Complete Poems

Which fits us together in the enjoyment of the thing by possessing it.
Whence also these two words exist: whence also the name of love.
But if the thing be absent, it begets longing. And yet,
With the body separated, the mind itself is wholly in the image.
The soul itself, having insinuated itself into the soul, cannot remain
Alone: but it applies itself, and has clung with secret fastenings.
With these such rare feasts, Brassica, I shall receive you,
Worn out by the clamor of the forum, which lacerates learned ears,
If by chance a feast day, or a dark
Court recess, or the solemn vintage releases you
From the bond in which you owe your labor to the comforts of the realm.

On a seven-month birth.

The matter is utterly ridiculous. But it does not straightaway
Touch everyone with laughter here, but, condemned by infamous grief,
Fame has pricked the heart with the sharp sting of the husband.
There is no place for falsehood, nor is that detraction now: but
[She is] having confessed the evidence, and having spoken from her own mouth.
You ask how it is? He could have sung a double wedding song here.
For the bride, when led home, being a girl,
Had another girl in the hidden labyrinths of her womb.
O happy you in your twin betrothals! Therefore,
Why do you shout? Why do you reveal with a great voice, as if a herald,
What no one would know before you had found it out,
When he proclaims the crown of the victor with the fighter's frond?
And perhaps you babble in vain. For terrified by the death
Which you were threatening on account of suspicion, she spoke out
What you foolishly ask, not wishing to find: eloquently
She turns away the dagger aimed at her throat and breast by the one
To whom it was spoken. Eat it up: you kneaded it. Now the judgment of the physicians
He implores. They doubt whether the girl was born
In the sixth month, or in the one which follows after. A gathering. They go to
Me, the father and true husband of the bride, and that father of the girl—
Not a father, as he claims: a father, as we claim, because