Amores III.12

What day was that, ye birds not white, on which you chanted omens ill-boding to the poet ever in love? or what ill star shall I think is rising on my fate, or what gods shall I complain are moving war against me? She who but now was called my own, whom I began alone to love, must now, I fear, be shared with many.

Am I mistaken, or is it my books of verse have made her known? So will it prove — 'tis my genius has made her common. And I deserve it! for why was I the crier of her beauty? Through my fault she I love has become a thing of sale. I am the pander has helped her to please, I have been guide to lead the lover, by my hand has her door been opened.

Whether verses are good for aught, I doubt; they have always been my bane, and stood in the light of my good. Though there was Thebes, though Troy, though Caesar's deeds, Corinna only has stirred my genius. Would that the Muses had looked away when I first touched verse, and Phoebus refused me aid when my attempt was new!

And yet 'tis not the custom to heed the poet's witness; my verses, too, I had preferred should have no weight. 'Twas we poets made Scylla steal from her sire a his treasured locks, and hide in her groin the devouring dogs; 'tis we have placed wings on feet, and mingled snakes with hair; our song made Abas' child a victor with the winged horse. We, too, stretched Tityos out through a mighty space, and gave to the viperous dog three mouths; we made Enceladus, hurling the spear with a thousand arms, and the heroes snared by the voice of the doubtful maid.c We shut in the skins of the Ithacan the East-winds of Aeolus; made the traitor Tantalus thirst in the midst of the stream. Of Niobe we made a rock, and turned a maiden to a bear.d 'Tis due to us that the bird of Cecrops sings Odrysian Itys; that Jove transforms himself now to a bird, and now to gold, or cleaves the waters a bull with a maiden on his back. Why tell of Proteus, and those Theban seeds, the dragon's teeth; that cattle once there were that spewed forth flames from their mouths; of thy sisters, Auriga, weeping tears of amber o'er their cheeks rt; of what were ships, but now are goddesses of the sea; of the ill-starred day at Atreus' maddened tables, and the rocks that followed at stroke of the lyre?

Measureless pours forth the creative wantonness of bards, nor trammels its utterance with history's truth. My praising of my lady, too, you should have taken for false; now your easy trust is my undoing.