The Art of Love Read Online Free Page A

rapidly cover, my chosen field.
    [L ATIN :
Dum licet, et…
]
        While you’re still unharnessed and can wander fancy-free,
    Pick a girl and tell her, “You’re the only girl for me.”
    A mistress, though, doesn’t float down from the sky:
    You have to seek out the one who’s caught your eye.
    A hunter has to work,
    Know where to spread his stag-nets, in which glens boars lurk,
    A fowler’s familiar with copses, fishermen learn
    Which streams are the most rewarding, and you, if you yearn
    For a long-term affair, won’t have one till you’ve found
    The places where girls are thick on the ground.
    Though Perseus brought back Andromeda from the Syrian coast
    And Paris stole Helen from his foreign host,
    You can achieve your ambition
    More easily. I’m not recommending an expedition
    Overseas or a gruelling march; look nearer home
    And you’ll say, “The prettiest girls in the world are in Rome”—
    They’re thicker than wheatsheaves on Gargara, grapes in Lesbos, birds in the trees,
    Stars in the sky, fish in the seas,
    For Venus is a strong presence
    In the city her son founded. If you fancy adolescents,
    One stunner out of plenty
    Will emerge and dazzle you; if you like them over twenty,
    The range of available talent is so rich
    That your only problem will be which;
    And if you prefer mature, experienced women,
    Believe me, they’re as common
    As blackberries.
    [L ATIN :
Tu modo Pompeia…
]
                             When the sun’s on the back of Hercules’
    Lion, in high summer, just stroll at your ease
    Down Pompey’s shady colonnade,
    Or Octavia’s (which she made
    More beautiful, when her son died,
    With rich marblework on the outside),
    Or the one that’s named
    After its founder, Livia, famed
    For its antique paintings. Don’t forget to go
    To the Danaids’ portico
    Where the fifty sculptured virgins meditate
    Their luckless cousins’ fate—
    The multiple murder planned
    By their fierce father Belus (here shown sword in hand).
    And don’t miss the shrine where Venus weeps
    For Adonis, the synagogue where Syrian Jewry keeps
    The sabbath sacred, or the Memphian temple
    Of the linen-clad heifer Io, whose example
    Has taught many a courtesan
    To offer her body to a man
    As she did hers to Jove.
    The law-courts, too, are fertile grounds for love,
    Believe it or not—yes, desire
    From dry forensic tinder can catch fire.
    There where the Appian nymph tosses her water-jets
    High from beneath the marble shrine, Venus’s nets
    Trap even lawyers. The man who knows how to lend
    His eloquence to defend others can’t defend
    Himself, words fail him, he has to look after
    A new case now—his own. Meanwhile the goddess’s laughter
    Tinkles from her nearby temple at the sight
    Of the advocate turned client overnight.
    [L ATIN :
Sed tu praecipue…
]
        Above all, comb the curved theatre—that’s the place
    Richest in spoils of the sexual chase.
    There you’ll find someone to love, or a playmate, there
    You can opt for one night or a solid affair.
    As ants in column bustle up and down their lanes,
    Jaws clutching their wheat-grains,
    As bees in their fragrant glades and pastures hover
    Above flowers and thyme and clover,
    Our smart women swarm to the games in such numbers my vision
    And judgment blur—often I lose my powers of decision.
    They come to see and be seen;
    Modesty, chastity mean
    Nothing there. Romulus, it was all your fault,
    It was your games that first featured rape and assault—
    Those Sabine women and sex-hungry men.
    The theatre had no marble seats or awnings then,
    Nor was the stage red-dyed
    With sweet-smelling saffron; the Palatine woods supplied
    A backdrop of greenery,
    And nature without artifice the scenery;
    Shaggy-headed, the spectators sat
    On tiered turf seats, any old leaves as a hat
    To shade the sun. Alert, each man
    Brooded silently and formed his plan,
    Having marked with a glance his selected girl.
    Then, to the skirl
    Of Etruscan