So blind Tiresias gave to all who came
Faultess and sure reply and far and wide
Through all Boeotia’s cities spread his fame.
To test his truth and trust the first who tried
Was wave-blue water-nymph Liriope,
Whom once Cephisus in his sinuous flow
Embracing held and ravished. In due time
The lovely sprite bore a fine infant boy,
From birth adorable, and named her son
Narcissus; and of him she asked the seer
Would he long years and ripe old age enjoy,
Who answered ‘If he shall himself not know’.
For long his words seemed vain; what they concealed
The lad’s strange death and stranger love revealed.

Narcissus now had reached his sixteenth year
And seemed both man and boy; and many a youth
And many a girl desired him, but hard pride
Ruled in that delicate frame, and never a youth
And never a girl could touch his haughty heart.
Once as he drove to nets the frightened deer
A strange-voiced nymph observed him, who must speak
If any other speak and cannot speak
Unless another speak, resounding Echo.
Echo was still a body, not a voice,
But talkative as now, and with the same
Power of speaking, only to repeat,
As best she could, the last of many words.
Juno had made her so; for many a time,
When the great goddess might have caught the nymphs
Lying with Jove upon the mountainside,
Echo discreetly kept her talking till
The nymphs had fled away; and when at last
The goddess saw the truth, ‘Your tongue’, she said,
‘With which you tricked me, now its power shall lose,
Your voice avail but for the briefest use.’
The event confirmed the threat: when speaking ends,
All she can do is double each last word,
And echo back again the voice she’s heard.

Now when she saw Narcissus wandering
In the green byways, Echo’s heart was fired;
And stealthily she followed, and the more
She followed him, the nearer flamed her love,
As when a torch is lit and from the tip
The leaping sulphur grasps the offered flame.
She longed to come to him with winning words,
To urge soft pleas, but nature now opposed;
She might not speak the first but – what she might –
Waited for words her voice could say again.
It chanced Narcissus, searching for his friends,
Called ‘Anyone here?’ and Echo answered ‘Here!’
Amazed he looked all round and, raising his voice,
Called ‘Come this way!’ and Echo called ‘This way!’
He looked behind and, no one coming, shouted
‘Why run away?’ and heard his words again.
He stopped and, cheated by the answering voice,
Called ‘Join me here!’ and she, never more glad
To give her answer, answered ‘Join me here!’
And graced her words and ran out from the wood
To throw her longing arms around his neck.
He bolted, shouting ‘Keep your arms from me!
Be off! I’ll die before I yield to you.’
And all she answered was ‘I yield to you’.
Shamed and rejected in the woods she hides
And has her dwelling in the lonely caves;
Yet still her love endures and grows on grief,
And weeping vigils waste her frame away;
Her body shrivels, all its moisture dries;
Only her voice and bones are left; at last
Only her voice, her bones are turned to stone.
So in the woods she hides and hills around,
For all to hear, alive, but just a sound.