The head of Argus (as with stars the skies) Was compass’d round, and wore a hundred eyes: But two by turns their lids in slumber steep; The rest on duty still their station keep; Nor could the total constellation sleep. Thus, ever present to his eyes and mind, His charge was still before him, though behind. In fields he suffer’d her to feed by day; But when the setting sun to night gave way, The captive cow he summon’d with a call, And drove her back, and tied her to the stall. On leaves of trees and bitter herbs she fed: Heaven was her canopy; bare earth her bed: So hardly lodged:⁠—and to digest her food, She drank from troubled streams, defiled with mud. Her woeful story fain she would have told, With hands upheld; but had no hands to hold. Her head to her ungentle keeper bow’d, She strove to speak; she spoke not, but she low’d; Affrighted with the noise, she look’d around, And seem’d to inquire the author of the sound.

Once on the banks where often she had play’d (Her father’s banks) she came, and there survey’d Her alter’d visage, and her branching head; And, starting, from herself she would have fled. Her fellow nymphs, familiar to her eyes, Beheld, but knew her not in this disguise; Ev’n Inachus himself was ignorant, And in his daughter did his daughter want. She follow’d where her fellows went, as she Were still a partner of the company: They stroke her neck; the gentle heifer stands, And her neck offers to their stroking hands. Her father gave her grass; the grass she took, And lick’d his palms, and cast a piteous look, And in the language of her eyes she spoke. She would have told her name, and ask’d relief, But wanting words, in tears she tells her grief; Which, with her foot she makes him understand, And prints the name of Io in the sand.

“Ah wretched me!” her mournful father cried; “She with a sigh to wretched me replied.” About her milk-white neck his arms he threw, And wept; and then these tender words ensue; “And art thou she whom I have sought around The world, and have at length so sadly found? So found, is worse than lost: with mutual words Thou answerest not; no voice thy tongue affords; But sighs are deeply drawn from out thy breast; And speech denied by lowing is express’d. Unknowing, I prepared thy bridal bed, With empty hopes of happy issue fed: But now the husband of a herd must be Thy mate, and bellowing sons thy progeny. O, were I mortal, death might bring relief; But now my godhead but extends my grief; Prolongs my woes, of which no end I see, And makes me curse my immortality!” More had he said, but fearful of her stay, The starry guardian drove his charge away To some fresh pasture; on a hilly height He sat himself, and kept her still in sight.

Now Jove no longer could her sufferings bear, But call’d in haste his airy messenger, The son of Maia, with severe decree, To kill the keeper, and to set her free. With all his harness soon the god was sped, His flying hat was fasten’d on his head; Wings on his heels were hung, and in his hand He holds the virtue of the snaky wand. The liquid air his moving pinions wound, And, in the moment, shoot him on the ground. Before he came in sight, the crafty god His wings dismiss’d, but still retain’d his rod. That sleep-procuring wand wise Hermes took, But made it seem to sight a shepherd’s hook: With this he did a herd of goats control, Which by the way he met, and slyly stole: Clad like a country swain, he piped and sung, And, playing, drove his jolly troop along.

Syrinx, a nymph of Arcadia, escapes from the solicitations of the god Pan, and is changed into a reed, called Syrinx, with which the god makes himself a pipe.