The other day in class we had to choose 5 lines from The Metamorphoses of Ovid to share with the class. I think they were supposed to be our favorite lines. I chose an excerpt from Arachne on page 179. It's describing a tapestry, I just like the description:
"as, when a storm is done, the rays of sun
strike through the raindrops and a rainbow stains
with its great curve a broad expanse of sky;
and there a thousand different colors glow,
and yet the eye cannot detect the point
of passage from one color to the next,
for each adjacent color is too like
its neighbor..."
I went three lines over the suggested 5, but I thought it was necessary. This description paints a rainbow across your mind. Even though it is not there for your eyes to see, you have no doubt of what it looks like. This description makes the colors dance in my imagination. I feel the colored raindrops are interacting and communicating. There could be a dialogue between the color droplets. I have heard many words trying to describe a rainbow, but this description used in The Metamorphoses of Ovid, is not cheesy like the others, it is true and majestic. Just absolutely beautiful.
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