No More Learning

This did my queen teach me by her many lamentings,
when her bridegroom set out for stern warfare. Yet thou didst not mourn the
widowhood of desolate couch, but the tearful separation from a dear
brother? How care made sad inroads in thy very marrow! In so much that
thine whole bosom being agitated, and thy senses being snatched from thee,
thy mind wandered! But in truth I have known thee great of heart ever since
thou wast a little maiden. Hast thou forgotten that noble deed, by which
thou didst gain a regal wedlock, than which none dared other deeds bolder?
Yet what grieving words didst thou speak when bidding thy bridegroom
farewell! Jupiter! as with sad hand often thine eyes thou didst dry! What
mighty god changed thee? Was it that lovers are unwilling to be long absent
from their dear one's body? Then didst thou devote me to the whole of the
gods on thy sweet consort's behalf, not without blood of bullocks, should
he be granted safe return. In no long time he added captive Asia to the
Egyptian boundaries. Wherefore for these reasons I, bestowed 'midst the
celestial host, by a new gift fulfil thine ancient promise. With grief, O
queen, did I quit thy brow, with grief: I swear to thee and to thine head;
fit ill befall whosoever shall swear lightly: but who may bear himself peer
with steel?
Even that mountain was swept away, the greatest on earth, over
which Thia's illustrious progeny passed, when the Medes created a new sea,
and the barbarian youth sailed its fleet through the middle of Athos. What
can locks of hair do, when such things yield to iron? Jupiter! may the
whole race of the Chalybes perish, and whoever first questing the veins
'neath the earth harassed its hardness, breaking it through with iron. Just
before severance my sister locks were mourning my fate, when Ethiop
Memnon's brother, the winged steed, beating the air with fluttering
pennons, appeared before Locrian Arsinoe, and this one bearing me up, flies
through aethereal shadows and lays me in the chaste bosom of Venus. Him
Zephyritis herself had dispatched as her servant, a Grecian settler on the
Canopian shores. For 'twas the wish of many gods that not alone in heaven's
light should the golden coronet from Ariadne's temples stay fixed, but that
we also should gleam, the spoils devote from thy golden-yellow head; when
humid with weeping I entered the temples of the gods, the Goddess placed
me, a new star, amongst the ancient ones. For a-touching the Virgin's and
the fierce Lion's gleams, hard by Callisto of Lycaon, I turn westwards
fore-guiding the slow-moving Bootes who sinks unwillingly and late into the
vasty ocean. But although the footsteps of the gods o'erpress me in the
night-tide, and the daytime restoreth me to the white-haired Tethys, (grant
me thy grace to speak thus, O Rhamnusian virgin, for I will not hide the
truth through any fear, even if the stars revile me with ill words yet I
will unfold the pent-up feelings from truthful breast) I am not so much
rejoiced at these things as I am tortured by being for ever parted, parted
from my lady's head, with whom I (though whilst a virgin she was free from
all such cares) drank many a thousand of Syrian scents.

Now do you, whom the gladsome light of the wedding torches hath joined,
yield not your bodies to your desiring husbands nor throw aside your
vestments and bare your bosom's nipples, before your onyx cup brings me
jocund gifts, your onyx, ye who seek the dues of chaste marriage-bed. But
she who giveth herself to foul adultery, may the light-lying dust
responselessly drink her vile gifts, for I seek no offerings from folk that
do ill. But rather, O brides, may concord always be yours, and constant
love ever dwell in your homes. But when thou, O queen, whilst gazing at the
stars, shalt propitiate the goddess Venus with festal torch-lights, let not
me, thine own, be left lacking of unguent, but rather gladden me with large
gifts. Stars fall in confusion! So that I become a royal tress, Orion might
gleam in Aquarius' company.

LXVII.