She who loved most, and who most loved had been, Said: “Not the waves shall part me from my queen.” She strove to plunge into the roaring flood, Fix’d to the stone, a stone herself she stood; This, on her breast would fain her blows repeat; Her stiffen’d hands refused her breast to beat; That stretch’d her arms unto the seas, in vain Her arms she labour’d to unstretch again. To tear her comely locks another tried; Both comely locks and fingers petrified. Part thus; but Juno, with a softer mind, Part doom’d to mix among the feather’d kind. Transform’d, the name of Theban birds they keep, And skim the surface of that fatal deep.
Wearied with toil and infirm with age, Cadmus and his wife retire to Illyricum, and at their own request are changed into Serpents.