Amores II.1

This, too, is the work of my pen — mine, Naso's, born among the humid Paeligni, the well-known singer of my own worthless ways. This, too, have I wrought at the bidding of Love — away from me, far away, ye austere fair! Ye are no fit audience for my tender strains. For my readers I want the maid not cold at the sight of her promised lover's face, and the untaught boy touched by passion till now unknown; and let some youth who is wounded by the same bow as I am now, know in my lines the record of his own heart's flame, and, long wondering, say : " From what tattler has this poet learned, that he has put in verse my own mishaps? "

I had dared, I remember, to sing — nor was my utterance too weak — of the wars of Heaven, and Gyas of the hundred hands, when Earth made her ill attempt at vengeance, and steep Ossa, with shelving Pelion on its back, was piled upon Olympus. I had in hand the thunder-clouds, and Jove with the lightning he was to hurl to save his own heaven.

My beloved closed her door! I — let fall Jove with his lightning; Jove's very self dropped from my thoughts. Jove, pardon me! Thy bolts could not serve me; that door she closed was a thunderbolt greater than thine. I have taken again to my proper arms — the light and bantering elegy; its gentle words have softened the hard-hearted door. Song brings down the horns of the blood-red moon, and calls back the snowy steeds of the departing sun; song bursts the serpent's jaws apart and robs him of his fangs, and sends the waters rushing back upon their source. Song has made doors give way, and the bolt inserted in the post, although of oak, has been made to yield by song.

Of what avail will it be to me to have sung of swift Achilles? What will the sons of Atreus, the one or the other, do for me, and he who in wandering lost as many years as in war, and Hector the lamented, dragged by Haemonian steeds? But a tender beloved, at my oft praising of her beauty has come of herself to the poet as the reward for his song. Great is my recompense! Renowned names of heroes, fare ye well; your favours are not the kind for me! And fair ones, turn hither your beauteous faces as I sing the songs which rosy Love dictates to me!