No More Learning

Daughter of Proteus might well she be whom he sired upon Thetis.

In metamorphoses they've many a hero deceived.

So now the daughter beguiles the naive and bedazzles the foolish,

Teases you while you're asleep; when you awaken, she's flown.

Eagerly yields herself up to the quick, to the active man only.

He discovers she's tame, playful and tender and sweet.

Once she appeared to me, too: a dark-skinned girl, tumbling

Over her forehead the hair down in waves heavy and dark.

Round about a delicate neck curled short little ringlets;

Up from the crown of her head crinkled the unbraided hair.

When she dashed by me I seized her, mistaking her not. Lovingly

Kiss and embrace she returned, knowing and teaching me how.

O how enraptured I was! Ah, say now no more. It's a bygone.

But, O pigtails of Rome, still I'm entrammled in you.




VII

Happily now on classical soil I feel inspiration.

Voices from present and past speak here evocatively.
Heeding ancient advice, I leaf through the works of the Ancients

With an assiduous hand. Daily the pleasure's renewed.

Throughout the night, in a different way, I'm kept busy by Cupid--

If erudition is halved, rapture is doubled that way.

Do then I not become wise when I trace with my eye her sweet bosom's

Form, and the line of her hips stroke with my hand? I acquire,

As I reflect and compare, my first understanding of marble,

See with an eye that feels, feel with a hand that sees.

While my beloved, I grant it, deprives me of moments of daylight,

She in the nighttime hours gives compensation in full.

And we do more than just kiss; we prosecute reasoned discussions

(Should she succumb to sleep, that gives me time for my thoughts).

In her embrace--it's by no means unusual--I've composed poems

And the hexameter's beat gently tapped out on her back,

Fingertips counting in time with the sweet rhythmic breath of her slumber.

Air from deep in her breast penetrates mine and there burns.

Cupid, while stirring the flame in our lamp, no doubt thinks of those days when

For the triumvirs he similar service performed.




VIII

"Can you be cruel enough to sadden me thus with reproaches?

Germans speak, I suppose, bitterly when they're in love.

Bear it I must when the gossips bring forth accusations: I'm guilty--

Or am I not? But, alas, all of my guilt was with you.

Clothes that you've given bear witness for envious neighbors

That the poor widow no more grieves for her husband alone.

Did you not thoughtlessly visit me in the disguise of a cleric,

Muffled all up in a cloak, hair all rounded behind?