He sang the stings of a step-dame's ire 1 and the deeds of Hercules, the monsters overcome by his strong right arm how while yet a child he had shown the strangled snakes to his terrified mother, and had laughed, fearlessly scorning such dangers. Does sported in amity with the striped tiger and hinds had no fear of the lion's mane. Molossian dogs fawned playfully on fearless hares, and the lamb made room for the wolf by her side. The tall poplar and the pine, accompanied by the oak, left the slopes of treeless Haemus, and even the laurel came, allured by the voice of Orpheus, though erstwhile it had despised Apollo's art. Scarce had they heard him when the winds and waves were stilled Hebrus flowed more sluggishly with reluctant stream, Rhodope stretched out her rocks all eager for the song, and Ossa, his summit less exalted, shook off his coat of snow. P317 idle chords with the smooth quill, plied the famed ivory with festal fingers. The rugged mountains lamented his silence and the woods that had so often followed his Thracian lute.īut after that Hercules, setting forth from Inachian Argos, reached the plains of Thrace on his mission of salvation, and destroying the stables of Diomede, fed the horses of the bloody tyrant on grass, then it was that the poet, o'erjoyed at his country's happy fate, took up at once more the tuneful strings of his flute long laid aside, and touching its
Nature's savagery returned and the heifer in terror of the lion looked in vain for help from the now voiceless lyre. When Orpheus sought repose and, lulling his song to sleep, had long laid aside his neglected task, the Nymphs complained that their joy had been reft from them and the sad rivers mourned the loss of his tuneful lays.
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