Classic Poem

So Diomed made answer. Venulus
soon after left the Calydonian realms,
Peucetian bays, and the Messapian fields.
Among those fields he saw a darkened cave
in woods and waving reeds. The halfgoat Pan
now lives there, but in older time the nymphs
possessed it. An Apulian shepherd scared
them from that spot. At first he terrified
them with a sudden fear, but soon in scorn,
as they considered what the intruder was,
they danced before him, moving feet to time.
The shepherd clown abused them, capering,
grotesquely imitating graceful steps,
and railed at them with coarse and foolish words.
He was not silent till a tree's new bark
had closed his mouth for now he is a tree.
And the wild olive's fruit took bitterness
from him. It has the tartness of his tongue.