I lately lived a proper person for girls, and campaigned it not without honor; but now this wall, which guards the left side of [the statue] of sea-born Venus, shall have my arms and my lyre discharged from warfare.  Here, here, deposit the shining flambeaux, and the wrenching irons, and the bows, that threatened the resisting doors.  O thou goddess, who possessest the blissful Cyprus, and Memphis free from Sithonian snow, O queen, give the haughty Chloe one cut with your high-raised lash.

* * * * *

ODE XXVII.

To Galatea, upon her going to sea.

Let the omen of the noisy screech-owl and a pregnant bitch, or a tawny wolf running down from the Lanuvian fields, or a fox with whelp conduct the impious [on their way]; may the serpent also break their undertaken journey, if, like an arrow athwart the road, it has frightened the horses.  What shall I, a provident augur, fear?  I will invoke from the east, with my prayers, the raven forboding by his croaking, before the bird which presages impending showers, revisits the stagnant pools.  Mayest thou be happy, O Galatea, wheresoever thou choosest to reside, and live mindful of me and neither the unlucky pye nor the vagrant crow forbids your going on.  But you see, with what an uproar the prone Orion hastens on:  I know what the dark bay of the Adriatic is, and in what manner Iapyx, [seemingly] serene, is guilty.  Let the wives and children of our enemies feel the blind tumults of the rising south, and the roaring of the blackened sea, and the shores trembling with its lash.  Thus too Europa trusted her fair side to the deceitful bull, and bold as she was, turned pale at the sea abounding with monsters, and the cheat now become manifest.  She, who lately in the meadows was busied about flowers, and a composer of the chaplet meet for nymphs, saw nothing in the dusky night put stars and water.  Who as soon as she arrived at Crete, powerful with its hundred cities, cried out, overcome with rage, “O father, name abandoned by thy daughter!  O my duty!  Whence, whither am I come?  One death is too little for virgins’ crime.  Am I awake, while I deplore my base offense; or does some vain phantom, which, escaping from the ivory gate, brings on a dream, impose upon me, still free from guilt.  Was it better to travel over the tedious waves, or to gather the fresh flowers?  If any one now would deliver up to me in my anger this infamous bull, I would do my utmost to tear him to pieces with steel, and break off the horns of the monster, lately so much beloved.  Abandoned I have left my father’s house, abandoned I procrastinate my doom.  O if any of the gods hear this, I wish I may wander naked among lions:  before foul decay seizes my comely cheeks, and moisture leaves this tender prey, I desire, in all my beauty, to be the food of tigers.”  “Base Europa,”