Page:Metamorphoses.djvu/73

 through the pathless wastes until she came to Ladon's stream flowing peacefully along his sandy banks; how here, when the water checked her further flight, she besought her sisters of the stream to change her form; and how Pan, when now he thought he had caught Syrinx, instead of her held naught but marsh reeds in his arms; and while he sighed in disappointment, the soft air stirring in the reeds gave forth a low and complaining sound. Touched by this wonder and charmed by the sweet tones, the god exclaimed: "This union, at least, shall I have with thee." And so the pipes, made of unequal reeds fitted together by a joining of wax, took and kept the name of the maiden. When Mercury was going on to tell this story, he saw that all those eyes had yielded and were closed in sleep. Straightway he checks his words, and deepens Argus' slumber by passing his magic wand over those sleep-faint eyes. And forthwith he smites with his hooked sword the nodding head just where it joins the neck, and sends it bleeding down the rocks, defiling the rugged cliff with blood. Argus, thou liest low; the light which thou hadst within thy many fires is all put out; and one darkness fills thy hundred eyes.

Saturnia took these eyes and set them on the feathers of her bird, filling his tail with star-like jewels. Straightway she flamed with anger, nor did she delay the fulfilment of her wrath. She set a terror-bearing fury to work before the eyes and heart of her Grecian rival, planted deep within her breast a goading fear, and sent her fleeing in terror through all the world. Thou, O Nile, alone didst close her boundless toil. When she reached the stream, she flung herself down on her knees upon the river bank; with head thrown back she raised her face, 53