Epithalamion protreptikon

And widowed bed, you rejoice to have grown old.
If I am not mistaken, fierce fates took your mistress ten years ago:
You yourself say that time was yesterday.
Many mothers desire you: and chosen maidens
And with soft vows desire to be yours.
And they aspire to you with the known love of virtue:
And you burn many a young woman with silent love.
But you, loving modesty: and a cultivator of the honest,
Now lead a life like that of a chaste Turtle-dove
A Turtle-dove: whose spouse has been taken away and is dead.
After whose death the husband loves to weep
Sitting on a dry branch, he fills the fields,
The grove, the valleys with complaints: and he groans without end.
Neither green woods: nor are good pastures to his heart:
And he disturbs the waters with his foot, about to drink.
Thus you act, BUT add an end to these complaints,
BY LIGHT a play on the name of the Bridegroom or the "Light" of the wedding: and do not grieve the conscious fates of your wife.
And, if fixed piety does not forbid it, add the mind
Of another faith (what will forbid it?) to your own.
For Basel abounds in cultured maidens:
There is a great plenty of Matrons above.
Choose, whatever you love: what you are loved for, you will be loved:
Who, I ask, would not want to love such a man?
I myself, indeed, if I were a Virgin, if I were nubile:
I would wish to be able to marry such a man.
I promise, if you are the Bridegroom, a memorable poem:
And perhaps not unworthy of your name:
Provided that the Muse wills it: and Apollo, invoked, comes:
Thus far
Pliny and others write about Turtle-doves, that once the partner is taken away, they always groan: they observe chastity: they do not sit on green, but on dry branches of trees: and when there is a need to drink water, they disturb it with their foot, etc. And Turtle-doves and Pigeons are an image of marriage. Paramythion Consolation to Basilius Amerpachius.