Amores I.3

Just is my prayer: let the maid who has lately made me her prey either give me love, or give me reason for ever to love! Ah, I have asked too much — let her but suffer herself to be loved; may Cytherea hear my many prayers!

Take one who would be your slave through long years: take one who knows how to love with pure faith! If I have not ancient ancestry and great name to commend me, if the author of my line was but a knight, and my fields are not renewed with ploughshares numberless, if both my parents guard frugally their spending — yet Phoebus and his nine companions and the finder of the vine are on my side, and so is Love, who makes me his gift to you, and I have good faith that will yield to none, and ways without reproach, and unadorned simplicity, and blushing modesty. I am not smitten with a thousand — I am no flit-about in love : you, if there be any truth, shall be my everlasting care. With you may it be my lot to live the years which the Sisters' threads have spun for me, and to be sorrowed over by you when I die! Give me yourself as happy matter for my songs — and my songs will come forth worthy of their cause. Through song came fame to Io frightened by her horns, and to her a lover beguiled in guise of the river-bird, and to her who was carried over the deep on the pretended bull while she grasped with virgin hand his bended horns. You and I, too, shall be sung in like manner through all the earth, and my name shall be ever joined with yours.