Odes 3.7 (Martin): Quid Fles, Asterie

Why weep, Asterie, for the youth,,
That soul of constancy and truth,
Whom from Bithynia's shore
Rich with its wares, with gentle wing
The west-winds shall in early spring
To thy embrace restore?

Driven by the southern gales, when high
Mad Capra's star ascends the sky,
To Oricum, he keeps
Sad vigils through the freezing nights,
And, thinking of his lost delights
With thee, thy Gyges weeps.

Yet in a thousand artful ways
His hostess' messenger essays
To tempt him, urging how
Chloe — for such her name — is doom'd
By fires like thine to be consumed,
And sigh as deep as thou;

Narrating, how by slanders vile
A woman's falsehood did beguile
The credulous Proetus on,
To hurry with untimely haste
Into the toils of death the chaste,
Too chaste Bellerophon.

Of Peleus then he tells, who thus
Was nigh consign'd to Tartarus,
Because his coldness shamed
Magnessia's queen Hippolyte,
And hints at stories craftily
To sap his virtue framed.

In vain! For he, untouch'd as yet,
Is deafer than the rocks that fret
The Icarian waves; — but thou,
Keep watch upon thy fancy too,
Nor to Enipeus there undue
Attractiveness allow!

Though no one on the Martian Mead
Can turn and wind a mettled steed
So skilfully as he,
Nor any breast the Tuscan tide,
And dash its tawny waves aside
With such celerity.

At nightfall shut your doors, nor then
Look down into the street again,
When quavering fifes complain;
And though he call thee, as he will,
Unjust, unkind, unfeeling, still
Inflexible remain!