Odes 2.5 (Martin): Nondum Subacta

Have patience! She's plainly too tender, you see,
The yoke on her delicate shoulders to bear,
So young as she is, fit she never could be
His task with the gentlest yoke-fellow to share,
Or brook the assault of the ponderous bull,
Rushing headlong the fire of his passion to cool.

At present your heifer finds all her delight
In wandering o'er the green meadows at will.
In cooling her sides, when the sun is at height:
In the iciest pools of some mountain-fed rill,
Or 'mid the dank osier-beds bounding in play
With the young calves, as sportive and skittish as they.

For unripe grapes to long is mere folly; soon, too.
Many-tinted Autumnus with purple will dye
Thy clusters that now wear so livid a hue;
And so after thee, soon, her glances will fly,
For merciless Time to her count will assign
The swift speeding years, as she takes them from thine.

And then will thy Lalage long for a lord,
Nor shrink from the secrets of conjugal joy;
By thee she will be, too, more fondly adored,
Than Pholoe's self, or than Chloris the coy,
Her beautiful shoulders resplendently white
As the moon, when it silvers the ocean by night

Or as Gnidian Gyges, whom were you to place
In the midst of a bevy of sunny-brow'd girls,
So boyish, so girlish at once is his face,
So silken the flow of his clustering curls,
'Twould puzzle the skilfullest judge to declare,
If Gyges or they were more maidenly fair.