Metamorphoses

by Ovid

“Help me, father! If your streams have divine power, Destroy this too pleasing beauty of mine By transforming me!”

She had just finished her prayer When a heavy numbness invaded her body {22} And a sheathe of bark enclosed her soft breast. [580] Her hair turned into fluttering leaves, her arms Into branches; her feet, once so swift, Became mired in roots, and her face was lost In the canopy. Only her beauty’s sheen remained.

Daphne's transformation

You will be my tree. My hair will be wreathed With you, Laurel, and you will crown my quiver and lyre.

In a blanket of mist and stole her chastity.

So slight a gift as a cow to his sister and wife Might make the cow seem to be no cow at all. So Juno received her bovine rival but was still

I make her an animal and now she’s a goddess! That’s how I smite those who trespass against me, That’s how mighty I am! He might as well release her From her animal form and give her back her old face,

The poor girl [150] Could not endure this, and she slipped a noose Around her neck.

“Live on, Wicked girl, but keep hanging, your legacy

Touched by this potion, the girl’s hair fell off Along with her nose and ears. Her head became Her smallest part, and her body small, too, [160] With her slender fingers clinging to it as legs. The rest was belly, from which she still spins thread And plies as a spider

And died in this devoted act, pierced through the gut With fatal steel shot by the Delian archer.

When the arrow was extracted, part of the lung Was stuck to the barb, and his blood poured

His skin was peeled from his body’s surface And he was one massive wound. Blood flowed All over the place; his muscles were laid bare; His veins throbbed and quivered without any skin;

You could count the pulsing entrails; the fibers Of his lungs showed clearly through his

A lotus tree was growing in the water’s edge, Its red and purple blooms holding the promise of fruit.

But her feet were rooted to the ground. She struggled To tear herself away, but only her upper body Could move, as the bark crept slowly up from below [400] Until it had covered her groin. When she saw this She tried to tear her hair out, but only got Fistfuls of the leaves that now covered her head.

Let the bark creep up and close them as I die.’ In the same moment she ceased to speak and to be,

But the new branches long kept her body’s warmth.”

bark preserves its mistress’ name, Which will be spoken through all the ages.

Apollo did not allow ears so insensitive To keep their human form. He stretched them out

And covered them with coarse grey hair,

‘Are you mad, Eurytus? Move against Pirithoüs And you have two enemies in one as long as I live.’

‘Our race defeated by someone barely a man, Yet he is a man, and

with our feeble attempts We are what he once was! What is the use Of having super-bodies, of possessing twin powers,

An unjust fate has denied him to me and to you” (Here he pretended to wipe a tear from his eye), “Who

the great Achilles followed When he came to the Greeks?

[160] Because I have always used my intelligence To your benefit.

I will say that Jove is my ancestor as well, [170] And at the same remove. For my father Is Laertes and his was Arcesius, And Arcesius was, in fact, Jupiter’s son,

It comes down to a simple contest of deeds, And I have done more than I could recount Off the top of my head.

Thebes fell To me; give me credit for Tenedos, Chrsye, and Cilla, All cities of Apollo, and Scyros too.