Ovid Ovid

YE elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back, you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets…

ON loathing their lascivious Life,
Abhorred all Womankind, but most a Wife:
So single chose to live, and shunned to wed,
Well pleased to want a Consort of his Bed.

OW Salmacis with weak enfeebling streams Softens the body, and unnerves the limbs,
And what the secret cause shall here be shown;
The cause is secret, but the effect is known. The Naiads nurst an infant heretofore,
That Cytherea…

OF bodies chang'd to various forms,
I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;

CE, in his saffron robe, for distant Thrace,
Hymen departs, thro' air's unmeasur'd space;
By Orpheus call'd, the nuptial Pow'r attends,
But with ill-omen'd augury descends;

LE Perseus entertain'd with this report
His father Cepheus, and the list'ning court,
Within the palace walls was heard aloud
The roaring noise of some unruly crowd;

Theseus requests the God to tell his woes,
Whence his maim'd brow, and whence his groans arose
Whence thus the Calydonian stream reply'd,
With twining reeds his careless tresses ty'd:

AM, to whom the story was unknown,
As dead, deplor'd his metamorphos'd son:
A cenotaph his name, and title kept,
And Hector round the tomb, with all his brothers

…Short partings do best, though: time wears out affections,
The absent love fades, a new one takes its place.
With Menelaus away,
Helen's disinclination for

But oh,
I suppose she was ugly; she wasn't elegant;
I hadn't yearned for her often in my prayers.
Yet holding her I was limp, and nothing happened at all:

RE, while the Thracian bard's enchanting strain
Sooths beasts, and woods, and all the listn'ing
plain,
The female Bacchanals, devoutly mad

NG thou art fair,
I bar not thy false playing,
But let not me poor soul know of thy straying.
Nor do I give thee counsel to live chaste

UR husband will be with us at the Treat;
May that be the last Supper he shall Eat.
And am poor I, a Guest invited there,
Only to see, while he may touch the Fair?

AS, attending to the Muse's song,
Approv'd the just resentment of their wrong;
And thus reflects:
While tamely I commend

HE Argonauts now stemm'd the foaming tide,
And to Arcadia's shore their course apply'd;
Where sightless Phineus spent his age in grief,
But Boreas' sons engage in his relief;

ET still Alcithoe perverse remains,
And Bacchus still, and all his rites, disdains.
Too rash, and madly bold, she bids him prove
Himself a God, nor owns the son of Jove.

EN now Agenor had his daughter lost,
He sent his son to search on ev'ry coast;
And sternly bid him to his arms restore
The darling maid, or see his face no more

It was very hot.
The day had gone just past its noon.
I'd stretched out on a couch to take a nap.
One of the window-shutters was open, one was closed.

OW shone the morning star in bright array,
To vanquish night, and usher in the day:
The wind veers southward, and moist clouds arise,
That blot with shades the blue meridian skies.

HE Sun's bright palace, on high columns rais'd,
With burnish'd gold and flaming jewels blaz'd;
The folding gates diffus'd a silver light,
And with a milder gleam refresh'd the sight;

Lovers all are soldiers, and Cupid has his campaigns:
I tell you,
Atticus, lovers all are soldiers.
Youth is fit for war, and also fit for Venus.

OW Glaucus, with a lover's haste, bounds o'er
The swelling waves, and seeks the Latian shore.
Messena,
Rhegium, and the barren coast

I don't ask you to be faithful - you're beautiful, after all -but just that I be spared the pain of knowing.
I make no stringent demands that you should really be chaste,
but only that you try to cover up.
If a girl can claim to be…

Already over the sea from her old spouse she comes, the blonde goddess whose frosty wheels bring day.
Why do you hurry,
Aurora?
Hold off, so may the birdsshed ritual blood each year for Memnon's shade.