Amores III.11

Much have I endured, and for long time; my wrongs have overcome my patience; withdraw from my tired-out breast, base love! Surely, now I have claimed my freedom, and fled my fetters, ashamed of having borne what I felt no shame while bearing. Victory is mine, and I tread under foot my conquered love; courage has entered my heart, though late. Persist, and endure! this smart will some day bring thee good; oft has bitter potion brought help to the languishing.

Can it be I have endured it — to be so oft repulsed from your doors, and to lay my body down, a free born man, on the hard ground? Can it be that, for some no one you held in your embrace, I have lain, like a slave keeping vigil, before your tight-closed home? I have seen when the lover came forth from your doors fatigued, with frame exhausted and weak from love's campaign; yet this is a slighter thing than being seen by him — may shame like that befall my enemies!

When have I not in patience clung close to your side, myself your guard, myself your lover, myself your companion? Be sure, too, that people liked you because you were at my side; my love for you has won you love from many. Why repeat the shameful lies of your empty tongue, and recall the perjured oaths to the gods you have sworn to my undoing? Why tell of the silent nods of young lovers at the banquet board, and of words concealed in the signal agreed upon? Say I had been told she was ill — headlong and madly I ran to her; I came, and she was not ill — to my rival!

Oft bearing such-like things, and others I say naught of, I have hardened; seek another in my stead who can submit to them. Already my craft is decked with votive wreath, and listens undisturbed to the sea's swelling waters. Cease wasting your caresses, and the words that once had weight — I am not a fool, as once I was!

Struggling over my fickle heart, love draws it now this way, and now hate that — but love, I think, is winning. I will hate, if I have strength; if not, I shall love unwilling. The ox, too, loves not the yoke; what he hates he none the less bears. I fly from your baseness — as I fly, your beauty draws me back; I shun the wickedness of your ways — your person I love. Thus I can live neither with you nor without, and seem not to know my own heart's prayer. I would you were either less beauteous or less base; beauty so fair mates not with evil ways. Your actions merit hate, your face pleads winningly for love — ah! wretched me, it has more power than its owner's misdeeds.

Spare me, O by the laws of love's comradeship, by all the gods who oft lend themselves for you to deceive, and by that face of yours, to me the image of high divinity, and by your eyes, that have taken captive mine! Whatever you be, mine ever will you be; choose you only whether you wish me also willing, or to love because constrained! Let me rather spread my sails and use the favouring breeze, that I may wish, though against my will, for love's constraint.