The young Tarantine

Weep, sweet kingfishers, sacred birds

beloved of Thetis, sweet kingfishers, weep!

Myrto, the young Tarantine, lived.

A ship carried her to the banks of the Camarine.

There marriage, songs, flutes would have slowly

led her to her lover's door.

A vigilant key had locked away

the wedding garment in cedar for this day,

with the gold that would adorn her arms at the feast

and perfumes prepared for her blonde hair.

But alone at the prow, praying to the stars,

the impetuous wind that blew in the sails

enveloped her. Astonished, far from the sailors,

she cried out and fell onto the breast of the waves.

The young Tarantine is in the bosom of the waves.

Her beautiful body rolled under the waves of the sea.

Thetis, weeping, hid her in the cleft of a rock

from the monsters that would have devoured her.

By her orders, the beautiful Nereids

soon came and lifted her above their damp homes,

carried her to the shore and in this monument

laid her on Zephyr's cape.

Then, calling their distant companions,

nymphs of the woods and the streams and the mountains,

all beat their breasts and mourned long

and repeated in chorus around her coffin,

"Alas, you never reached your lover.

You never wore the wedding garment.

The gold was never knotted around your arms,

the sweet perfume never poured onto your hair."

Weep, sweet kingfishers, sacred birds

beloved of Thetis, sweet kingfishers, weep!