Myrrha

Woman into Tree

 

Myrrha falls in love with her father and tricks him into committing incest. Pregnant and despondent, she decides that she can’t stand either the thought of living or dying. So she asks the gods to be transformed into something else.

 

Drive me from either realm; from life and death

Debar me, into some new shape transform'd.—

The penitent some god propitious heard;

Her final prayer at least success obtain'd:

For as she spoke rose round her legs the earth;

The lofty tree's foundation, crooked roots

Shot from her spreading toes; hard wood her bones

Became; the marrow in the midst remain'd

As pith; as sappy juice still flow'd her blood:

Her arms large boughs were spread; her fingers chang'd

To slender twigs; rough bark her skin became.

The growing tree press'd hard the gravid womb;

Invested next her breast, and o'er her neck

Threaten'd to spread. Impatient of delay

She shrunk below to meet th' approaching wood,

And hid beneath the rising bark her face.

Human sensation with her change of shape

She lost, yet still she weeps; and from the tree

Warm drops yet fall, and much the tears are priz'd.

The myrrh which oozes from the bark still holds

Its mistress' name, well known in every age.

 

Her unborn son is delivered out of the tree trunk by the goddess of childbirth and grows up to be Adonis, the most handsome man in the world.