Extant Works

With my lamp, holding back, and with unstrung bow we tightened our grip:
How great the fires are that the anxious youth suffers since that time,
I am the witness; how much he bears me pressing him night and day,
Never have I weighed more heavily on anyone, Mother, and I repeat the wounds I inflicted.
I saw Hippomenes, eager to run on the field,
And he was not so pale even at the finish line.
I saw the arms of the Abydenian youth Leander struggling against the oars
90 Of the waves, and I praised his hands, and I often practiced with the swimmer;
That heat was less, with which the savage seas were warmed,
You, youth, have surpassed the loves of old.
I myself was amazed that you endured such great heat,
And I strengthened your spirits, and with bland feathers I wiped away
Your tear-moistened eyes, as often as Apollo complained to me,
"So does my poet mourn!" Now, Mother, indulge the beloved
Bridal chambers, that companion of ours, the pious
Standard-bearer, could recount the arm-bearing labors,
And the famous deeds of men, and the fields flowing with blood:
100 * Hence he gave you the lyre: and the poet preferred to advance gently,
And to weave the laurel beneath our myrtle.
He reflects on the falls of youths and his own wounds, not from yesterday,
O what reverence the Paphian Venus holds for the Mother’s divinity!
He has lamented our fates, O Dove.
He had spoken, and hung on his mother’s tender neck,
Blandly, and warmed her breast with his hovering wings.
She replies, not disdaining to be asked in her expression.
"It is great, and rare for men, whom I myself have approved,
That the Pierian youth desires this vow: I, having admired the extraordinary
110 Beauty of his form, for whom the glory of his fathers,"