T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Elegy to Cynthia
By Propertius (c. 50–c. 16 B.C.)(Translated by Sir Charles Elton) NOT such Corinthian Lais’ sighting train, | |
| Before whose gates all prostrate Greece had lain; | |
| Not such a crowd Menander’s Thais drew, | |
| Whose charms th’ Athenian people joy’d to woo; | |
| Nor she, who could the Theban towers rebuild, | 5 |
| When hosts of suitors had their coffers filled. | |
| Nay—by false kinsmen are thy lips carest; | |
| By sanction’d simulated kisses prest. | |
| The forms of youths and beauteous gods, that rise | |
| Around thy pictured roof, offend mine eyes; | 10 |
| The tender lisping babe, by thee carest | |
| Within its cradle, wounds my jealous breast. | |
| I fear thy mother’s kiss, thy sister dread; | |
| Suspect the virgin partner of her bed: | |
| All wakes my spleen, a very coward grown: | 15 |
| Forgive the fears that spring from thee alone. | |
| Wretched in jealous terror, to my eyes | |
| Beneath each female robe a lover lies. | |
| Blest was Admetus’ spouse, and blest the dame | |
| Who shared Ulysses’ couch in modest fame: | 20 |
| Oh! ever happy shall the fair-one prove, | |
| Who by her husband’s threshold bounds her love. | |
| Ah! why should Modesty’s pure fane ascend? | |
| Why at her shrine the blushing maiden bend? | |
| If, when she weds, her passions spurn control; | 25 |
| If the bold matron sates her wishful soul? | |
| The hand, that first in naked colours traced | |
| Groups of loose loves, on walls that once were chaste: | |
| And full exposed, broad burning on the light, | |
| The shapes and postures that abash the sight; | 30 |
| Made artless minds in crime’s refinements wise, | |
| And flash’d enlightening vice on virgin eyes. | |
| Woe to the wretch! who thus insidious wove | |
| Mute rapture’s veil o’er wrath and tears of love! | |
| Not thus the roofs were deck’d in olden time, | 35 |
| Nor the stain’d walls were painted with a crime: | |
| Then, for some cause, the desert fanes of Rome | |
| Wave with rank grass, while spiders veil the dome. | |
| What guards, O Cynthia! shall thy path confine? | |
| What threshold bound that wilful foot of thine? | 40 |
| Weak is constraint, if women loth obey, | |
| And she is safe, who, blushing, fears to stray. | |