Amores III.5

"'Twas night, and slumber weighed my weary eyelids down — when a vision terrified my soul. 'Twas on this wise :

" At the foot of a sunny hill was a grove thick-standing with ilex, and in its branches was hidden many a bird. Near by was a plot of deepest green, a grassy mead, humid with the tricklings of gently sounding water. I was seeking refuge from the heat beneath the branches of the trees — though beneath the trees' branches came none the less the heat — when lo! coining to crop the herbage mingled with varied flowers there stood before my eyes a shining white heifer, more shining white than snows just freshly fallen and not yet turned by time to flowing waters; more shining white than the milk that gleams with still hissing foam, and has just left the sheep drained dry. A bull was companion to her, a happy consort he, and pressed the tender ground beside his mate.

« While he lay there, slowly chewing the grassy cud that rose again, and feeding a second time on what he had fed on before, in my vision I thought that sleep took away his power of holding up his head, and he laid its horned weight upon the earth. Thither, gliding down through the air, on pinions light, came a crow, and settled chattering on the verdant ground, and, pecking thrice with wanton beak at the breast of the snowy heifer, carried away in his mouth white tufts of hair. The heifer, lingering long, went away from the place and from the bull — but a darkly livid mark was on her breast; and, seeing bulls afar cropping the pasturage— there were bulls cropping the glad pasturage afar — she ran quickly thither and mingled with those herds, choosing the ground where the herbage was more lush.

" Come, tell me, augur of visions by night, whoe'er thou art, what mean those things I saw, if aught they hide of truth."

:;:; Thus I; and thus spake the augur of visions by night, weighing in mind each single thing I said :

"The heat you wished to shun beneath the fluttering leaves, and shunned but ill, was the heat of love. The heifer was your love — that colour matches your love. You, her beloved, were the bull with the heifer for mate. The pecking of her breast by the crow's sharp beak meant a pandering old dame was meddling with your mistress' heart. The lingering long e'er the heifer left her bull was sign that you will be left cold in a deserted bed. The dark colour and the black spots on her breast in front were signs that her heart is not without stain of unfaithfulness."

The interpreter had said. I was cold; the blood fled from my face, and before my eyes stood deep night.