May Love call the Muses, and the Muses bring Love; and may the Muses ever give me song at my desire, dear melodious song, the sweetest physic in the world.
Happy are lovers when their love is requited. Theseus, for all he found Hades at the last implacable, was happy because Perithoüs went with him; and happy Orestes among the cruel Inhospitables, because Pylades had chosen to share his wanderings; happy also lived Achilles Aeacid while his dear comrade was alive, and died happy, seeing he so avenged his dreadful fate.
A shearer came to a Queensland shed, when most of the sheds were full;
He'd tramped and tramped till his hope was dead, and never got hands in wool.
He'd stuck to the Union, hard and fast, with no one to understand
How his heart had longed, as the weeks dragged past, for his love and his Maoriland.
" Fern and tussock and flax; range and river and sea.
A strain on my heart that will never relax — a heart that will never be free.
Lovely sheaphard ope thine eye,
Sleepe is losse when I stand by. E.
Whoes that who does forbid me sleepe
Has the wolfe disperst my sheepe F.
I keepe thy flocks, they feed secure & free
Would I could guard my hart as well from thee
And I grieve to see thy cruelty E.
I blush to heare of love
As yet I have no cares, but can
To my homely oaten reed
Singe prases of great Pan
But loue they say does sorrow breed F.
Peevish Lad canst thou disdaine
y e silver goddesse of the night
When w th all her starry traine
Love did not know there was a bee sleeping in the roses and was stung; he shook his finger and cried out.
He ran and fluttered to the beautiful Cytherean and exclaimed: " I am killed, mother, I am killed, I shall die! A little winged serpent which peasants call a honey-bee, stabbed me. "
And she answered: " If the sting of a honey-bee hurt so much, how do you think they suffer, Love, who are stung by you? "
Love flays me with a hyacinth rod and bids me to fight.
I dash through the sharp torrents, the forests and the valleys; and my sweat exhausts me.
My heart leaps to my mouth and I desire death.
But Love brushes my brow with soft wings and whispers: " Can you not kiss? "
The husband of Cytherea by the furnace of Lemnos took iron and fashioned the shafts of the loves.
And Aphrodite took sweet honey to anoint the tips, but Love mingled gall with it.
Ares shaking his thick spear, sneered at Love's shaft, but Love said: " It is heavy; those who have felt it know that. "
Ares received the dart; Aphrodite smiled a little. But Ares groaned and cried: " It is heavy indeed — take it from me. " But Love said: " Keep it. "