Page:Metamorphoses.djvu/411

 METAMORPHOSES BOOK VII than its beauty; it goes straight to any mark, and chance does not guide its flight; and it flies back, all bloody, with no hand to bring it." Then indeed young Phocus was eager to know why it was so, and whence it came, who was the giver of so wonderful a gift. Cephalus told what the youth asked, but he was ashamed to tell at what price he gained it. He was silent; then, touched with grief for his lost wife, he burst into tears and said; " It is this weapon makes me weep, thou son of a goddess-who could believe it?-and long will it make me weep if the fates shall give me long life. This destroyed me and my dear wife together. And oh, that I had never had it! My wife was Procris, or, if by more likely chance the name of Orithyia has come to your ears, the sister of the ravished Orithyia. If you should compare the form and bearing of the two, Procris herself is the more worthy to be ravished away. It is she that her father, Erechtheus, joined to'me; it is she that love joined to me. I was called happy, and happy I was. But the gods decreed it otherwise, or, perchance, I should be happy still. It was in the second month after our marriage rites. s spreading my nets to catch the antlered deer, when from the top of ever-blooming Hymettus the golden goddess of the dawn, having put the shades to flight, beheld me and carried me away, against my will: may the goddess pardon me for telling the simple truth; but as truly as she shines with the blush of roses on her face, as truly as she holds the portals of the day and night, and drinks the juices of nectar, it was Procris I loved; Procris was in ny heart, Procris was ever on my lips. I kept talking of my wedding and its fresh joys of love and the first union of my now deserted couch. The 391