Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

APOLLO 237
all-consuming fire and fueled his love with fruitless hope. He sees her hair lying
unadorned upon her neck and says, "What if it were adorned?" He sees her
flashing eyes like stars; he sees her lips—and merely to see is not enough. He
praises her fingers, hands, arms, and shoulders half-bared; those parts which
are covered he thinks more beautiful.
Swifter than the wind, Daphne runs from him and stays not to hear him call
her back: "Stay, nymph! Stay, daughter of Peneus, I pray! I am not an enemy
who pursues you. Stay, nymph! A lamb runs like this from the wolf, a hind from
the lion, doves with fluttering wings from the eagle. Each kind runs from its enemy;
love makes me pursue! Oh, take care you do not fall; let not the thorns
scratch those legs that never should be marred and I be the cause of your hurt!
Rough is the place where you run; run more slowly, I beg, and I will pursue
more slowly. Yet consider who loves you; I am not a mountain peasant; I am
not an uncouth shepherd who watches here his flocks and herds. Unheeding
you know not whom you try to escape, and therefore do you run. I am lord of
Delphi, of Claros, Tenedos, and royal Patara; Jupiter is my father! I show the future,
the past, the present; through me came the harmony of lyre and song! Unerring
are my arrows, yet one arrow is yet more unerring and has wounded my
heart, before untouched. The healing art is mine; throughout the world am I
called the Bringer of Help; the power of herbs is mine to command. Ah me! for
no herb can remedy love; the art which heals all cannot heal its master!"
Even as he spoke, Daphne fled from him and ran on in fear; then too she
seemed lovely—the wind laid bare her body, and her clothes fluttered as she ran
and her hair streamed out behind. In flight she was yet more beautiful. Yet the
young god could not bear to have his words of love go for nothing; driven on by
love he followed at full speed. Even as a Gallic hound sees a hare in an empty field
and pursues its prey as it runs for safety—the one seems just to be catching the
quarry and expects each moment to have gripped it; with muzzle at full stretch it
is hot on the other's tracks; the other hardly knows if it has been caught and avoids
the snapping jaws—so the god chased the virgin: hope gave him speed; her speed
came from fear. Yet the pursuer gains, helped by the wings of love; he gives her
no respite; he presses hard upon her and his breath ruffles the hair upon her neck.
Now Daphne's strength was gone, drained by the effort of her flight, and
pale she saw Peneus' waters. "Help me, Father," she cried, "if a river has power;
change me and destroy my beauty which has proved too attractive!" Hardly had
she finished her prayer when her limbs grew heavy and sluggish; thin bark enveloped
her soft breasts; her hair grew into leaves, her arms into branches. Her
feet, which until now had run so swiftly, held fast with clinging roots. Her face
was the tree's top; only her beauty remains.
Even in this form Apollo loves her; placing his hand on the trunk he felt the
heart beating beneath the new-formed bark. Embracing the branches, as if they
were human limbs, he kisses the wood; yet the wood shrinks from his kisses.
"Since you cannot be my wife," said he, "you shall be my tree. Always you shall
wreathe my hair, my lyre, my quiver. You shall accompany the Roman generals
when the joyous triumph hymn is sung and the long procession climbs the
Capitol . . . and as my young locks have never been shorn, so may you forever