Short Poems

You sleep, Zenophile, a slender branch.
If only now I could enter your eyelids like wingless Sleep so that not even he who enchants the eyes of Zeus should enter you but I alone possess you!

Morning Star, enemy of lovers, why do you move so slowly around the earth now that another is warm under Demo's bedcover?
When I held her loveliness in my arms you came swiftly, shedding light as if in mockery of me!

Morning Star, enemy of lovers, why do you stand by the bed when I am just warm on the breast of my loved Demo?
Turn back your swift course and become the Evening Star, O you who shed so sweet a light so bitter to me!
Before now you came against Zeus with Alcmene and you are not ignorant of how to turn back.

Quintus is burnt, and may thereof be glad;
For being poor, he hath a good pretence
At every church to crave benevolence,
For one that had by fire lost all he had.

Mother of the gods, beloved Night, one thing I beg of you, ah, I beg of you, Holy Night, companion in my love-revels!
If any one now lies happy under one cover with Heliodora, warmed by her sleep-cheating flesh, let the torch be extinguished. And let him lie asleep on her breast, another Endymion.

By want of shift since lice at first are bred;
And after, by the same increased and fed:
Crambo, I muse how you have lice so many;
Since all men know you shift as much as any.

Thou evermore dost ancient poets blame,
For feigning Venus wife to Vulcan lame.
I blame the stars, and Hymen too, that gave
A fair straight wife to thee, a foul lame knave:
And nought doth ease my grief but only this,
Thy Venus now hath got a Mars to kiss.

You promise mountains still to me,
When over-night stark drunk you be;
But nothing you perform next day:
Henceforth be morning drunk, I pray.

Gnat, swift messenger, fly from me and when you touch the tip of Zenophile's ear, murmur this:
" Sleepless he waits you, but you sleep, O heavy-eyed forgetter of your lover! "
Fly! Hey, friend of the Muse, fly! But hum gently lest you waken her husband and arouse his jealousy against me.
If you bring her here I will gird you with a lion's skin, O most magnanimous gnat, and I will give you a club to carry in your hand!

Shrill-humming, impudent gnats, suckers of human blood, two-winged night beasts, I beseech you, let Zenophile sleep tranquilly for a little — look, here is my own flesh, devour it.
I implore them fruitlessly. These beasts of prey delight to luxuriate on delicate flesh. But I warn you to cease your insolence, vile beasts, or you will learn the weight of jealous hands!