorching the thirsty Indian, and the fiery sun had swept to his mid arch: the grass was parched, and in hollow river-beds, dry-mouthed, the heated mud baked in his rays; when Proteus advanced from the waves to seek his familiar cavern; around him the wet tribes of the mighty deep gambolling splashed wide the briny spray. His seals stretch themselves asleep here and there along the shore; he, as some guardian of a