Alone amongst Nature
Truly this is a silent, lonely place for grieving, and the breath of the West Wind owns the empty wood. Here I could speak my secret sorrows freely, if only these solitary cliffs could be trusted. To...
View ArticleReconciliation
Agamemnon did not joy like this over his triumph at Troy, when Laomedon’s great wealth went down to ruin: Ulysses was no happier, when, his wanderings done, he touched the shore of his beloved Ithaca:...
View Articlea dream of shipwreck
I saw you, in my dreams, mea vita, shipwrecked, striking out, with weary hands, at Ionian waters, confessing the many ways you lied to me, unable to lift your head, hair heavy with brine, like Helle,...
View ArticleTransience
Persephone, let your mercy endure: Dis, why set out to be crueller than her? There are so many thousands of lovely girls among the dead: if allowed, leave one beautiful one up here! Down there with you...
View ArticleHis Mistress’ Fury
Our quarrel by lamplight last night was sweet to me and all those insults from your furious tongue, when frenzied with drinking you pushed the table back, and threw full glasses at me, with angry hand....
View ArticleThe True Life
Let other men gather bright gold to themselves and own many acres of well-ploughed soil, let endless worry trouble them, with enemies nearby, and the peals of the war-trumpets driving away sleep: let...
View ArticleMarathus in love with Pholoe
No one can hide that lover’s nod from me those soft words spoken with a gentle sound. Yet I’ve no lots or entrails that show gods’ will, birdsongs don’t call to me of things to come: Venus herself tied...
View ArticleHer Apology
Let me not be such a feverish passion to you, my love, as I seem to have been a few days ago, if I’ve done anything in my foolish youth which I’ve owned to regretting more than leaving you, alone, last...
View ArticleLet’s Live and Love: To Lesbia
Let us live, my Lesbia, let us love, and all the words of the old, and so moral, may they be worth less than nothing to us! Suns may set, and suns may rise again: but when our brief light has set,...
View ArticleHow Many Kisses: to Lesbia
Lesbia, you ask how many kisses of yours would be enough and more to satisfy me. As many as the grains of Libyan sand that lie between hot Jupiter’s oracle, at Ammon, in resin-producing Cyrene, and old...
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