Book III, Elegy 3: What is Wealth to Lygdamus without Love? (Postgate)

What gain is it to have filled the heavens with vows, Neaera, and offered bland incense with constant prayer, not that I might step out from the threshold of a marble dwelling, observed and noted for a glorious house, or that bulls of mine might turn the clods o'er many a rood and earth in her bounty give me great harvests, but that through long years of life I might share my joys with thee, and that in thine arms might drop my aged frame in the hour when my course of light was fully run and stripped of all I was forced to voyage on the barque of Lethe ?

What good to me were heavy weight of precious gold or a thousand oxen cleaving my rich fields ? what good a house that rests on pillars from Phrygian quarries, or, Taenaros, from thine, or thine, Carystos, woods within mansions mimicking the sacred groves, or gilded cross-beams and a floor of marble ? Or what the pearl shell gathered on Erythraean shores, or wool dipped in the purple dye of Sidon, and all besides that the world admires ? Here env) lodges : the crowd is misguided in most that it adores. Wealth lightens not the hearts and cares of men. For Fortune rules their circumstances by ordinances of her own.

With thee, Neaera, would I welcome poverty without thee I want nothing that the kings can give, O snow-bright morn that shall give thee back to me O day that will bring me three- and four-fold bliss !

But if the unfriendly god should turn his ears away from all that I vow for that dear return, then no kingdoms please me, nor river of Lydia charged with gold, nor all the wealth that the earth's round bears. Let others long for these; but let me live in humble style, if without misgivings I may have my dear wife for my own.

Be with me, daughter of Saturn, and listen to my timid prayers, and thou too listen, goddess of Cyprus whose chariot is thy shell. But if Fate and the dour sisters who draw the yarn and spin the future deny returning, then let the voice of sallow Orcus, the lord of treasures amidst sluggish waters, call me to his desolate rivers and his black morass.