Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book II, The Story of Europa, Lines 832 - 875


My own "translation", 2012sep16.


Europa

``HERMES drive Agenor's cattle from hill to shore, of this I need not expand, you need know no more, to the spot marked X, where the land thrusts into the sea a spearpoint of dunes and beach and scattered trees'', and Zeus did not mention on that shore of sand, the King's darling and her girls frolicked, tanned, and talked of clothes, boys, brides, and nights for which all was useless, he had had her sight and now Europa, human star, held his thought where thunderbolts are thrown, caught, his god-as-god form should break her slenderness, no patience for words of tenderness a golden boy would have to say to bring her breast beating on his mortal breast, a golden beast, no words, but touch and Taurus, ``let history judge, smart alecks make a chorus.'' A bull ambles on the sand, yoke wide, enormous eyes, not brown, uncanny blue, and in them skies and skies, he moves a shade, she stops, makes to retreat, he nuzzles grass, ``he's harmless, I'll stand, ignorant he'll pass with those horns twisted, piteous, baroque, dewlap magnificent, I'd play in it like my cloak, he seemed golden brown and now bride white, I'll touch his side, he cannot bite, he moves to my touch and moves in dances, he lies, I lie on him and lie in trances, I tickle his ears, he flicks them and we rise, we rove over sand, there Sidon-King, Tyre-Queen, there mountains of Lebanon, there sea going west, Venus in foam, we breed a world of myths and legends and die at last in heaven.''