Collected Works

And those who move tambourines beneath the Idaean hill:
Or those whom the half-divine Dryads and two-horned Fauns
Have stunned by their divine power:
For they report to me: when that fury has retreated,
Everything. Love, a witness, burns me in silence.
Perhaps we owe this love to the fate of our lineage:
And Venus seeks a tribute from the entire family.
Jupiter loved Europa (she is the first origin of the race):
While the god hid in the form of a bull.
Pasiphae, my mother, subjected to the deceived bull,
Brought forth the crime from her womb: and her burden.
The treacherous descendant of Aegeus Theseus, having followed the leading threads,
Fled the curved halls by the help of my sister Ariadne.
Look, I now, lest I be thought to have too little of Minos' blood:
I go to the final limits of the race in social laws:
This too is fated: one house has pleased two women.
Your form captures me: just as your father Theseus captured my sister.
The descendant of Theseus, and Theseus himself, have seized two sisters.
Set up two trophies from our house.
At the time when the Cereal Eleusis the Mysteries of Demeter was initiated for us:
I wish the Gnossian Cretan soil had detained me.
Then, especially to me (though you did not displease me before):
Sharp love stuck in my extreme bones.
Your clothing was white: your hair bound with flowers.
A shy blush had tinted your yellow cheeks.
And the face that others call rigid and stern:
To the judge Phaedra, it will be strong.
May young men adorned like women be far from us.
A masculine form is loved when adorned with moderation.
That rigor of yours: and your hair placed without art:
And the light dust on your noble face becomes you:
Whether you twist back the struggling necks of a fierce horse:
I marvel at your feet bent in a small circle.
Whether you twist the pliant spear with a strong arm:
Your fierce arm has its face turned toward itself.
Whether you hold the cornel-wood hunting spears with broad iron:
In short, whatever you do delights my eyes.
Just lay aside your hardness in the mountainous woods.
I am not material worthy of being destroyed by you.
What does it help to practice the pursuits of the ungirded Diana?
And to have snatched from Venus her own numbers?
What lacks alternating rest: is not durable.
This repairs strength: and renews weary limbs.