Amores I.12

Weep for my misfortune — my tablets have returned with gloomy news! The unhappy missive says : " Not possible to-day." There is something in omens; just now as Nape would leave, she tripped her toe upon the threshold and stopped. When next you are sent abroad, remember to take more care as you cross, and soberly to lift your foot full clear!

Away from me, ill-natured tablets, funereal pieces of wood, and you, wax close writ with characters that will say me nay! — wax which I think was gathered from the flower of the long hemlock by the bee of Corsica and sent us under its ill-famed honey. Yet you had a blushing hue, as if tinctured deep with minium — but that colour was really a colour from blood. Lie there at the crossing of the ways, where I throw you, useless sticks, and may the passing wheel with its heavy load crush you! Yea, and the man who converted you from a tree to an' object for use, I will assure you, did not have pure hands. That tree, too, lent itself to the hanging of some wretched neck, and furnished the cruel cross to the executioner; it gave its foul shade to hoarse horned owls, and its branches bore up the eggs of the screech-owl and the vulture. To tablets like these did I insanely commit my loves and give my tender words to be carried to my lady? More fitly would such tablets receive the wordy bond, for some judge to read in dour tones; 'twere better they should lie among day-ledgers, and accounts in which some miser weeps o'er money spent.

Yes, I have found you double in your dealings, to accord with your name. Your very number was an augury not good. What prayer should I make in my anger, unless that rotten old age eat you away, and your wax grow colourless from foul neglect?