I give tears, poor tears, all that is left my love, to you, Heliodora, in Hades under the earth. On your tear-wet grave I lay the memory of our passion, the memory of our affection.
Bitterly, ah bitterly, Meleager mourns his dear one among the dead, her loveliness useless in Acheron.
Ah! where is my beloved olive-shoot? Broken, broken by death! Dust stains the lovely flower.
Earth, Mother of all, I beseech you as a mother, hold gently to your bosom one so bitterly wept.

I cherish Love, the ball-player; he throws to you, Heliodora, the heart which trembles in me.
Let Desire come too as a player; but if you place me away from you I will not endure this breach of the rules of the palaestra!

What wonder if Love, the plague of men, shoots fiery arrows and laughs shrilly with wayward eyes?
Does not his mother love Ares and is she not the wife of Hephaestus and therefore kin to fire and sword?
And does not Thalassa, the mother of his mother, roar savagely under the whip of the winds?
No one knows who his father is. Therefore Love has the fire of Hephaestus and delights in the waves' anger and in the blood-stained shafts of Ares.

Dear, why hath my long love, and faith unfeigned,
At your fair hands no grace at all obtained?

Is 't that my pock-holed face doth beauty lack?
No: your sweet sex, sweet beauty praiseth:
Ours, wit and valour chiefly raiseth.

Is't that my muskless clothes are plain and black?
No: what wise lady loves fine noddies,
With poor-clad minds, and rich-clad bodies?

Is't that no costly gifts mine agents are?
No: my true heart, which I present you,
Should more than pearl or gold content you.

Whosoever longs to try
Both love and jealousy,
My fair inconstant lady let him see,
And he will soon a jealous lover be.

Then he by proof shall know,
As I do to my woe,
How they make my poor heart at once to dwell,
In fire and frost, in heaven and in hell.

To Love

Thou, whose sole Name all Passions doth comprize,
Youngest and Eldest of the Deities,
Born without Parents, whose unbounded Raign
Moves the firm Earth, fixeth the floating Main,
Inverts the Course of Heav'n; and from the Deep
Awakes those Souls that in dark Lethe sleep,
By thy mysterious Chains seeking t'unite
Once more, the long-since torn Hermaphrodite.
He who thy willing Pris'ner long was vow'd
And uncompell'd beneath thy Scepter bow'd,
Returns at last in thy soft Fetters bound,

" Oh why," my darling prayeth me, " must you sing
For ever of ghostly loves, phantasmal passion?
Seeing that you never loved me after that fashion
And the love I gave was not a phantom thing,
But delight of eager lips and strong arms folding
The beauty of yielding arms and of smooth shoulder,
All fluent grace of which you were the moulder:
And I. . . . Oh, I was happy for your holding."
" Ah, do you not know, my dearest, have you not seen
The shadow that broodeth over things that perish:
How age may mock sweet moments that have been

Now by Aphrodite, I will burn all you have, Love, your arrows and your Scythian quiver; I will burn them!
Why do you laugh like a fool and grin with your wrinkledup nose and sneer? I think you will soon laugh with a wry face! I will cut off your wings, the guides of Desire, and I will bind your feet with a bronze chain.
Yet I shall win but a Cadmean victory if I keep you too near me, like a lynx in the goat-pastures. Go then, hard-to-conquer, bind on light sandals and fly away on new swift wings!

The wine-cup is glad; it has touched (it says) the sweet-speaking mouth of Zenophile, the dear-to-love.
Fortunate cup! O that with her lips upon my lips Zenophile would drink my soul at a draught!

O night, O my sleepless yearning for Heliodora, O the sharp kisses and tears at hateful dawn, does any trace of my love remain with her, any remembered kiss warm her cold thoughts? Does she remember my tears in her bed? Does she clasp to her breast and kiss a heart-deluding dream shape of me?
Or has she a new love, new caresses?
O lamp, may you never look on such a thing, but be the guardian of her I have committed to you.