Illic nec voces, nec verba juvantia cessent;
Spondaque lascivâ mobilitate tremat.
With your garments put on looks that dread accusation; and let modesty disavow improper pursuits. Deceive the public, deceive me, too; in my ignorance, let me be mistaken, and allow me to enjoy my silly credulity.
Why do I so often espy letters sent and received? Why one side and the other [673] tumbled, of your couch? Why do I see your hair disarranged more than happens in sleep, and your neck bearing the marks of teeth? The fading itself alone you do not bring before my eyes; if you hesitate consulting your own reputation, still, spare me. My senses fail me, and I am expiring, oft as you confess your failings; and the drops flow, chilled throughout my limbs. Then do I love you; then, in vain, do I hate what I am forced to love; 673* then I could wish myself to be dead, but together with you.
No enquiries, for my part, will I make, nor will I try to know what you shall attempt to conceal; and to me it shall be the same as a false charge. If, however, you shall be found detected in the midst of your guilt, and if criminality shall be beheld by my eyes; what has been plainly seen, do you deny to have been plainly seen; my own eyes shall give way to your assertions.'Tis an easy conquest for you to vanquish me, who desire to be vanquished. Let your tongue only be mindful to say—"I did not do it!" since it is your lot to conquer with two words; although not by the merit of your cause, still conquer through your judge.
ELEGY X.
He tells Venus that he now ceases to write Elegies.
Seek a new Poet, mother of the tender Loves; here the extreme turning-place is grazed [674] by my Elegies, which I, a foster-child of the Pelignian fields, have composed; nor have my sportive lays disgraced me. Me, I say, who, if that is aught, am the heir to my rank, [675] even through a long line of ancestors, and not lately made a Knight in the hurly-burly of warfare. Mantua delights in Virgil, Verona in Catullus; I shall be called the glory of the Pelignian race; which its own liberties summon to glorious arms, [676] when trembling Rome dreaded [677] the allied bands. And some stranger will say, as he looks on the walls of the watery Sulmo, which occupy but a few acres of land, "Small as you are, I will call you great, who were able to produce a Poet so great." Beauteous boy, and thou, Amathusian parent [678] of the beauteous boy, raise your golden standard from my fields. The horned [679] Lyæus [680] has struck me with a thyrsus more potent; with mighty steeds must a more extended plain be paced. Unwarlike Elegies, my sportive [681] Muse, farewell; a work destined to survive long after I am dead and gone.——