Book II, Elegy 8

The girl I loved so long is being torn from my arms, and dost thou, my friend, forbid me to weep? No enmities are bitter save those of love; slay me if thou wilt, and my hatred shall be milder far. Can I bear to behold her reclined on another's arm? Shall she no more be called "mine," that was "mine" so lately? All things change: and loves not least; conqueror thou art or conquered; so turns the wheel of love. Oft have leaders and lords of might fallen; Thebes stood of old and lofty Troy once was. What gifts I gave her, what songs I made for her! Yet never did she soften her iron heart nor say, "I love thee."

So then, have I, that through so many years too rashly have endured thee and thy household, cruel girl, have I ever seemed to thee aught save thy slave? Or wilt thou never cease to hurl words of scorn at me?

So then, Propertius, must thou die in thine earliest youth? Nay, die! let her rejoice to see thee perish! Let her harry my ghost, and vex my shade, let her trample on my pyre and spurn my bones! [Why? Did not Boeotian Haemon die by Antigone's tomb, his side rent by the sword, and mingle his bones with those of the hapless maid, without whom he would not return to his Theban home?] But thou shalt not escape; thou must die with me, on this same steel must drip the blood of both! Such death shall be for me a death of shame; but, shameful though it be, thou still shalt die.

Even the great Achilles when left forlorn, his love snatched from his side, endured that his arms should lie idle in his tent. He saw the rout, the Achaeans dragged along the shore, he saw the Dorian camp glow with the torch of Hector, he saw Patroclus lie low defiled with clotted sand, his streaming hair dabbled with blood; and all this he endured for the sake of the lovely Briseis. Such is the force and fierceness of grief when love is stolen away. But when with tardy retribution his captive was restored to him, it was the same Achilles dragged brave Hector at the heels of his Haemonian steeds. What wonder then if Love rightfully triumphs over me, that have neither mother nor armour like to his?