When I was from Cupid’s passions free, my Muse was mute and wrote no elegy.
All that remained of Daphne was her shining loveliness.
But love, resistless love, my soul invades, discretion this, affection that perswades. I see the right and I approve it too, condemn the wrong and yet the wrong pursue.
Peace filled the world – until some futile brain Envied the lions’ diet and gulped down A feast of flesh to fill his greedy guts.
Todas las grandes riquezas que posees se encuentran ahora reducidas al espacio que tu cuerpo.
Phantasos: he takes illusory shapes of all inanimate things, earth, stones, rivers, trees.
When lizard-footed giants climbed the hills And with a hundred hands clawed at the sky.
Love is a child and naked; he has years that know no meanness, and he has no clothes, so that he is open in his ways.
And warns us to use life’s beauty as it blooms. The thorn is spurned when the rose has dropped.
To wish for what you want is not enough; With ardent longing you must strive for it.
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
Argus, you are fallen, and the light in all your lamps is utterly put out: one hundred eyes, one darkness all the same!
An animal more like the gods than these, more intellectually capable and able to control the other beasts, had not as yet appeared: now man was born, either.
Perhaps you think that there are sacred groves and cities of the gods along the way, temples displaying all the gifts of wealth? Not so: your path is full of lurking perils as well as images of savage beasts. “And if you hold this course unswervingly, you’ll find the horns of Taurus in your way, 110 the Archer and the gaping jaws of Leo, and Scorpio, whose long and curving arms sweep one way, while the curving arms of Cancer sweep broadly in the opposite direction.
Thence are we a hardy generation, and able to endure fatigue, and we give proofs from what original we are sprung.
Thus earth of late so rude, So shapeless, man, till now unknown, became.
I intend to speak of metamorphoses.
Apollo Loves at first sight; he wants to marry Daphne, He hopes for what he wants – all wishful thinking!
Wij mensen zijn dan ook gehard en tehen veel bestand, een wezenlijk bewijs van dat waaruit wij zijn geschapen.
Since you can never be my bride, My tree at least you shall be! Let the laurel Adorn, henceforth, my hair, my lyre, my quiver: Let Roman victors, in the long procession, Wear laurel wreaths for triumph and ovation.
The rest night knows, and we, and the tower that sees, and the light that showed me a path through the sea.