English

Once a shepherd on the hills
Marvelled at the weeping rills
How a stone like Niobi
Should so tearful ever be.

Now 'tis I who weep and moan
And Erippi is the stone.
Though I cry in darkness drear
Never she my plaint will hear.

Love is still the cause of all,
Sends the tears from both that fall.
She bewails her children slain,
I my unrequited pain.

For whom shall I array my hair,
For whom my hands adorn,
For whom my sea-dyed tunic wear,
Now I am left forlorn?

Mine eyes of Rhodopi berest
Find naught to make them gay,
No joy in golden dawn is left
Now that my love's away.

This is love's vintage hour; within my arms
I hold imprisoned all thy rosy charms,
The crown of my desire, nor can see
In spring or summer aught so fair as thee.
Thy autumn beauties every treasure hold,
Oh, may they bloom for aye, nor e'er grow old.
And yet, what care I? When the grapes lie piled,
Men do not heed the curling tendrils wild.
And so my love will constant last, I trow,
E'en when the tendril wrinkles line thy brow.

Cupid, pierce no more my heart
Nor my inward vitals burn;
Prithee on some other part
Thy swift arrows turn.

'Tis true, good sir, that now you're old
And love's hot spur in you is cold,
But you were young once and should be
Compassionate to frailty.

To err is human you should know,
Nor treat a tender maiden so,
Just for one slip it was not fair
To spoil the glory of her hair.

A father's part you think to play,
But she, poor girl, must rue the day.
She hoped in you a friend to find,
Yet now you seem more kin than kind.

Jove, men say, in golden shower
Entered once a maiden's bed,
Pierced within the brazen bower,
Took a maidenhead.

So the poets tell the tale,
This the meaning I behold;
Bars and walls will ne'er avail,
Brass must yield to gold.

Bonds relax, doors open wide
If you take a golden key,
Haughty dames forget their pride,
Sink on willing knee.

Danai the falling rain
Welcomed thus in days gone by,
Lovers need not sigh in vain
If with gold they try.

Have mercy, Love, and lull my sleepless pain
Nor leave my Muse's voice to cry in vain.
To-day thy bow, forgetting other hearts,
On me alone pours all its winged darts.
Even if you kill me, on my tomb you'll see
This epitaph — " Slain by Love's Cruelty ."

Love and Desire play the set,
My heart's the flying ball,
To Heliodore across the net
They send it, rise and fall.

Be heedful, sweetest; watch thy art
Nor mock me in my need;
To miss the stroke and lose my heart,
That were a fault indeed.

Along the beach where Love was born
Cleander strolled one summer morn
And saw his Nico swimming there
Breasting the waves with bosom bare.
He saw and burned: for strange to say
Water gave birth to fire that day,
And from the briny drops she threw
A parching flame within him grew.
She tossed the waves with dimpled arm
And shoreward turned nor knew of harm.
But he who on the dry land stayed
Most lamentable shipwreck made.
Yet all proved well. An equal love
Venus has sent them from above:

Farewell my youthful loves, 'tis vain
To cast the reckoning of loss and gain:
Those pleasures fugitive
I take not now nor give.
A fairer image fills my heart,
A love where boyhood's fancies have no part;
Escaped from their strong hold
I fly the loves of old.