(ll. 239-246) `I would not have you be deathless among the deathless gods and live continually after such sort.  Yet if you could live on such as now you are in look and in form, and be called my husband, sorrow would not then enfold my careful heart.  But, as it is, harsh (29) old age will soon enshroud you —­ ruthless age which stands someday at the side of every man, deadly, wearying, dreaded even by the gods.

(ll. 247-290) `And now because of you I shall have great shame among the deathless gods henceforth, continually.  For until now they feared my jibes and the wiles by which, or soon or late, I mated all the immortals with mortal women, making them all subject to my will.  But now my mouth shall no more have this power among the gods; for very great has been my madness, my miserable and dreadful madness, and I went astray out of my mind who have gotten a child beneath my girdle, mating with a mortal man.  As for the child, as soon as he sees the light of the sun, the deep-breasted mountain Nymphs who inhabit this great and holy mountain shall bring him up.  They rank neither with mortals nor with immortals:  long indeed do they live, eating heavenly food and treading the lovely dance among the immortals, and with them the Sileni and the sharp-eyed Slayer of Argus mate in the depths of pleasant caves; but at their birth pines or high-topped oaks spring up with them upon the fruitful earth, beautiful, flourishing trees, towering high upon the lofty mountains (and men call them holy places of the immortals, and never mortal lops them with the axe); but when the fate of death is near at hand, first those lovely trees wither where they stand, and the bark shrivels away about them, and the twigs fall down, and at last the life of the Nymph and of the tree leave the light of the sun together.  These Nymphs shall keep my son with them and rear him, and as soon as he is come to lovely boyhood, the goddesses will bring him here to you and show you your child.  But, that I may tell you all that I have in mind, I will come here again towards the fifth year and bring you my son.  So soon as ever you have seen him —­ a scion to delight the eyes —­ you will rejoice in beholding him; for he shall be most godlike:  then bring him at once to windy Ilion.  And if any mortal man ask you who got your dear son beneath her girdle, remember to tell him as I bid you:  say he is the offspring of one of the flower-like Nymphs who inhabit this forest-clad hill.  But if you tell all and foolishly boast that you lay with rich-crowned Aphrodite, Zeus will smite you in his anger with a smoking thunderbolt.  Now I have told you all.  Take heed:  refrain and name me not, but have regard to the anger of the gods.’

(l. 291) When the goddess had so spoken, she soared up to windy heaven.

(ll. 292-293) Hail, goddess, queen of well-builded Cyprus!  With you have I begun; now I will turn me to another hymn.

VI.  TO APHRODITE (21 lines)