their naked breasts, they call night and day upon their brother, who nevermore will hear their sad laments, and prostrate themselves upon his sepulchre. Four times had the moon with waxing crescents reached her full orb; but they, as was their habit (for use had established habit), were mourning still. Then one day the eldest, Phaëthusa, when she would throw herself upon the grave, complained that her feet had grown cold and stark; and when the fair Lampetia tried to come to her, she was held fast as by sudden roots. A third, making to tear her hair, found her hands plucking at foliage. One complained that her ankles were encased in wood, another that her arms were changing to long branches. And while they look on those things in amazement bark closes round their loins, and, by degrees, their waists, breasts, shoulders, hands; and all that was free were their lips calling upon their mother. What can the frantic mother do but run, as impulse carries her, now here, now there, and print kisses on their lips? That is not enough: she tries to tear away the bark from their bodies and breaks off slender twigs with her hands. But as she does this bloody drops trickle forth as from a wound. And each one, as she is wounded, cries out: "Oh, spare me, mother; spare, I beg you. 'Tis my body that you are tearing in the tree. And now farewell"—the bark closed over her latest words. Still their tears flow on, and these tears, hardened into amber by the sun, drop down from the new-made trees. The clear river receives them and bears them onward, one day to be worn by the brides of Rome.
Cycnus, the son of Sthenelus, was a witness of this miracle. Though he was kin to you, O Phaëthon, by his mother's blood, he was more closely joined in
