XLIV THE TOMB OF THE NAIADS
Mitchell S. (Mitchell Starrett) Buck translation
THROUGH the woods covered with hoarfrost, I walked; my hair before my mouth glistened with little icicles, and my sandals were heavy with clinging and heaped-up snow.
He said to me: “What seekest thou?—I follow the tracks of a satyr. His little cloven steps alternate like holes in a white mantle.” He said to me: “The satyrs are dead.
“The satyrs and the nymphs also. For thirty years there has been no winter so terrible. The track thou seest is that of a buck. But let us rest here, where their tomb is.”
And with the iron of his hoe, he broke the ice of the spring where once laughed the naiads. He lifted the great cold masses and, raising them toward the pale sky, he gazed about him.