86There was a hill, and on the hill a stretch of perfectly level ground, which blades of grass made green. 88The place lacked shade: but after the bard born of gods sat down in that spot and set his sounding strings in motion, shade came to the place. 90The Chaonian tree was not absent. 91not the grove of the Heliades, not the oak with its lofty foliage, nor the soft limes, nor the beech and the virgin laurel, and the brittle hazels and the ash, useful for spears, and the knotless fir and the holm-oak bent with acorns, and the genial plane and the maple uneven in its colours, and with them the river-dwelling willows and the water-loving lotus, and the box, ever green, and the slender tamarisks, and the two-coloured myrtle and the laurustinus, dark blue with berries.
99You too came, ivies with your twining feet, and together with you the leafy vines and the elms clothed in vines, and the mountain-ashes and the pitch-pines, and the arbutus laden with ruddy fruit, and the pliant palms, the victor's prizes, and the pine, its foliage girded up and shaggy at the top, dear to the mother of the gods; 104for Cybele's Attis put off his human form for this and hardened into that trunk. 106To this throng came the cypress, shaped like the turning-posts, now a tree, but once a boy loved by that god who tunes the lyre with strings and the bow with strings. 109For there was a huge stag, sacred to the nymphs who hold the Carthaean fields, and with his widely spreading antlers he himself gave deep shade to his own head.
112His antlers gleamed with gold, and jewelled necklaces hung from his rounded neck, falling down onto his shoulders. 114Above his brow there swung a silver boss tied with little thongs, of the same age as himself: pearls gleamed from both his ears about his hollow temples. 117And he, free from fear and with his natural timidity laid aside, used to visit people's homes and offer his neck to be stroked even by unknown hands. 120But yet, more than to anyone else, he was dear to you, Cyparissus, loveliest of the Cean race. 121You used to lead the stag to fresh pastures, you to the waters of the clear spring; now you would weave varied flowers through his antlers, now, sitting as a rider on his back, you would happily guide his soft mouth this way and that with purple halters.
126It was summer heat and the middle of the day, and the curved arms of the shore-dwelling Crab were burning with the sun's heat: weary, the stag laid his body down on the grassy earth and drew coolness from the shade of the trees. 130The boy Cyparissus, unwittingly, pierced him with a sharp javelin; 131and when he saw him dying from the cruel wound, he resolved to die himself. 132What consolations did Phoebus not speak, and how he urged him to grieve lightly and in proportion to the cause! 134Still he groans, and asks of the gods above this last gift, that he may mourn for all time. 136And now, his blood drained away by endless weeping, his limbs began to turn a green colour, and the hair that a moment ago hung over his snow-white brow began to become a bristling crest and, taking on stiffness, to gaze at the starry sky with a slender tip.
141The god groaned and said sadly, 'You will be mourned by me, and you will mourn others, and you will stand by those who grieve.'