Ode LXXIII: Often into a far distant meadow

Often into a far distant meadow, where the many-coloured bloom tops the quick-growing greenery, and in its glistening dewy brightness the boot profits not the [wearer, who is as good as] bare-footed,

Have I plunged at early dawn with a comrade like a wolf, who rears him-self on high, whose breast [from the pollen of the flowers] is like a perfume-pounder of mother-of-pearl.

So early did I visit it that its sparrows had not yet begun to twitter — my companion striving to conceal himself : but others may be hidden — not he !

But it helps not the wildings that they have warning of his coming : he is as it were suspended over them with a grapnel [to clutch them].

When I endeavour to restrain him, he pushes on, making for them, like the pushing-on of a torrent over the papyrus-stems standing in the way of the flood.