Collected Works

Nor do the Thracian original: "sythois" waves carry any Athenian original: "attaeas" ships.
    If you were to count the time—which we lovers count so well—
Our complaint does not arrive before its due day.
    My hope, too, was slow to fade. We are slow to believe what hurts us when believed;
But now, even against my loving will, these things cause me pain.
    Often I lied to myself for your sake; often I imagined
That the white sails were being brought back by the stormy South winds.
    I cursed Theseus Demophoon's father, thinking he would not let you go;
Yet perhaps he was not the one holding up your journey.
    Sometimes I feared lest, while you steered toward the shallows of the Hebrus A river in Thrace; the original "ebri" refers to this location,
Your shipwrecked hull might be submerged in the white-foaming water.
    Often, as a suppliant to the gods, I prayed that you, wicked man, might be well;
I said to myself: "If he is healthy, he is coming."
    In short, my faithful love imagined whatever stands in the way of those in a hurry;
I was ingenious at inventing excuses for you.
    But you remain absent and slow; neither the gods you swore by
Bring you back, nor do you return moved by our love.
    Demophoon, you have given both your words and your sails to the winds;
I complain that the sails lack a return, and the words lack good faith.
    Tell me, what have I done? Unless it was that I loved unwisely;
By that "crime" I might have earned your devotion.
    My only sin is that I welcomed you, you wicked man;
But this sin has the weight and likeness of a great merit.
    Where are your oaths and your faith now? Where is the right hand joined to mine?
And where is the god who was so often on your lying lips?
    Where is the Marriage God original: "hymenaeus" promised for our years together,
Who was the sponsor and the guarantor of our marriage?
    By the sea, which is entirely tossed by winds and waves,
Through which you had often gone, and through which you were to go;
    And by your grandfather Poseidon/Neptune you swore to me—unless he too is a fiction—
He who calms the waters stirred up by the winds;
    By Venus, and by the weapons that affect me far too much—
One weapon being the bow, the other being the torches The arrows and torches of Cupid;
    And by Juno, who kindly presides over the marriage beds,
And by the mystic sacred rites of the torch-bearing goddess Ceres or Hecate, associated with mystery cults.
    If each one of these many offended gods were to take
Their own vengeance, you alone would not be enough for the punishment.
    But in my madness, I even repaired your shattered ships,
So that the hull by which I was to be abandoned would be sturdy.
    I gave you the rowing crew by which you would flee from me.
Alas, I suffer from wounds made by my own weapons!
    I believed your charming words (of which you have plenty);
I believed in your noble lineage and in your gods.