T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
From Elegies: Book III. Elegia XI.
By Ovid (43 B.C.–18 A.D.)(Translated by Christopher Marlowe) Ad amicam a cujus amore discedere non potest. |
LONG have I borne much, mad thy faults me make; | |
| Dishonest love, my wearied breast forsake! | |
| Now have I freed myself, and fled the chain, | |
| And what I have borne, shame to bear again. | |
| We vanquish, and tread tamed love under feet, | 5 |
| Victorious wreaths at length my temples greet, | |
| Suffer, and harden: good grows by this grief, | |
| Oft bitter juice brings to the sick relief. | |
| I have sustained, so oft thrust from the door, | |
| To lay my body on the hard moist floor. | 10 |
| I know not whom thou lewdly didst embrace, | |
| When I to watch supplied a servant’s place. | |
| I saw when forth a tirèd lover went, | |
| His side past service, and his courage spent, | |
| Yet this is less than if he had seen me; | 15 |
| May that shame fall mine enemies’ chance to be. | |
| When have not I, fixed to thy side, close laid? | |
| I have thy husband, guard, and fellow played. | |
| The people by my company she pleased; | |
| My love was cause that more men’s love she seized. | 20 |
| What, should I tell her vain tongue’s filthy lies, | |
| And, to my loss, god-wronging perjuries? | |
| What secret becks in banquets with her youths, | |
| With privy signs, and talk dissembling truths? | |
| Hearing her to be sick, I thither ran, | 25 |
| But with my rival sick she was not than. | |
| These hardened me, with what I keep obscure: | |
| Some other seek, who will these things endure. | |
| Now my ship in the wishèd haven crowned, | |
| With joy hears Neptune’s swelling waters sound. | 30 |
| Leave thy once-powerful words, and flatteries, | |
| I am not as I was before, unwise. | |
| Now love and hate my light breast each way move, | |
| But victory, I think will hap to love. | |
| I’ll hate, if I can; if not, love ’gainst my will, | 35 |
| Bulls hate the yoke, yet what they hate have still. | |
| I fly her lust, but follow beauty’s creature, | |
| I loathe her manners, love her body’s feature. | |
| Nor with thee, nor without thee can I live, | |
| And doubt to which desire the palm to give. | 40 |
| Or less fair, or less lewd would thou might’st be: | |
| Beauty with lewdness doth right ill agree. | |
| Her deeds gain hate, her face entreateth love; | |
| Ah, she doth more worth than her vices prove! | |
| Spare me, oh, by our fellow bed, by all | 45 |
| The gods, who by thee, to be perjured fall. | |
| And by thy face to me a power divine, | |
| And by thine eyes whose radiance burns out mine! | |
| Whate’er thou art, mine art thou: choose this course, | |
| Wilt have me willing, or to love by force. | 50 |
| Rather I’ll hoist up sail, and use the wind, | |
| That I may love yet, though against my mind. | |