De Rerum Natura

In such uncertain state they waste away

With unseen wound.

To which be added too,

They squander powers and with the travail wane;

Be added too, they spend their futile years

Under another's beck and call; their duties

Neglected languish and their honest name

Reeleth sick, sick; and meantime their estates

Are lost in Babylonian tapestries;

And unguents and dainty Sicyonian shoes

Laugh on her feet; and (as ye may be sure)

Big emeralds of green light are set in gold;

And rich sea-purple dress by constant wear

Grows shabby and all soaked with Venus' sweat;

And the well-earned ancestral property

Becometh head-bands, coifs, and many a time

The cloaks, or garments Alidensian

Or of the Cean isle. And banquets, set

With rarest cloth and viands, are prepared-

And games of chance, and many a drinking cup,

And unguents, crowns and garlands. All in vain,

Since from amid the well-spring of delights

Bubbles some drop of bitter to torment

Among the very flowers- when haply mind

Gnaws into self, now stricken with remorse

For slothful years and ruin in baudels,

Or else because she's left him all in doubt

By launching some sly word, which still like fire

Lives wildly, cleaving to his eager heart;

Or else because he thinks she darts her eyes

Too much about and gazes at another,-

And in her face sees traces of a laugh.

These ills are found in prospering love and true;

But in crossed love and helpless there be such

As through shut eyelids thou canst still take in-

Uncounted ills; so that 'tis better far

To watch beforehand, in the way I've shown,

And guard against enticements. For to shun

A fall into the hunting-snares of love

Is not so hard, as to get out again,

When tangled in the very nets, and burst

The stoutly-knotted cords of Aphrodite.

Yet even when there enmeshed with tangled feet,

Still canst thou scape the danger-lest indeed

Thou standest in the way of thine own good,

And overlookest first all blemishes

Of mind and body of thy much preferred,

Desirable dame. For so men do,

Eyeless with passion, and assign to them

Graces not theirs in fact. And thus we see

Creatures in many a wise crooked and ugly

The prosperous sweethearts in a high esteem;

And lovers gird each other and advise

To placate Venus, since their friends are smit

With a base passion- miserable dupes

Who seldom mark their own worst bane of all.

The black-skinned girl is "tawny like the honey";

The filthy and the fetid's "negligee";

The cat-eyed she's "a little Pallas," she;

The sinewy and wizened's "a gazelle";

The pudgy and the pigmy is "piquant,

One of the Graces sure"; the big and bulky

O she's "an Admiration, imposante";

The stuttering and tongue-tied "sweetly lisps";

The mute girl's "modest"; and the garrulous,

The spiteful spit-fire, is "a sparkling wit";

And she who scarcely lives for scrawniness

Becomes "a slender darling"; "delicate"

Is she who's nearly dead of coughing-fit;

The pursy female with protuberant breasts

She is "like Ceres when the goddess gave

Young Bacchus suck"; the pug-nosed lady-love

"A Satyress, a feminine Silenus";

The blubber-lipped is "all one luscious kiss"-

A weary while it were to tell the whole.

But let her face possess what charm ye will,

Let Venus' glory rise from all her limbs,-

Forsooth there still are others; and forsooth

We lived before without her; and forsooth

She does the same things- and we know she does-

All, as the ugly creature, and she scents,

Yes she, her wretched self with vile perfumes;

Whom even her handmaids flee and giggle at

Behind her back. But he, the lover, in tears

Because shut out, covers her threshold o'er

Often with flowers and garlands, and anoints

Her haughty door-posts with the marjoram,

And prints, poor fellow, kisses on the doors-

Admitted at last, if haply but one whiff

Got to him on approaching, he would seek

Decent excuses to go out forthwith;

And his lament, long pondered, then would fall

Down at his heels; and there he'd damn himself

For his fatuity, observing how

He had assigned to that same lady more-

Than it is proper to concede to mortals.

And these our Venuses are 'ware of this.

Wherefore the more are they at pains to hide

All the-behind-the-scenes of life from those

Whom they desire to keep in bonds of love-