Lydia

I ENVY you, ye fields and lovely meads, for this more lovely that my lovely girl is yours: in silence she sighs for my love. You it is she now sees, with you my Lydia plays, to you she now makes speech, on you she now smiles with those dear eyes, and cons my songs with voice subdued, and sings the while those strains she was wont to sing into my ear.

I envy you ye fields; my joys ye possess, and now ye have her, who aforetime was my delight. But my dying limbs are wasting with grief, and warmth fails me, steeped in the chill of death, because my mistress is not with me. No girl on earth was more skilled or more lovely; and, if the tale be not false, then worthy of Jupiter as bull or as gold (turn thine ear aside, O Jupiter!), is my girl alone.

O happy bull, sire and pride of the mighty herd, never does the heifer, seeking stalls apart, suffer thee to low thy grief vainly to the woods. And thou, sire of the kids, happy and ever blest, whether thou, roaming o'er the rocks, seekest the steepy mountains or whether, in woods or on plains, it please thee to scorn fresh forage: with thee is thy happy mate. And wherever is a male, with him is ever joined his mate, and never has he bewailed an interrupted love. Why, O Nature, hast thou not with us too been kind? Why so oft do I suffer cruel grief?

When through the green heavens the pale stars come back, and in turn the golden orb of Phoebus departs on his course, thy love, O Moon, is with thee: why is not mine also with me? O Moon, thou knowest what grief is: pity one who grieves. For he who bears thee, O Phoebus, celebrates love for the laurel; and what procession has told the story of a god, when fame has not told it in the woods? A god (ye gods are everywhere) carries his joys with him, or sees them scattered through the world — to tell these would be a tedious task. Nay more, when the golden ages rolled their course, and mortals of those days were under like conditions — this also I pass over: well we know the star of Minos' daughter, and the maiden who, as captive, followed her lord. Wherein, O denizens of heaven, could our age have injured you, that therefore life's conditions should be harder for us?

Was I the first who dared to sully the chaste purity and assail the hallowed fillet of his love, that by my death I am forced to pay the due of an untimely Fate? And O that my fault were the first prompter of that deed! Then were death sweeter to me than life. No, not mine the fame that at any time would die, for 'twould be said that I first had stolen Love's sweet joys, and from me had sprung that sweet pleasure. Nay, the envious fates have not granted me a boon so great, that our misdeed should be the beginning of secret love.

Of yore Jupiter, who could at all times counterfeit false forms of himself, along with Juno, ere either was called a spouse, tasted the stolen joys of sweet love. The Cyprian, too, rejoiced that on the tender grass her lover crushed the brilliant flowers whereon she lay, as she threw her arms about his lovely neck. At that time Mars, methinks, had been detained in warfare, for as to Vulcan, he too, surely, was busy at work, and with unsightly soot was defiling cheek and beard. Has not Aurora, too, bewailed new loves, and blushingly hidden her eyes in her roseate mantle? Thus have the denizens of heaven done: and the golden age, did it do less? Therefore what gods and heroes have done, why should not a later age do?

Unhappy I, who was not born in those days when Nature was kind! O my luckless birth-lot, and O the wretched race, in which desire is laggard! Such havoc have the Fates made of my life, that what remains of me your eyes could scarcely recognize.