with canvas. And this (says she) the shore of the blustering Adriatic does not deny, nor the Cyclad isles and famous Rhodes and the wild Thracian Propontis, nor the gloomy gulf of Pontus, where she who was afterwards a pinnace was formerly a leafy forest: for on the height of Cytorus she often rustled with talking leaves. Pontic Amastris and Cytorus green with box, my galley says that all this was and is well known to thee; she says that from her earliest birthtime she stood on thy summit, in thy waters first dipped her blades, and thence over so many riotous seas brought her owner, whether the breeze from left or right invited, or Jove came down astern on both sheets at once; and that no vows to the gods of the shore had been made for her when at the last she was sailing from the sea even to this limpid lake.

But these things are past and gone; now she rests in old age and retired leisure, and dedicates herself to thee, twin Castor, and to thee, Castor’s twin.

V

Let us live, my Lesbia, and love, and value at one farthing all the talk of crabbed old men.

Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then