Amores

Ovid

Ovid. Ovid's Art of Love (in three Books), the Remedy of Love, the Art of Beauty, the Court of Love, the History of Love, and Amours. Dryden, John, et al., translator. New York: Calvin Blanchard, 1855.

  1. His hands in your embrace you'll find embru'd
  2. With clotted, and perhaps with guiltless blood;
  3. How awkward must it be for you to feel,
  4. Near yours, his thigh that late was cas'd with steel
  5. That ring, the token of his pride and state,
  6. Was with a heavy gauntlet hid of late:
  7. Canst thou have commerce with a thing so foul!
  8. Where's now the boasted niceness of thy soul?
  9. What pleasure canst thou in his roughness find?
  10. Thou that wert once the softest of thy kind!
  11. Behold what marks of brutal rage he bears,
  12. And how he's mangled with dishonest scars.
  13. Yet to these scars, dishonest as they are,
  14. His wealth he owes, his fortunes with the fair.
  15. No doubt, he makes a merit of his guilt,
  16. And brags what blood he has in battle spilt.
  17. Fine courtship this, to win a gentle dame;
  18. Thou shar'st his money, and must share his shame.