Yet he that follows, aided by the wings of love, is the swifter, and denies her { any} rest; and is { now} just at her back as she flies, and is breathing upon her hair scattered upon her neck. Her strength being { now} spent, she grows pale, and being quite faint, with the fatigue of so swift a flight, looking upon the waters of Peneus, she says, “Give me, my father, thy aid, if you rivers have divine power. Oh Earth, either yawn { to swallow me}, or by changing it, destroy that form, by which I have pleased too much, and which causes me to be injured.”
Hardly had she ended her prayer, { when} a heavy torpor seizes her limbs; { and} her soft breasts are covered with a thin bark. Her hair grows into green leaves, her arms into branches; her feet, the moment before so swift, adhere by sluggish roots; a { leafy} canopy overspreads her features; her elegance alone[84] remains in her. This, too, Phœbus admires, and placing his right hand upon the stock, he perceives that the breast still throbs beneath the new bark; and { then}, embracing the branches as though limbs in his arms, he gives kisses to the wood, { and} yet the wood shrinks from his kisses. To her the God said: “But since thou canst not be my wife, at least thou shalt be my tree; my hair, my lyre,[85] my quiver shall always have thee, oh laurel! Thou shalt be presented to the Latian chieftains, when the joyous voice of the soldiers shall sing the song of triumph,[86] and the long procession shall resort to the Capitol. Thou, the same, shalt stand as a most faithful guardian at the gate-posts of Augustus before his doors,[87] and shalt protect the oak placed in the centre; and as my head is { ever} youthful with unshorn locks, do thou, too, always wear the lasting honors of thy foliage.”
Pæan had ended { his speech}; the laurel nodded assent with its new-made boughs, and seemed to shake its top just like a head.
[Footnote 73: _The Delian God._--Ver. 454. Apollo is so called, from having been born in the Isle of Delos, in the Ægean Sea. The Peneus was a river of Thessaly.]
[Footnote 74: _A fillet tied together._--Ver. 477. The ‘vitta’ was a band encircling the head, and served to confine the tresses of the hair. It was worn by maidens and by married women also; but the ‘vitta’ assumed on the day of marriage was of a different form from that used by virgins. It was not worn by women of light character, or even by the ‘libertinæ,’ or female slaves who had been liberated; so that it was not only deemed an emblem of chastity, but of freedom also. It was of various colors: white and purple are mentioned. In the later ages the ‘vitta’ was sometimes set with pearls.]