VI SYLVA FLORIFERA. 



" And beat their naked bosoms, and complain, 

 And call aloud for Phaeton, in vain : 

 All the long night their mournful watch they keep, 

 And all the day stand round the tomb and weep. 



Four times revolving the full moon return'd, 

 So long the mother and the daughters mourn'd ; 

 When now the eldest, Phaethusa, strove 

 To rest her weary limbs, but could not move ; 

 Lampetia would have help'd her, but she found 

 Herself withheld, and rooted to the ground : 

 A third in wild affliction, as she grieves, 

 Would rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves % 

 One sees her thighs transform'd, another views 

 Her arms shot out, and branching into boughs. 

 And now their legs, and breasts, and bodies stood 

 Crusted with bark, and hard'ning into wood." 



As the poplar has been found so abundantly 

 in the neighbourhood of the river Po, it has 

 been conjectured by some that it was that 

 tree into which the daughters of Clymene were 

 transformed ; but in a medal of Publius Acco- 

 leius Lariscolus, the three sisters are repre- 

 sented as transformed into larches ; and it 

 would certainly seem that Ovid rather meant 

 the larch than the poplar, from the tears of 

 the sorrowing trees, which agrees with the 

 former, but not with the latter. 



Indejiuunt lacrymcs : stillataque sole rigescuni 

 De ramis electra novis : quce lucidus amnis 

 Excipit) et nuribus mittit gestanda Latinis. 



" The new-made trees in tears of amber rim, 

 Which, harden'd into value by the sun, 



