My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Three times do I pour libation, and thrice, my Lady Moon, I speak this spell:—Be it with a friend that he lingers, be it with a leman he lies, may he as clean forget them as Theseus, of old, in Dia—so legends tell—did utterly forget the fair-tressed Ariadne.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Coltsfoot is an Arcadian weed that maddens, on the hills, the young stallions and fleet-footed mares. Ah! even as these may I see Delphis; and to this house of mine, may he speed like a madman, leaving the bright palaestra.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
This fringe from his cloak Delphis lost; that now I shred and cast into the cruel flame. Ah, ah, thou torturing Love, why clingest thou to me like a leech of the fen, and drainest all the black blood from my body?
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Lo, I will crush an eft, and a venomous draught to-morrow I will bring thee!
But now, Thestylis, take these magic herbs and secretly smear the juice on the jambs of his gate (whereat, even now, my heart is captive, though nothing he recks of me), and spit and whisper, ‘’Tis the bones of Delphis that I smear.’
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!