Persephone's Arpage

The Abduction of Proserpine

Ceres, seeing this, was no longer in doubt of her loss,
but she did not yet know the cause, and laid the blame
on the innocent land.
"Ungrateful soil," said she,
"which I have endowed with fertility and clothed with herbage and nourishing grain,
No more shall you enjoy my favors"
Then the cattle died, the plough broke in the furrow,
the seed failed to come up, there was too much sun,
there was too much rain, the birds stole the seeds,
thistles and brambles were the only growth.
Seeing this, the fountain Arethusa interceded for the land.
"Goddess," said she, "blame not the land,
it opened unwillingly to yield a passage to your daughter.
I can tell you of her fate, for I have seen her.
This is not my native country, I came hither from Elis.
I was a woodland nymph, and delighted in the chase.
They praised my beauty, but I cared nothing for it,
and rather boasted of my hunting exploits.
One day I was returning from the wood, heated with exercise,
when I came to a stream silently flowing,
so clear that you might count the pebbles on the bottom.
The willows shaded it, and the grassy bank sloped down to the water's edge. I approached, I touched the water with my foot.
I stepped in knee-deep, and not content with that,
I laid my garments on the willows and went in.
While I sported in the water, I heard an indistinct murmur coming up
as out of the depths of the stream
and made haste to escape to the nearest bank.
The voice said, 'Why do you fly, Arethusa?
I am Alpheus, the god of this stream.' I ran, he pursued,
he was not more swift than I, but he was stronger,
and gained upon me, as my strength failed.
At last, exhausted, I cried for help to Diana.
'Help me, goddess! Help your votary!'
The goddess heard, and wrapped me suddenly in a thick cloud.


The river-god looked now this way and now that,
and twice came close to me, but could not find me.
'Arethusa! Arethusa!' he cried.
Oh, how I trembled, like a lamb that hears the wolf growling
outside the fold. A cold sweat came over me,
my hair flowed down in streams, where my foot stood there was a pool.
In short, in less time than it takes to tell it I became a fountain.
But in this form Alpheus knew me, and attempted to mingle his stream with mine. Diana cleft the ground, and I, endeavoring to escape him, plunged into the cavern, and through the bowels of the earth came out here in Sicily. While I passed through the lower parts of the earth,
I saw your Proserpine.
She was sad, but no longer showing alarm in her countenance.
Her look was such as became a queen, the queen of Erebus,
the powerful bride of the monarch of the realms of the dead."