Ovid's Erotic Poems - Ovid

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I thought Ovid was supposed to be a poet.” Readers still skeptical are invited to peruse these exact, unrhymed versions and judge of their aesthetic qualities.

      Finally, some minor notes on my technical practice. In order to make my task easier, I have, in a number of instances, played fast and loose with certain features of metrical, rhymed English verse. I have, for example, availed myself, wherever necessary, of the convention of the floating possessive: sometimes my meter requires Venus’ and sometimes Venus’s son. Many of my lines are “headless,” by which I simply mean that the first syllable in a line otherwise iambic has been omitted. I have substituted an occasional trochaic first foot for an iambic, leading to what the ancients called a choriamb. I have also substituted an occasional trochee or spondee for an iambic foot at different positions in the metrical line. Readers who have been hearing my otherwise fairly regular meters in their heads will possibly notice these substitutions, but I doubt they will be overly discomfited by them.

      In the matter of rhymes, I have on a very few occasions settled for what I hope are acceptably close near-rhymes or off-rhymes. The reader is assured that I did so only because I could find no alternative. (Some cruxes are never resolved.) So-called feminine end-rhymes occasionally appear (di-syllabic rhymes such as “making” and “taking”), followed at the start of new lines by an iamb or trochee, as the sense of the line seemed to require.

      And with all these constraints in mind, I have tried to bring to the reader an English Ovid dealing with love in all its permutations.

      Some translations of Ovid consulted:

      Ovid: The Art of Love, trans. James Michie Ovid’s Amores, trans. Guy Lee Ovid: The Art of Love, trans. Rolfe Humphries Ovid: The Love Poems, trans. A. D. Melville Ovid: The Erotic Poems, trans. Peter Green Ovid: The Art of Love and Other Poems, trans. J. H. Mozley Ovid in English, ed. Christopher Martin

       Amores

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      Five little books of Naso’s once, now we are three—

      The way the author wished his work to be.

      So even if you don’t enjoy as you read on,

      That reading should hurt less—with two books gone.

      BOOK I

       I.1

Prepared for war, I set the weapon of my pen
To paper, matching meter, arms, and men
In six feet equal to the task. Then Cupid snatched
A foot away, laughing at lines mis-matched.
I asked him who had made him Master of My Song: 5
“Wild little boy, we poets all belong
To the Muses. You don’t see Venus bear the shield
Minerva wears, or blonde Minerva wield
The lover’s torch. And who would want the woods to yield
To Ceres, or Diana rule the field? 10
Is long-haired Phoebus meant to march on pike parade
While Mars shows how the Aonian lyre’s played?
Your power, boy, runs every single thing in sight,
So why this all-devouring appetite
For more? Or must your writ run clear to Helicon 15
And up each string Apollo plays upon?
My first, fierce line: how well that virgin verse once served me—
Until the simpering second one unnerved me!
But I don’t have the matter for those lighter stresses—
No girl—or boy—with long and comely tresses.” 20
Then I was done, and Cupid fetched an arrow fletched
For me (since on its shaft my name was etched).
He bent that reflex bow of his against one knee,
Saying what burden he had meant for me:
“Receive this barb, my bard.” Well, Cupid is the best 25
Of archers, so that bolt burns in my breast,
While six feet rise and five pronounce my clear decline
In elegiacs. Farewell, epic line.
And bind your golden locks with myrtle from the sea,
Eleven-footed Muse of Elegy. 30

       I.2

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Because it’s stone, I ask who’s made my bed this way:
Sweet sleep slips off, and sweat-soaked sheets won’t stay.
All night I cannot sleep at all, but toss and turn
Until my bones ache and my muscles burn.
I think I’d know if racking Love tormented me— 5
Unless he hid his arts in secrecy.
That must be it. He’s let it fly, his sneaky dart,
And I’m so weak, he twists it in my heart.
Should I give in—and up? Or fight—and feed the fire?
Surrender, or he’ll pile the pyre higher! 10
(I’ve seen what happens when you flourish one small brand:
Flame leaps. But don’t? It dies out in your hand.)
They whip an ox that fights the yoke and will not pull,
But ploughing’s painless for a docile bull.
The fiercest stallion breaks his mouth on iron bits;