horace

Tibullus, pull yourself together!

Tibullus, pull yourself together!
You musn’t make such heavy weather
When women throw you over.
All day you melt in songs of woe,
Merely because a younger beau
Is now Neara’s lover.

The slender-brow’d Lycoris burns
For Cyrus: presto, Cyrus turns
To court the peevish Julia;
But Julia will no more abate
Her virgin pride, than does will mate
With wolves from wild Apulia.

Thus Venus plays her grimmest joke;
She loves to match beneath her yoke
Those who have least in common,
And both in looks and characters
Concocts the most unlikely pairs –
No help for man or woman!

Take my own case: I might have wooed
A girl as fair as she was good,
And here you see me slaving,
In utter bliss, for Myrtale,
A slur, more tetchy than the sea
Round southern headlands raving.


trans by edward marsh