Calamos avoided the blasts of the jealous wind, and made the nearest shore without his friend. He could neither see him nor get any answer to his cries, so full of love he called out in a lamentable voice Speak, Naiads ! What Wind has caught up Carpos ? Yes, I pray, grant me this last grace—go to another fountain, leave my father’s fatal water, drink not of the stream which murdered Carpos ! My father never killed the boy ! That wind had a grudge against Calamos after Phoibos, and he killed Carpos ; no doubt he desired him and struck him with a jealous gale—first the quoit, then for this youth the counterblast ! My star sank in the stream and has not yet risen, my Phosphoros has not yet shone again! Carpos is drowned in the river, and what care I to see the light any longer ?
“Speak, Naiads ! Who has quenched the light of love? How long you are, my boy! Why do you like the water so much? Can you have found a better friend in the water, have you thrown to the winds the love of poor Calamos that you may stay with him ? If one nymph of the Naiads enamoured has carded you off, tell me, and I will make war on them all If wedded love is your pleasure, and you want my sister for a wife, do but say so and I will build you a bridechamber in the stream. Have you […] me, Carpos, forgetting the familiar shore shouted till I am tired, and you do not hear my call. If Notos blew on you, if bold Euros, let him go off wandering without dances by himself, the barbarous enemy of love! If Boreas overwhelmed you, I will go to Oreithyia. If the wave covered you and had no pity for your beauty, if my father carried you off in the merciless rush of his wave, let him receive his son also in those man-slaying waters, let him hide Calamos near to dead Carpos. Where Carpos wandered and died, I will fall headlong, I will quench my burning love with a draught of water from Acheron.”
So he spoke, with streams bubbling from his eyes. To honour the dead he cut with sorrowful steel a dark lock of his hair, long cherished and kept, and holding out this mourning tress to Maiandros his father, he said these last words ;
Accept this hair, and then my body ; for I cannot see the light for one later dawn without […]. Carpos and Calamos had one life, and both felt a like […] of love on the earth : let there be one watery death for both together in the same stream. Build on the river bank, ye Naiads, one empty barrow for both, and on the tombstone let this verse be engraved in letters of mourning : “I am the grave of Carpos and Calamos, a pair of lovers, whom the pitiless water slew in days of yore.” Cut off just one small tress of your hair for Calamos too, your own dying brother so unhappy in love, and for Carpos cut all the hair of your heads.”
With these words, he threw himself into the river and sank, as he swallowed the son-slaying water of an unwilling father. Then Calamos gave his form to the reeds which took his name and like substance and Carpos grew up as the fruit of the earth.”
So stormy Eros comforted Dionysos with gentle friendly words, and softened the sweet pangs, but the spirit of Bacchos was scourged yet more with sorrowful care for the lad’s untimely death. And the rosy-cheek Seasons, daughters of the restless […] their stormfoot father, made haste to the house of Helios, One wore a snowy veil shadowing her face, and sent forth a gleam of subtle light through black clouds; her feet were fitted with chilly hailstone shoes. She had bound her braids about her watery head, and fastened across her brow a rain-producing veil, with an evergreen garland on her […] and a white circlet of snow covering her frost-trimmed breast,
Another puffed out from her lips the swallow-wind’s breath which gives joy to mortal men, having banded the spring-time tresses of her zephyr-loving head with a fresh dewy coronet, while she laughed like a flower, and fanned through her robe far abroad the fragrance of the opening rose at dawn. So she wove the merry dance for Adonis and Cythereia together.
“Another, the harvest-home Season, came with her Sisters. In her right hand she held a head of corn with grains clustering on the top, and a sickle with sharp-cutting blade, forerunner of harvest ; her maiden form was wrapt in linen shining white, and as she wheeled in the dance the fine texture showed the secrets of her thighs, while in a hotter sun the cheeks of her drooping face were damp with dewy sweat,
Another leading the dance for an easy plowing, had bound about her hairless temple shoots of olive drenched with the waters of seven-stream Nile. Scanty and withering was the hair by her temples, her body ; for she is fruit-pining Autumn, who shears off the foliage from the trees with scatter-leaf winds. For there were no vine-branches yet, trailing about the nymph’s neck with tangled clusters of […] curls ; not yet was she drunken with purple Maronian juice beside the neat-swilling winepress not yet had the ivy run up with wild intertwining tendrils. But then the fated time had come, which had brought the Seasons running together to the house of Helios.
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